This past weekend my project was upgrading a home theater PC (HTPC) with some better hardware. I also wanted to give the latest version of Boxee another try on a freshly configured PC. 
I first tried the beta version from a couple months ago on another HTPC (I’ve got two running) and despite being initially impressed, I was quickly turned off by sluggish and choppy streaming video and a somewhat unresponsive UI.
I thought the streaming issues might be caused by the wireless connection to the PC. In a perfect world I would have it plugged in with a network cable, but the layout at home prevents this. Furthermore, I’m able to stream content through a web browser from Netflix and Hulu with pretty good consistency on the same PC.
The UI at first glance looks nice and slick. Everything is well designed to display on a TV and be viewed from across the room. In my case I only have a mouse connected to the PC and find navigation to be difficult. Mouse clicks don’t always register and clicking back to previous screens often doesn’t work. I also find the worst scenario is when you start a streaming video, it begins to chop, you try to click back to stop the video, the click doesn’t register and you are essentially stuck and have to completely restart the PC. In my case this hard reboot sent my PC into a cycle of endless blue screens and reboots.
In short, my second go around with the new beta version wasn’t any better than the first. Disappointed, I left a little frustration out on Twitter and to my surprise I heard back from Boxee’s support account. We had a short conversation and I sent the log file to them. I really like how social media tools are helping customers and businesses connect like this and was impressed that Boxee was out there listening for customer feedback.
