The Boxee Box — an Apple-TV like embedded set-top-ish device. Under $200? Amazing. I am buying one asap.

The coolest thing out of the Boxee booth was the keyboard/remote combo. Assuming it’s reasonably cheap, I’m getting this for sure.

So if I can’t figure it out after much more time, I’ll have to replace it. I’m getting fed up.

Leopard runs pretty smooth, I guess just getting into it at its fifth (10.5.5) iteration means all of the major bugs have pretty much been squashed. Plex… it was just OK. It was no real improvement over my previous configuration really, and it crashed a few times trying to do basic operations.

I decided to give Boxee a try, as was recommended to me. Man this thing is slick! I added my media sources and it recognized 2/3rds to 3/4ths of my media automatically, providing more information about each episode or movie. Upon watching the media, it “scrobbled” (like last.fm) what I’d done to my profile. After watching, I applied a rating to what I had just watched, also put on my profile. How neat is that, as a concept? This is exactly what I was looking for months ago, but didn’t even think to look for an existing solution, I just assumed it didn’t exist.

I love how it integrates with other social media applications. Twitter (if I didn’t hate it) can be setup to have all of my updates tweeted to it. Last.fm can be setup to have all music I listen to scrobble to my profile. You can view your Flickr photostream and watch slideshows directly from the app. There’s more, it’s so cool.

Boxee takes over your apple remote (universal remote in my case), so when pressing Menu it takes you to Boxee instead of Front Row. This is not a problem for me, because everything Front Row offers is contained in Boxee — and that is a VERY small subset of Boxee’s operations. After using it a bit, I’m really happy with the fact that it takes over the remote, it removes the requirement upon Sofa Control (as I used to use), or Remote Buddy (a similar product). Boxee even has an option for you to suspend the system, a feature which I use very often.

Boxee is still in “alpha” stage, but I’ve only come across a few bugs. I plan to contribute as much as I can to this project, because I think it’s really cool. It currently runs on Intel OS X 10.4/10.5 and Ubuntu. If you want an invite, let me know.

7:42 pulled up the guide, starting opening process
7:46 ok this putty knife is not going to work, going to use a small flathead screwdriver instead
7:50 ok got it open with combination of the putty knife and flathead, minor scratches and bends on the bottom of the case, not a big deal
7:55 removed top slot of old 256MB ram stick and put in the new 2GB stick
7:58 why won’t this frickin tiny plug fit back in
8:05 k got the plug in, moment of truth
8:07 FRICK ON A STICK. back to the drawing board
8:10 took out both sticks, put the 2GB stick in the slot closest to the motherboard.
8:13 great success, time to put it all back together
8:20 ok, let’s see how the leopard install goes
8:37 “cannot be installed on this computer“, oh poop. Guess I should get a non-MacBook-specific Tiger disk

At some point in the past, XBMC was ported to Linux, and later OS X. It was called OSXBMC, then later changed to Plex. It became a great front-end for OS X HTPCs, specifically Mac Minis or Apple TVs, as an alternative to Front Row that plays more formats, and apparently is the only way to have the Mac Mini play 1080p content with its weak onboard graphics. Of course, it only works on Leopard (Mac OS X v10.5), Intel based Macs — another reason for me to upgrade.

I plan on giving it a try as soon as I upgrade. So hopefully it will make it so I no longer require SofaControl or VLC.

The wife loves her Leopard Macbook, and I noticed some drastic improvements to Front Row that aren’t available on the version my Mini runs, Tiger. So I want to upgrade the OS on the mini to Leopard.

I found a neat guide to upgrading the RAM on the mini, so I just need to buy the RAM (currently uses 2x256MB DDR2 SDRAM 667 MHz, I’d like 2x1GB) and install it before I migrate to Leopard. Meanwhile I’m still on a 60GB hard drive, but fortunately we watch shows as fast as I can get them.

Fun times…

Edit:
Bought a G.SKILL 200-pin DDR2 667MHz PC 5300 2GB memory chip for the upgrade.

For awhile I’ve been pretty disappointed by the audio on my HTPC. The subwoofer never really worked, and the audio levels were pretty abysmal. I have a JVC RX-6030VBK 5.1 setup with a toslink cable going between my Mac Mini and the receiver. The subwoofer is behind a door in my entertainment center, so the already-quiet sound is muffled. I’ve been thinking of replacing this system for awhile, because the audio quality is very weak.

Last night, I played around with the configuration on the unit, and set the subwoofer to +10 audio and the other 4 channels to -10. I tested it with some bass tracks, and man it was ground-shaking great. The wife and I watched some TV on it and were pleased with the experience. I think I’ll keep this system after all (at least for awhile).

I’ve already had the lamp replaced twice, so I’m starting to think this TV wasn’t such a good deal after all.

Man how annoying.

Two or three times since my lamp was replaced on my DLP HDTV I’ve heard that same beeping/buzzing when turning my TV on. From what I understand, that’s the early stages of the lamp going bad. The manufacturer’s warranty is good for one year past purchase date, which ends for me in mid January, 2008. It’s so far been only a VERY minor inconvenience, but it could become something more serious.

So I sent an online request to have it repaired, and the Samsung guy came out the next business day. They told me they’d call me 20 minutes before they arrived, which was good — I wanted to take pictures in case I had to replace the lamp myself in the future. Unfortunately they did not give me 20 minutes notice, I got a call from the wife saying that the repairman was already here replacing it. Come to think of it, this same thing happened last time, and I remember thinking afterwards, “Gee that’s a convenient ‘mistake’, I wonder if he even replaced it…”. Odd that it happened again.

I was reminded to get the lamp replaced by a warranty extension renewal I received in the mail… something like $500 for 3 years. Are you kidding me?!? I guess next time it goes bad, I’ll need to replace it myself.