Wii GeeXbox Review

[blazingwolf]

Hey guys, this is my first review for TehSkeen, hopefully you guys find it useful. My review today will be about the Multimedia application for Wii called GeeXbox. Let me start off by saying GeeXbox is an excellent solution for playing media on your Wii. It can play almost any video and audio format you can throw at it.

* Container formats: 3GP, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV (QuickTime), MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia
* Video formats: Cinepak, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV
* Audio formats: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, Intel Music Coder, Monkey's Audio, MP3, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis, WMA
* Subtitle formats: AQTitle, ASS/SSA, CC, JACOsub, MicroDVD, MPsub, OGM, PJS, RT, Sami, SRT, SubViewer, VOBsub, VPlayer

The first thing you'll notice is the load time, its pretty quick, but noticeable when MPlayerWii loads up in an instant. About a 10 second wait, not really too bad, but its there nonetheless.

This version of GeeXbox supports Wiimote control, and you can also use Bluetooth to use your cellpone as a remote! When starting, you must manually sync the remote by holding 1 and 2 on the Wiimote. Sync in an instant since Alpha 2! Controls are simple, you scroll up and down the menu/directories with the up and down on the D-Pad. You select an option/song/directory with right on the D-Pad, and left to go back. Once you are playing media, you can use the "A" button to stop a song or video and "A" again to unpause. Lower the volume of a song or video by hitting "-" and raise it with "+". If you wish to skip ahead in a video holding "B and +" skips forward and "B and -" is back.

The audio playback is perfect and handled MP3, OGG, and FLAC as expected. Music loads in 1-2 seconds. GeeXbox features an awesome visualizer which is pretty trippy and actually entertaining to watch while playing music. While listening to music, you can scroll through your list by hitting home, the menu will appear over your visualizer and you can easily scroll though the songs or menus. Again, its easy to change the volume by hitting plus or minus on your Wiimote.

The video playback is also very good. Videos load anywhere from 2-4 seconds. The video playback is very smooth, the framerate is perfect when watching videos. You can easily pause the video with "A" and return to it with "A". The videos play fine in 4:3 and 16:9, no color splotches or pixelation, DVD-Rips look great on my 42' Insignia 1080p widescreen TV. Volume control is simple, like before. You can change aspect ratio, sync audio, etc. You can skip forward or backward at a set interval of time with "B and +/-". Works well, I have a minor complaint though, I wish you could set the interval it skips at. I haven't found an option to set the amount of time to skip in the video with each button press. It may be in a configuration file, but I haven't checked. Be nice to set it in the program. One other thing to note, some videos seem to playback with some slight jerks in videos. I'm not sure what causes this problem, and it only happens on the same videos. But when I play that same video in MPlayerWii, it does not have this problem. Not sure whats wrong, but its something to be fixed in GeeXbox. I've only encountered this in one video of the 6 I tested, but it did happen, and not in MPlayer, so thats an issue with GeeXbox.

Overall, this app is really great, I love it. Perfect media solution for Wii, with a few bugs to be worked out.

Positives:

-Front SD Support
-Plays all Audio and Video Codecs without a hitch.
-Good control.
-Many options.
-Cool visualizer
-USB support works fine.
-You can use your PSP as a USB media source!
-Easy switch between sources of USB/SD.


Negatives:
-Small loading time in the beginning, not really all that bad, and it probably has to be there, oh well.
-Certain videos play with small one second jerks. Not common, but it happens on some videos for some reason.
-Small hiccups when changing videos or songs, random, not really that bad.

Overall: Awesome! Check it out. Much love to the author for this application. gets a lot of use out of me!

Alpha 2 Update: Since Alpha too the Wiimote is done in a mere second and you can how hold buttons to continously raise or lower volume and scroll through lists, eliminating some of my earlier complaints.



Overview Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIuQo-HKBZ8

Thanks for reading and have fun!

Download: Here

[from_a_distance]

Great reveiw of a great app!

[DSman59]

Did you test HD videos with the H264 codec? If yes, how well did Wii handle them?

[4ltj4]

definetly not, I can hardly run them on my Macbook 2,1 with X300 graphics
(by the way, the Wii only supprots the max resolution of 480p, an every hd-vid on the net seems to be either 720p or 1080p)

[slaphappygamer]

this app is so awesome. why hasnt it been added to the homebrew browser yet?

[Brainy142]

I believe It's because of the size of the app, I remember reading something on why It hasn't been added

[samsam12]

this is a great app! i love the USB support, it works great with my mp3 player. it will play 720p videos.

[MisterOhm]

Originally Posted by slaphappygamer

this app is so awesome. why hasnt it been added to the homebrew browser yet?

The Homebrew Browser can only download a folder with a boot.elf(.dol), icon.png, and meta.xml. It cannot download other folders such as GEEXBOX, which is needed in the directory. Hence why it isn't there.

[blazingwolf]

Not sure about the H246 codec, but I watched some high definition episodes of Prison Break on this earlier today and they played without a hitch, looked beautiful on my TV.

[mr dildo]

Ugg, this inverts colors on all the video I run with it. Works as advertised otherwise.

[soldierblade]

It's played practically everything i've thrown at it, and smoothly. I love this app... but theres something i'd like to point out. If you use component cables but your display doesnt support progressive scan (odd i know) then you'll have to revert back to svideo or composite. Geexbox runs under wii linux, and aparently that cant send an interlaced signal through a component cable. Just FYI for those with wonky old school tv sets like mine.

[thiskid]

Just tested this out using my Apple Ipod 80GB as my USB device, awesome, awesome work. Love it.

[ElricX]

where I can obtain help for usb drive problem? My 160gb usb drive work fine but not my 1to usb drive

[yoitsme]

There's nothing you can do about it. Some brands work and some don't.