#Boxee tv dvr review tv

Add in the combination of an excellent user interface and ease of use with the exception of the remote’s volume control buttons, and it’s clear the competition pales by comparison.

#Boxee tv dvr review tv

With its relatively petit size, a superb picture, and a low price tag, the TCL Roku Smart TV 28S305 is an excellent choice if you are looking for a smaller device. Lacking an aerial, we didn’t try over-the-air broadcasts but we suspect those using it for that purpose will be satisfied.įinally, picture quality was judged very good with deep black levels, good brightness, good contrast, and accurate color. We tried the television in multiple venues including a conference room, kitchen, and bedroom and one staffer plans to add it to the vintage Airstream trailer he is restoring. The device then uploads those recordings to the cloud, where users receive unlimited storage. In general, the set did what it was supposed to do and did it quite well, although occasionally we all noticed we would select CNN and it would start to open and then the set would return to the main menu. Boxee TV also sports two tuners, letting it simultaneously display one channel while recording another.

Setting up channels was a one-time affair, typically involving being sent to a web site to enter a code, and was simple and straightforward. The list is extensive (there are thousands of apps) and also includes Comedy Central, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Disney, PBS Kids, among dozens of others. Through the built-in Roku functionality, many options are available, including NetFlix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, HBO Now, Showtime, NBC News, NBC, the Tagesschau, PBS, Sky News, France 24, and Deutsche Welle or DW. I found I would hit the side-mounted volume control buttons when merely gripping the remote to turn it off or navigate and others testing the unit had a similar experience. Two – Sling and Hulu – of the four on my remote are essentially useless in my case. While the onscreen menu is highly customizable, even the wallpaper is changeable, the dedicated remote buttons are not so. The compact TCL remote features four dedicated Roku buttons for Netflix, Sling, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, a volume button on the side, and it does not have a numeric keyboard but who enters channel numbers these days anyway. The TV, unlike inexpensive standalone Roku units like the Express, can connect to both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless networks. Simply unpack, attach the two feet using the four screws (provided), insert two AAA batteries (also provided) into the remote, plug in the power cord, and connect the set to your Wi-Fi network. That makes it a great option for households where some people just want to watch TV and other people want to be able to stream Netflix, watch YouTube videos, or surf the web on the big screen.Setup was easy. You could literally hook Google TV up in your house and nobody would notice that it’s there. The end result is a TiVo interface that works just like it normally does and, when I want it, a Google TV interface that I can bring up over the top of TiVo when I want to do something more advanced than TiVo offers.

So in my case, Comcast goes into the back of my TiVo box, the HDMI output from my TiVo box goes into the HDMI input on the Logitech Revue, and then the HDMI output on the Logitech Revue goes into the HDMI input on my TV. This is crucially important and is the fundamental difference between Google TV and everything else that’s out there. It sits between your cable box and your television set and acts as a layer over the top of however you normally watch TV. Your cable box, for instance, connects to the primary input on your TV and when you want to watch something on your Apple TV, you switch to input two. The standard internet-connected TV box connects to an auxiliary input on your TV and exists separately from however you normally watch TV-TiVo, your cable company’s DVR, over-the-air, etc. It does some of the same things that those boxes do, but it does a whole lot more. Google TV is not like Apple TV or Boxee or Roku or any of those boxes that connect to your television set.

It sets a standard that potential competitors should closely emulate with future products. Whether Google TV as a platform ultimately succeeds or fails doesn’t matter as much as the method with which Google has fused TV and the web together.

Well, bullish on the concept of Google TV and how it integrates with the current way most people consume television and the way we’ll all consume television in the future.