After spending months patiently waiting for BOXEE to come out with a version that actually worked on Windows I was saddened to finally find an interface that is buggy, slow and unintuitive. Meanwhile Hulu – the online video portal for which BOXEE was in part designed – comes out with it’s own beta desktop software. Comparing the two lead me to the following conclusion: Hulu Desktop = Yay! BOXEE = Aww!
When BOXEE announced a working version for Windows late 2008 using a demo video on zdnet I was excited. Later I came to find out that the Windows alpha release shown in the video wasn’t available to the public. So I waited and waited for a public release and a few months later forgot about it. Then in May I installed the just released Hulu Desktop beta on my HTPC and was very pleased with it’s overall performance but couldn’t help wondering…whatever happened to BOXEE?
Well as it turns out, BOXEE hasn’t come far since the initial Windows alpha release a year ago. I found the software buggy, slow and not organized very well. Here are some screen-shots I took from BOXEE:
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Here are screen-shots from Hulu Desktop:
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To be fair BOXEE is open source, commercial free and supports other networks that Hulu doesn’t, but for me getting to the shows I wanted using BOXEE was more of a hassle than going to the network’s website and watching the content there.