Boxee - My impressions so far, for my HTPC

[MSIC]

I will make a new thread soon regarding my newly-self made mini ITX HTPC.
I have been preparing this by using Boxee on my Win7 Desktop, and generally it's looking really nice with lots of aspects that work well.

I have however been having problems with regards to recognition of certain files, and this being a well-known and well addressed topic, I have been following the Boxee forums closely, and ended up using a slightly buggy but really quite good piece of software called 'TV Rename' (as opposed to another, called 'TV Renamer' which I dont like so well).
This has resolved most of my issues, but I am left with a few that are annoying me.

Examples:

I have lots of Tom & Jerry cartoons from the 1940s onwards (love 'em ), but some are regarded as small films rather than as a series - firstly, Boxee insists therefore on adding them to the 'film' section rather than TV section (it takes details from IMDB), with seemingly no way of the user being able to override this... annoying
Secondly, i have one of the first ones call 'Polka-Dot Puss' which despite me literally copying and pasting the name from IMDB, Boxee steadfastly refuses to acknowledge.
There is the ability to browse purely by file, akin to using Windows Explorer, however this isnt what I want, as alot of the files are for my young son to see visually and point to what he wants.
At present, I have no answer to this.

The second example is of a DVD that my son uses to aid his language development called 'Sookie & Finn' - it's a very small circulation DVD, and therefore not listed on IMDB, which again means that Boxee software refused to recognise within its library - no ability to manually add Metadata to the file.

These are a real shame, and significantly hamper my intention to get rid of my Western Digital TV Live (which currently browses and plays purely by folder & file) and replace with a Boxee HTPC.

I have also been considering alternatives, such as XBMC (which Boxee was a fork from), but dont work as well as Boxee in other ways.

Does anyone else have experience of using Boxee? Any solutions to the above?

PS I realise that I could post all of this in the Boxee forums, and indeed may still do, but Hexus is my home

[Dareos]

slightly offttopic, where can I get those cartoons?

[Barrichello]

I will make a new thread soon regarding my newly-self made mini ITX HTPC.
I have been preparing this by using Boxee on my Win7 Desktop, and generally it's looking really nice with lots of aspects that work well.

I have however been having problems with regards to recognition of certain files, and this being a well-known and well addressed topic, I have been following the Boxee forums closely, and ended up using a slightly buggy but really quite good piece of software called 'TV Rename' (as opposed to another, called 'TV Renamer' which I dont like so well).
This has resolved most of my issues, but I am left with a few that are annoying me.

Examples:

I have lots of Tom & Jerry cartoons from the 1940s onwards (love 'em ), but some are regarded as small films rather than as a series - firstly, Boxee insists therefore on adding them to the 'film' section rather than TV section (it takes details from IMDB), with seemingly no way of the user being able to override this... annoying
Secondly, i have one of the first ones call 'Polka-Dot Puss' which despite me literally copying and pasting the name from IMDB, Boxee steadfastly refuses to acknowledge.
There is the ability to browse purely by file, akin to using Windows Explorer, however this isnt what I want, as alot of the files are for my young son to see visually and point to what he wants.
At present, I have no answer to this.

The second example is of a DVD that my son uses to aid his language development called 'Sookie & Finn' - it's a very small circulation DVD, and therefore not listed on IMDB, which again means that Boxee software refused to recognise within its library - no ability to manually add Metadata to the file.

These are a real shame, and significantly hamper my intention to get rid of my Western Digital TV Live (which currently browses and plays purely by folder & file) and replace with a Boxee HTPC.

I have also been considering alternatives, such as XBMC (which Boxee was a fork from), but dont work as well as Boxee in other ways.

Does anyone else have experience of using Boxee? Any solutions to the above?

PS I realise that I could post all of this in the Boxee forums, and indeed may still do, but Hexus is my home

I have tried both Boxee and now been happy with xbmc for sometime, i suffered with the issues you raised above. Been a while since i used boxee now but can you use separate scrappers for both Films and tv shows on boxee? i cant remember, but i would try that first. I found that using imdb for films and tvdb for tv series works best for me now.

I found lots of quirky issues with Boxee and tv series, if it is possible to use tvdb scrapper for your tv? and format the filename correctly so file should be (S1940.E39) polka-dot puss should work fine as per below...

http://thetvdb.com/?tab=episode&seri...d=101453&lid=7

[MSIC]

Unfortunately i cant see any way to change the scraper from being IMDB only ... even though thetvdb seems better suited.
I'd love to be wrong though.

Just to be clear, could you please say exactly how you would name the file?
At present, it is called
"Polka-Dot Puss (1949).avi"
which doesnt work, and neither does
"S1940.E39 Polka-Dot Puss (1949).avi"

As to Dareos, which cartoons are you referring to?

[Dareos]

Tom and Jerry

[MSIC]

£13 is a bargain for anyone, however pay attention to the review / comments at the bottom, if you are serious about collecting.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-Jerry-Co...3473863&sr=1-1

[duffster]

how does boxee compare to mythtv?

[Barrichello]

Unfortunately i cant see any way to change the scraper from being IMDB only ... even though thetvdb seems better suited.
I'd love to be wrong though.

Just to be clear, could you please say exactly how you would name the file?
At present, it is called
"Polka-Dot Puss (1949).avi"
which doesnt work, and neither does
"S1940.E39 Polka-Dot Puss (1949).avi"

Actually reading the naming conventions i think this is relevant to xbmc only using TVDB as scrapper by the looks of this...
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=TV_Shows...deo_Library%29

So dont think the naming conventions i use from that link would be of any help to you with Boxee

In my test created a file and named it S1940.E39.avi within a folder called Tom and Jerry and it worked perfectly for me under the tvdb scrapper.

This is the reason i went with xbmc over boxee in the end, was quite a headache with TV-series.

[Shooty*]

Mediabrowser all the way.

Edit: You can use Metabrowser with it to set your own metadata, the interface is the best of the lot (I recommend Chocolate as a skin) and it's just generally awesome. I've been using it on my HTPC for ages, EXCLUSIVELY. None of the others, and I tried a lot, offer anything like as cool. It's clean, it's simple, and it works. Some of the other similar things i tried were just fugly.

[MSIC]

how does boxee compare to mythtv?

Sorry, dont know - although i'm quite happy to give MythTV a go in principle, I know that I want to run a couple of Windows-only apps in the background for other purposes, so am ruling out Linux right now. Which is a shame, as i'd love to get rid of Windows.

[duffster]

You can run the mythtv backend in a virtualbox running linux on your windows machine. In fact there is a distro called mythbuntu that makes the install as easy as pie, as you just install the mythbuntu OS and it's all there ready for you to set up.
So long as your tuners are USB, virtualbox will be able to use them.

And there is a windows frontend available for mythtv, so you can watch tv natively on your (same) windows box. Or any other PCs you have on the same network.