One of the bugs in the currently available firmware for the Boxee Box is the constant buffering and stuttering of Blu-Ray M2TS files, even over USB. Unfortunately, the HQV 2.0 benchmark we have is a set of M2TS files from a Blu-Ray ISO. I had to put up with constant interruptions in the benchmarking videos, and as such I wasn't very comfortable tabulating the results. I tried repeating playback of each stream more than 3 times each to ensure that I had a fair idea of how the playback quality turned out.
| Boxee Box : HQV 2.0 Benchmark | ||||
| Test Class | Chapter | Tests | Max. Score | Boxee Box |
| Video Conversion | Video Resolution | Dial | 5 | 0 |
| Dial with Static Pattern | 5 | 5 | ||
| Gray Bars | 5 | 5 | ||
| Violin | 5 | 5 | ||
| Film Resolution | Stadium 2:2 | 5 | 0 | |
| Stadium 3:2 | 5 | 0 | ||
| Overlay On Film | Horizontal Text Scroll | 5 | 3 | |
| Vertical Text Scroll | 5 | 5 | ||
| Cadence Response Time | Transition to 3:2 Lock | 5 | 0 | |
| Transition to 2:2 Lock | 5 | 0 | ||
| Multi-Cadence | 2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCam Video | 5 | 0 | |
| 2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video | 5 | 0 | ||
| 3:2:3:2:2 24 FPS Vari-Speed | 5 | 0 | ||
| 5:5 12 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| 6:4 12 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| 8:7 8 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| Color Upsampling Errors | Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP) | 5 | 2 | |
| Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) | 5 | 2 | ||
| Noise and Artifact Reduction | Random Noise | SailBoat | 5 | 0 |
| Flower | 5 | 0 | ||
| Sunrise | 5 | 0 | ||
| Harbour Night | 5 | 0 | ||
| Compression Artifacts | Scrolling Text | 5 | 3 | |
| Roller Coaster | 5 | 3 | ||
| Ferris Wheel | 5 | 3 | ||
| Bridge Traffic | 5 | 3 | ||
| Upscaled Compression Artifacts | Text Pattern | 5 | 3 | |
| Roller Coaster | 5 | 3 | ||
| Ferris Wheel | 5 | 3 | ||
| Bridge Traffic | 5 | 3 | ||
| Image Scaling and Enhancements | Scaling and Filtering | Luminance Frequency Bands | 5 | 2 |
| Chrominance Frequency Bands | 5 | 5 | ||
| Vanishing Text | 5 | 5 | ||
| Resolution Enhancement | Brook, Mountain, Flower, Hair, Wood | 15 | 10 | |
| Video Conversion | Contrast Enhancement | Theme Park | 5 | 0 |
| Driftwood | 5 | 0 | ||
| Beach at Dusk | 5 | 0 | ||
| White and Black Cats | 5 | 0 | ||
| Skin Tone Correction | Skin Tones | 10 | 0 | |
| Total Score | 210 | 73 | ||
The Boxee Box appears to fare a little bit better than the average WDTV type streamer even with the unreliable firmware. Do note that some of the tests simply make no sense for the Boxee Box because the knobs to activate and test out the features just don't exist (as Boxee probably doesn't want to befuddle the average user with some arcane menu options).
That said, one of the disappointing aspects revealed in the above benchmark is the complete lack of cadence detection. Hopefully, the end user doesn't want to spend too much time watching interlaced videos at non-native video refresh rates. Other than that, we wouldn't fault Boxee too much for not scoring higher in this benchmark.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIFxfphoq6GdXZe8ubHEZpmosF2nsre1xLBmamg%3D