Review D-Link Boxee Box

The Black Cube…
The Boxee Box is a black cube with one of its corners cut off, giving it a slanted look when placed on a flat surface. The design is very modern and looks rather nice. The boxes dimensions are 115 x 115 x 115.5 mm. The cubes sides are all finished with a mat plastic look with the exception of the front which is a polished black. The bottom side is fluorescent green and comes with an anti-slip finish. When powered on, the Boxee logo lights up at the centre of the facade – orange when there is no network connection and green when there is. The internal fan can be heard when within 50 centimetres of the box, but if this is located under your television and you are sitting back from it than you won’t notice this at all.

The double faced remote control is a rather good idea!
Its not big (146 x 43 x 14 mm) and its feel in the hand is rather natural. The particularity of this remote control is no secret – with the device coming with two usable faces. The first contains the navigation buttons, play/pause and the home button, with the devices use being most practical when held vertically. The second side contains a "QWERTY" keyboard with rubber keys that are relatively well spaced allowing you to enter content searches into the integrated web browser and open various social network sessions (YouTube, Flickr), etc.

Buttons and connection ports
On the top of the Boxee Box is a single button to turn the device on. All of the devices connectivity options are on the back of the device, with the audio and HD video connectivity being made via the HDMI 1.3 port present (1.5 m cable provided). If you wish to make an analogue connection then you will need to acquire the relevant adaptors. For the audio, there are also RCA and digital outputs, but no headphones jack. To play multimedia content locally you can connect your external devices to one of the two USB ports (memory stick, hard drive) or insert your SD/MMC memory card into the port present on the front right. Finally, the network connectivity is made either via the Ethernet 10/100 port or the 802.11n WiFi connection, although there is unfortunately no Gigabit option.