CES: Boxee for iPad Gets Previewed

On January 7, 2011, in Industry News, by J.R. Bookwalter

Boxee, the little media center that could, had a banner year in 2010, finally making the leap from software to hardware at long last. But that hasn’t stopped the company from continuing to branch out, and they’re eyeing the iPad as one of their nex…

Plex media center software updates, adds iOS app

On August 31, 2010, in Industry News, by Dan Moren

Media center software Plex updated on Tuesday with new features including a spun-off media management program and a new iOS app.

Video: Plex/Nine Media Center Gains iOS App

On August 30, 2010, in Industry News, by J.R. Bookwalter

Plex/Nine

If you currently use your Mac as a home media hub, you might already be using Plex instead of competitors like XBMC or Boxee. If you aren’t, you may very well be downloading it after midnight tonight, because a new update — coupled with an all-new iOS app — brings some magical new capabilities.

CrunchGear got the exclusive scoop
on Plex/Nine, the latest version of the popular Plex media center software for Mac OS X. At the top of the list of new features is the introduction of an all-new media manager as well as an iOS app which brings all the Plex goodness to your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Thanks to Plex Media Manager (which requires Snow Leopard 10.6 to operate), adding media to your Plex library just got a whole lot easier. Media Manager is installed as an applet when you install Plex/Nine, and runs as a Finder menu item to easily manage your media — including adding new titles, creating new categories and jumping into Plex proper.

Perhaps the bigger news for Plex fans is that Plex/Nine will shortly have a swanky new universal iOS app, which allows you to use your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad as a remote control for the Mac software — and even to stream that media from your computer to your handheld device, as you can see from the quick overview video embedded below.

Among the clever tricks that the Plex iOS app brings to users is the ability to resume watching media already in progress. You can watch part of a show while sitting at your computer, then take your iPad into the bedroom and pick up where you left off before rolling over and counting sheep for the night.

For many users, Plex/Nine might eclipse the need for an updated Apple TV or something like the rumored iTV device from Apple, especially since Plex can access your iTunes library in addition to media files you have elsewhere, including network-attached servers or local drives.

Plex/Nine will be released at midnight EST on Tuesday morning, and the iOS app should be available in the App Store shortly thereafter — full details are available on the Plex website.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

 

Logitech Performance Mouse MX

On March 4, 2010, in Industry News, by Florence Ion

Mouse technology has come a long way since the rollerball mice of the 1980s. Logitech’s Performance Mouse MX drives that point home–it can be used on practically any surface, and it offers features that our first Mac mouse could never have dreamed of.

Despite its deep feature set, the sleek Performance Mouse MX is a simple install. It uses a tiny Unifying USB receiver, which works with other wireless Logitech products simultaneously–handy if you’ve got several wireless peripherals but only have one spare USB port. The battery life is impressive–we used the mouse for over a month without charging it. When you do need to re-up, the MX comes with a micro-USB cable for recharging from either your Mac or a wall outlet, and its nifty LEDs display the charge level.


Sure it’s a hundred bucks… but it’ll track on glass, man!

The tracking on the MX is almost too good to be true–we even busted out some of our older Logitech mice to make sure we weren’t just imagining things. The mouse uses Logitech’s Darkfield Laser Tracking, which is a fancy sci-fi jargon way of saying its two lasers detect the most miniscule details on your surface and create a micro-road map. It can track on practically any surface–even clear glass. The precision of the MX makes us feel like we’re actually drawing on screen with a pen in hand.

The MX is equipped with a hyperfast scrollwheel that even allows for horizontal scrolling. One of our favorite features is a button that lets you switch between free-spinning (for wicked-fast scrolling) or ratcheted scrolling (for line-by-line control). We used the well-placed thumb buttons for everything from jumping between windows in Exposé to moving backward and forward through our browser history to zooming in and out of photos and web pages. Whether you use your Mac for coding or just everyday web surfing, tweakable controls like these are a boon to productivity.

Logitech’s Control Center software lets you customize button settings and also gives you an onscreen battery monitor that can track the power levels of multiple devices sharing the same Unifying receiver. It’s a neat trick, as is the MX mouse’s ability to charge while you work. It’s the small details that make the MX stand apart from cheaper alternatives. The downside (aside from its sky-high price)? Users with small hands like mine might not be totally comfortable using the beefy Performance MX mouse; coworkers with larger paws, however, weren’t bothered by its size or weight. And the mouse is right-hand only.

Get the Boxee Beta on your Apple TV

On January 19, 2010, in Industry News, by Cory Bohon

Turn your Apple TV into a Boxee Box with the new Boxee Beta.

Previous versions of Boxee allowed you to install the media center software on the pre-Apple TV 3.0 OS, but you can now install the new beta version of Boxee with a bit of hackery on your Apple TV with the latest OS. 

Thanks to a bit of hackery, you can now install the latest Boxee beta on your Apple TV with OS versions 3.0 and 2.4. The Boxee beta is the same softwarewe expected on the Boxee Box shipping this summer.

Boxee has posted a full guide on how to complete the installation on your Apple TV, however, it is not for the non-techie. You’ll need to SSH into your Apple TV and mess around with the Terminal to get the software installed.

Be sure to check the comments on the Boxee post if you’re using a different ATV firmware version before attempting to install. Several users have tried the install on different versions of the ATV firmware, and are posting their conclusions.

 

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