Boxee vs. Plex vs. XBMC
So in the great challenge for me finding a viable media center device, I ran across Boxee (old news to many people I am sure) for OSX. Since I have a mini attached to my TV at home, it seemed like it could be a natural fit so I signed up and downloaded the application for my MBP to test it out. WOW was I impressed. A slick interface, iphone and appleRemote controls and tons of sweet options. Not to mention the fact that it is open source so if the main dev drops it others can keep it going. I was thouroughly impressed from the start. Plus the iphone control for Boxee was pretty damned good over wifi.
Then, Netflix didn’t work right. I realized later that even though I had provided my netflix credentials to Boxee previously, I needed to do it again in the application – not too bad. Now I am streaming Netflix, but the quality is terrible AND I can’t ffwd or rrwd! Ok, ok… lets try something less SD quality, like some of the content on Hulu. So I fire up Hulu and every time I play a video, all I get is a Hulu web page with no video but the show audio streaming in the background – lame. Ok, so how about the WB? An episode of Chuck should be good – not! Then I tried to stream my local media from a server I have in the house, which the Boxee was happy to add and catalog for me (sweet). I pull up a 2 minute video of one of my kids and it starts off great… and then it lags, and speeds up, and lags, and speeds up. *Barf*
I go trolling around the forums about video quality and buffering for Boxee and then I see someone else in the forums saying screw Boxee and try Plex. What the hell, why not… I just started with Boxee anyway I have no loyalty to it. So I download plex and install it in the MBP in parallel with Boxee and to my surprise Boxee isn’t a wunderkind – Plex is a nice app too. The interface is clean, but I have to dig a lot further to get some of the things I had available to me right away in Boxee (like Netflix, Hulu et al).
So I get Plex up and running, add Charlie Rose, Hulu and Netflix to my videos section and I think I am off to the races – or am I? Hulu just freezes Plex and it ends up crashing. Charlie Rose works well, but then again Charlie Rose would now… wouldn’t he? 
Netflix, after setting my login and password freezes Plex just like Hulu did. TED doesn’t work either. The shining star of Plex, so far, has been the way it deals with my iTunes library and playing tracks. Meh.
Then, on the Plex forums, I notice someone talking about XBMC, which I had heard of before. Apparently the Xbox Media Center is now open source and has active development and lots of users – time to download XBMC and give it a whirl!
XBMC starts off with a very easy install (I have met with very few difficult OS X installs) and I launch it. Another clean interface, the apple remote works just like in Boxee and Plex – but the Menu button brings up FrontRow instead of just going back in the menu tree, ugh. The videos section shows me an explorer style interface which sucks because I want it to find my stuff just like Boxee and Plex. I import my iTunes library and play some music – the interface works well but I can only play one track at a time and I can’t control the volume with the apple remote – ugh! Ok, now the full screen play comes on and I -can- control the volume with the remote. So far the coolest thing about XBMC is the pop up control when the media is playing… some kind of 3d cross thing that is pretty sweet. I don’t think I like XBMC, so I don’t even want to spend the 2.99 on the iPhone App store to buy the remote control software.
-DAMN-, I thought I had it. If I had to pick something, I would probably pick Boxee if it had better video quality or didn’t bomb out with most of its plugins. I would pick Plex over Boxee if I could get into some of those Menu’s because it seems to have better quality and finer control of the screen zoom for media playing. XBMC I would only use if there was a good way to get Netflix and the other integrated and to get FrontRow to stop popping up. I did look in the forums and used the “always on” feature… but then it made my remote non-functional for other applications.
I will play with them some more, but I am really on the brink here… I think I have stumbled upon what could be the media center of my dreams…. if I could only get it working !!!
EDIT: Now I am using Boxee exclusively. Since moving the system to use Hulu Feeds I have almost no issues with Boxee and it is my local media champion. Now if I could only get the audio and my DVI->HDMI playing at the same on my TV for a reasonable price.
I am using ATI 4550 with HDMI out for a single A/V connection to my TV on a Dell 745 running Boxee and it works well.
Since Boxee is based on XBMC, XBMC can’t be the loser here, can it? You can XBMC customize as you like to have a similar view on videos music and so on, like having cover flow, or cover art etc. Just use the options pane for each view!
I used XBMC on the original Xbox and Plex on a Mac Mini. I think Plex is really nice. Have not tried Boxee yet, but Plex plays everything and that is nice. Good review.
I use HDMI out of my ATI HD5570. Low Profile, under $100, can play most games relatively well. I agree, also, boxee seems the best. Don’t forget about the iPhone (Touch) app to control it!!
boxee and plex are just edited versions of xbmc. Im sticking with xbmc used it since it was called xbox media player