Boxee vs. Zinc vs. Hulu 116
For those with a Windows PC and some time for TV, DeviceGuru writes "Which is the best Internet media streaming application for a media-center PC? Boxee, Zinc, or the new Hulu Desktop? A post at DeviceGuru.com reviews these three media streaming platforms and draws some interesting conclusions. Key pros and cons are tabulated and numerous screenshots are included. Interestingly, despite lots of Boxee hype, Zinc already has a number of valuable features that Boxee is scrambling to add to its next version, due out in the fall. On the other hand, Boxee boasts far more third-party content-access applications support."
WMC plugins? (Score:2, Interesting)
Plex (Score:2, Interesting)
I prefer Plex over all of those. Surprised it was not included.
MythTV (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:None of them (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed that they aren't too useful for me, but Boxee does torrents and runs on Linux, so it's really my only choice of the three.
Screw them ALL! (Score:3, Interesting)
Since none of them support OS X unless you have an Intel processor, I'm ticked at them all. XBMC DOES, but so far I can't get it to stream Netflix OR Hulu (there are ways, but they require you to have another computer and to purchase Playon...FAIL).
Look, I'm not going to shell out hundreds of dollars just to have a media center computer. I happen to have some older hardware that is suitable for the task. PPC support makes sense because I think a fair number of people are walking the same path. So until Boxee gets off their collective butts and decides to support PPC, I'll pass.
Re:None of them (Score:3, Interesting)
Why isn't there some company in another country trying to do the same thing? Won't be as much American TV, obviously, but surely there are European companies trying to make a European(-country) version of Boxee/Hulu/Zinc.
Re:No mention of local media support (Score:2, Interesting)
Other than the livetv part, there isn't much to love in mythtv. Mythvideo is *horrible*. It doesn't have much in the way of automatically finding and acquiring metadata around your local media. The navigation menu assumes one big flat folder with everything in it. While it does work with directory trees, you end up having to click through that to get the video. Boxee really shines here -- it separates TV series from movies, and for tv shows, groups them according to season. This was exactly what I wanted. When you add new media, in myth you have to go an select scan from the setup screen while boxee is always watching for new media and it just shows up under the recently added section.
While the alpha does crash every now and then (the 0.12 has improved a lot for me) what I'm struggling with is the need for the fglrx -- the LTS fglrx support on my ati 9500 pro was horrible (freeze the screen, took 5 reboots to get stable from power on) -- I'm currently on 9.04 with xorg from 8.10 and that's been working out quite well now.
Re:Screw them ALL! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since none of them support OS X unless you have an Intel processor
Hulu does. I'm running Hulu Desktop on a G5.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)