In this ten minute cut video, I unwrap a new toy. The Boxee set me back about $200, not to mention Best Buy had a $99 sale only a week later (that’s life). At first $200 may seem expensive but hear me out.
At the time our media center/Boxee was running on a 6GB, dual core computer. It was a power hog. Using a Kill-A-Watt meter, I found that the cost just to run this computer 24/7 was about $5 per month. You might be thinking, “why not just enable sleep mode then?”
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Unfortunately, sleep mode did not work well with the media center (IR receiver, wake-up stuff) and furthermore could be confusing and frustrating. Following the Keep It Simple Stupid methodology, disabling sleep mode seemed the best option at the time. The thought occurred to me that if I could decommission this media PC then I would save electricity.
It also just so happens that Kitty, my lovely wife, was in the market for a new computer, thus I formated the old media center computer instead of buying a brand new PC ($400+). Given all these conditions, in a mixed up kind of way I ended up saving money with a Boxee box - yes, I can be a real a tight-ass sometimes.
UPDATE: updating the Boxee software fixed a lot of issues that I was experiencing on this video! Kitty and I have been using this for several months now and still really enjoy it.