Boxee For iPad Offers Many Options For Video Sharing
Boxee for iPad (Free) by BOXEE, INC. facilitates video social sharing by being a fully featured app.
The Boxee app talks to different social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as working with your PC, Mac, Apple TV (second generation), or a Boxee Box. Essentially, Boxee brings videos shared by your friends right to your door.
The app’s home page has three fields: friends (for Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr), watch later (videos you can save for a later date), and featured (which is a good way to play videos, since it is always populated). There are many different routes to go for viewing videos, so I’ll share what I tried.
I didn’t feel like creating a Boxee account, so my Facebook sign on looked like the next best choice. However, I didn’t see any shared videos under the “friends” field. This could either be due to my friends having so many videos to share that the app had to think for a little bit, or my friends didn’t have any videos to share. I’ll let you know if something does pop up.
The “My Media” page first gives you instructions on how to download the app for your Mac or PC. You then choose which movie folder you’d like to share. The videos from my MacBook Pro’s movies folder showed instantly. Playback was smooth and I liked being able to view the videos in fullscreen on my iPad. Viewing on the Apple TV through AirPlay worked equally as well.
The only thing I didn’t like was having to navigate through the folders to finally get to my videos. Here are the steps it took:
1. Select the Boxee icon for my Mac.
2. Click on my movies folder.
3. Locate the video I wanted.
4. Hit the play button.
This navigation felt cumbersome, specially considering I only had one shared folder to look through.
Even though I didn’t feel like creating a Boxee account, my Facebook log on became my Boxee log on. You can manage your account at http://www.boxee.tv. There you can add friends, track your activity, or change your settings.
Boxee is pretty versatile with what it can do and how it plays with your other devices. I especially liked being able to stream my home movies to my Apple TV.
