It has been 2 weeks since the first users got their Boxee Boxes. We received many bug reports, complaints, praises, feature suggestions, etc.
Today we are releasing the first firmware update with numerous bug fixes and improvements (details below). The Boxee Box is automatically checking for an update every 24hrs, but you can manually initiate the update by going to Settings>System>Update and click Check for New Version of Boxee. The build # is 1.0.1.16319. (in case for whatever reason the Box does not download the new version you can install it manually by following the instructions here)
At the risk of sounding emotional and corny, I must say a big Thank You! to the early users of the Boxee Box. You have been amazing. Providing great feedback. Telling us we suck in some cases and that we rock in others. Helping us troubleshoot. With this first firmware upgrade we hope we’re demonstrating that we are not only listening, but also taking action.
We are now working on the next version of the firmware. More bug fixes prioritized based on your reporting and a first batch of usability/UI fixes (will share screenshots and issues being addressed later next week). We aim to release a couple more firmware upgrades till the end of the year. Including not just fixes, but also the addition of the much anticipated new Netflix and Vudu apps.
Bug Fixes and Improvements:
Media Playback
- 1080i playback in Web browser caused black screens for Web and local content
- Some HD .avi content playing at low frames-per-second
- Failure to seek in specific Blu-Ray .iso over a network share
- Case sensitivity issues in .iso filename extension
- Stuttering while playing some Blu-Ray content
- No video, audio only while playing some .m4v content
- Failure to render .ass subtitles after changing overscan settings
- Failure in opening .rar files containing subtitles
- Playback and overscan issues when switching to and from fullscreen of online content
- Rear channels on AAC 5.1 are not played properly w/ LPCM 5.1 out
- Flash video audio drops out after ~1 hour in certain online videos
- Select subtitles from hard-drive, screen does not work
- MPEG1 video inconsistent play
- Re-buffering during playback of HD-Audio
- Video stuttering and losing audio (white noise) when resuming playback on a specific title in a blu-ray folder/ iso file
- HGTV OSD Controls don’t work and counter stuck at 00:00
- MPEG4 movies occasionally have green line at the side and/or purple line at the button
Wireless Connectivity
- Wireless signal levels display (showing one bar when in fact 3 bars should be displayed)
- Some WiFi encryption schemes were not supported
- First time WiFi setup takes excessive time
- Boxee does not accept ‘$’ in passwords for WiFi
- Wrong message displayed when WiFi password is wrong
Network Shares
- Repeated credentials request for non-secure network shares (SMB)
- Unable to access network share when Window Live is installed on Windows 7
- Intermittent crashes when failing to open networked media
- Frequent disconnects from Mac OS X network shares (SMB)
- Not reconnecting to disconnected shares disables selection in the Movies database view
- Prompted for username/password when accessing different shared folders on same computer via SMB
Other
- Empty screen appears when filtering shows by Channels > TED, Engadget, when geo lock is enabled
- Faulty DNS configuration when using VPN causing a Boxee network disconnect
- Not returning to the selected item library screens after item selection
- Leave/stay prompt shows up multiple times for some online content
- Searching for applications with spaces in their titles (i.e. funny or die) doesn’t show the application in the results
- When creating a new user, username textbox is not visible when the email contains the word ‘boxee’
- Repositories screen buttons activation and adding toggle state is wrong
- Web browser screen size was wrong, not compensating for overscan
- “Resume from” does not always show
- Browser Loading progress bar does not go away
- Weather location and timezone are not always set up correctly
- Boxee weather application doesn’t use the Temperature Scale configured at Settings > General > Location
- sian fonts display in the browser
- ‘Friends feed’ from Facebook is not ordered correctly
- TV OSD does not always work
- Browser Loading progress bar does not go away in certain cases
Improvements and additions
- Support .mkv with header compression
- Support switching from PC black level to video black level
- Default overscan is now 3% on all borders
- Add a global subtitles toggle, set to off by default
- Support for showing the last letter typed in password fields
- Support local thumbnails: .tbn support / folder.jpg
- Enable external subtitles for Blu-Ray and DVD iso/folders
- User selectable slideshow for the screensaver
subscribe to blog
join boxee
boxee on twitter
Nice work guys! One complaint though about the update process: please give us a "Remind Me Later" option to postpone the installation. We paused our movie for a few minutes and when we came back, there was no way we could resume it: the Boxee Box offered me no other option than "Install Update".
Yes. I know. Some poor thinking on our behalf on that one. Discussing a different approach with the team.
Hi Avner. Congratulation for you beautiful product and thank you for your hard work.
I'm waiting for Boxee Box to be available in Europe too. I have just one question: the remote can be sold separately? it will work on an HTPC with Boxee installed?
Thank you.
Iulian
It will be sold separately. Where in Europe are you?
I am from Romania, EU.
Boxee Box updated automatically Thanksgiving night. Now various avi files have no sound after playing for 10 to 15 seconds. I'll do more testing and give specifics later. Anyone else having the same problem?
The update applied, rebooted, and wont get past the upgrading screen, now what? I think Boxee bricked my Box. Nice!
wow. sorry about that. can you reach out to us be email. tsella [AT] boxee d0t TV
I have similar audio problem.
I have audio setting as Digital output, and DD5.1 and DTS 5.1 capable receiver. No audio will play except DTS5.1.
Then I unchecked DD5.1 capable receiver, now all audio will play but DD5.1 is down sampled and is not surround sound anymore.
I need my DD5.1 back.
if you can upload samples to dropbox we will look into it and see what's broken.
pls email eli [aT] boxee d0t TV
Hey, sorry you are hitting this. Also a heads up – if you have a Sony receiver and are using SPDIF audio, this may be a known issue that we are working on: http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-7070
Definitely get in touch with eli or ping me at dan AT boxee d0t tv
Cheers
have not seen it reported. can you email Eli Semory more details about the files? maybe upload samples? eli [AT] boxee d0t TV
I also have a problem with DD 5.1 when I use Spdif…
My reciver: Sony STR 830. DTS and 2ch works great.
Would it be an update for the windows version???
Win/Mac/Ubuntu versions are expected early next year
Ohww that;s quite a wait… pity i cant play with it in the holiday period
Yes. We are still working on that SMB bug (and many other issues).
Thanks for your patience. Trying hard to resolve all the major issues as soon as we can.
I loved Boxee in on window and i loved my Boxee i got from the store this week, but to day i don't know. the change in the GUI with all the functions of setting up the start page as i like it is removed (at least I cant find it). Big disappointment.
send me an email with your thoughts
avner [AT] boxee
in the meantime you can look at this post in the forum and see some of the stuff we are working on http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=22313
quick reply, I like… I will send you a e-mail
Well done on getting this firmware out so quickly. Both the support team and your very public input is great and will be the reason why this product suceeds. Really looking forward to the update with the revised UI. Well done!
Thanks. Will share some screenshots later this week.
Just a comment about the design (which I love). How about more colors? White, green and silver would be nice.
Other thoughts. One model could have a hard drive (or rather a Solid-state drive) and the remote would be a lot cooler with a screen instead (of the keyboard) with swype technology (T9) and a virtual keyboard.
there are going to be more HW options beside the Boxee Box in the future and more remote options, too.
regarding colors. do you mean of the UI?
Sounds cool. Looking forward to buy my father a unit in for $ 129 the future and for myself the high-end version with SSD for $ 299
About colors. I meant the color of the hardware. It would be nice with a silver/aluminum box for instance. My girlfriend do not like Electronics in black so they are hidden or banned in our home.
But the UI would be great to customize with your own background picture , colors, icons etc as well to be able to move around different feeds at the home screen.
Thanks for the quick Firmware update guys. Haven't installed it yet, but from the list above it seems that one important feature is still missing…
Please, PLEASE let us fast forward/rewind music just like you do for videos. I'm not sure why this feature was ever missing (my Xbox doesn't have it either!) but it's incredibly annoying especially when listening to DJ sets that are often > 1hr in length.
The only other important thing is having an option to make local files more prominent in the man navigation. 98% the time I am using the Boxee to stream local files, so I'd love to have the Shows and Movies buttons default to my local files and not the online content. And please, PLEASE add a "Music" button in the main nav which defaults to my local music files.
If you made the above changes, I'd be TWICE as happy with my Boxee!
Thanks again guys!
will ask the team about the ffwd in Music playback.
re making the local files playback options more prominents. it will be addressed with the next firmware upgrade.
A Firmware update for the Thanksgiving holiday was great but… Still many issues to resolve.
Once I log into the BOXEE from Mac running 10.6.5 it still displays the 2TB external drive connected to the BOXEE incorrectly showing the drive as a 314.6MB. Also I still cant write to it at all, permissions problem is still happening.
My Boxxe box can't connect to my linksys wireless network since that update… Can anybody help me?
you should hear from Tom Sella (my co-founder) tsella [AT] boxee d0t tv
I'm having the same issue but with a cisco router.
I had the exact same problem after the Thanksgiving update.I couldn't connect. The error message said something about a bad password.
I called the help line and had to reset my router encryption options. I have a Cisco (Linksys) E3000. Now it works.
(I love the boxee box. I bought 3)
Had the same problem with my Buffalo. Had to manually enter the network details and pick WPA instead of WPA2 [which Boxee had selected by default]. That fixed the problem. [Router does both WPA and WPA2 just fine with other devices].
It was a great OOB experience at first…unbox, turn on, join wireless, download update, reboot…and blammo, dead in the water, no wireless. Took a half hour of fiddling to find the fix above.
Also it seems as though now HD Blu-ray rips will stream in perfect unison via wifi….which was one of my few negatives prior to this release, keep it up!
cool. guess you have a good WiFi setup.
Great work Avner and the team! How about using a high capacity flash drive as a local cache for the device if the onboard isn't enough?
we are looking into more efficient cache management
I just updated to the latest version and now I can't sign in to youtube. The sign in link doesn't even work. I've tried shutting down and powering back up with no luck. Has anyone else run into this issue?
I have I told boxee about this and they are looking into it. The sign in button does not work on any sites the new firmware seems to have broken the browser.
Thanks for the reply, Steve. I guess we'll just have to wait for a patch!
Browser has been opening p. e. http://www.dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de (very important for me) with v 0.9. I could access any link on this site especially flash contents.
But now (1.0) nothing opens but a time bar at standstill.
Restoring to 0.9 website opens but now I'm unable to open any link, so I can't play the flash contents.
Is the browser downloaded every time or embedded? If downloaded is there any change there?
Can't evaluate any browser version.
Thanks for the update – everything seems to be working great. Love my Boxee Box. As an early adopter I expect a few bumps, but really this has been pretty smooth. Long time fan! Keep up the love!
Will there be any future support of having both the wireless and the wired interfaces activated at the same time. Us who want to both use an NAS directly wired to boxee and only have wireless internet are in alot of trouble when dealing with local files.
Even pc's can't handle wireless and wired at the sane time. Just stick to one interface.
PC's do support more than one ethernet, otherwise using a PC as router would be pretty damn hard.
Using Boxee Box without a constant internet connection is a pain in the ass.
Please grab a laptop and enable both your physical ethernet and your wireless and try to browse the internet…you will run into problems due to routing. You want to enable one or the other.
I do it all the time. The OS designates one of the interfaces as primary, depending on the order they are activated. If a request is not routable on the primary interface it goes to the other. This is the case on MacOS, Windows and Linux, I've done it on all three.
Jeff:
There is absolutely no problem at all.
I installed the update today. My kids speak French therefore all my DVDs are ripped in FR and EN using Handbrake 0.94 with stereo and AC3 Passthru audio track. By default Boxee Box will select the first track which is EN – Stereo (Will be nice to be able to setup the default track).
Problem: When selecting a different track the Audio/Video freeze. When it finally unfreeze the AC3 audio track is not working. Let me know how I can help you resolve this problem.
Even with the bugs I love the product and look forward for the next software upgrade.
Nice work – but why is there a difference in "Current List of Boxee Apps" between Windows and Box Edition?
Apart from that, it's a very nice product!
Hey Avner,
I am hearing great things about this latest update.
However, I am having a bit of trouble updating my boxee box.
the update gets till about 38%, and then it says "update failed".
i have tried reupdating, but it still doesnt work.
I even reset my boxee box to factory settings, but that doesnt seem to help.
Help!!!
Can you secretly make a boxee.iso file that will load the latest xbmc for us. We wont tell i promise
love the box it looks awesome.. love the online content .. can we get a boxee.iso update file that can dual boot xbmc and boxee so we can use xbmc for local content? I really need some of the xbmc apps too that are not available on boxee. pretty please its all i want for xmas…
What's up? after I have read posts like this, I have come to realize that I need enhance my game. Good job with the article. Love the Music.
Hi. Great experience so far, despite a few expected bumps. Got my box from pre-order and love it. Fixes listed cover most issues I've had but when viewing some channels – seems to be only Comedy Channel (Daily Show) for now – has a few inches wide strip of black screen on far right when playing full screen. Not sure what's going on. Thanks!
@RP, look at your video settings and make sure you have the set resolution set up correctly. The part that lists 720p, 1080p, etc.
The update fixes a few but breaks the browser. I also still can't connect to Win 2k8 server shares. The computer isnt even listed in the devices found on the network
Are you lanmanager 2 compatible yet?
Interesting and good stuff you got here. Keep it coming! I am always looking to read on that topic.
When it will be available in India
I have in stock 4 pieces left Rs 15,500
regards
anand shah
I like to work with static IP addresses instead of dynamic addresses
this static IP address function however does not seem to work as it continues comes back with an error that the IP address is not valid.
Even if I use the DHCP provided address as static address it still provides an error
Very disappointed, The Boxee Box(BB) will intermittently communicate with my airport extreme. Will have internet connection then for no operator reason it will take me off line. Customer service reps are very nice but none of them have Apple background, so none are able to help. The network I am using is a guest network without security so that should not be an issue. I can’t believe these issues were not resolved before shipping, have the newest firmware, no help. I am looking for a fix of I am sending the BB back.
after the update it boots up and gives me a black screen…hello? fix?
Maybe I replied at the wrong comment so I write it here once more
Browser has been opening p. e. http://www.dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de (very important for me) with v 0.9. I could access any link on this site especially flash contents.
But now (1.0) nothing opens but a time bar at standstill.
Restoring to 0.9 website opens but now I’m unable to open any link, so I can’t play the flash contents.
Is the browser downloaded every time or embedded? If downloaded is there any change there?
Can’t evaluate any browser version.
When will the source code for the new Boxee be provided? I didn't I receive it with my Box. The code is still covered by the GPL, isn't it?
What ever happened to justin.tv I had it before my boxee took the latest update..
Where do I go to download the justin.tv app?
Hi
I am the first Boxee user in India ( I pre ordered 10 days before launch )
Would be great if a comparison chart could be made on
Boxee Box Vs WDTV Live / HUB
cheers
anand
India
Great Work Team
but sorry to say that ISO files still not working from DLNA
My only big complaint is that fox is not under the shows section, but i can still watch fox shows from the web browser perfectoy fine. Which i think us kinda wierd given that fox is on the windows version of boxee.
WOW Boxee you have been quite silent on information and blog posting since launch just a short while ago. You need to keep excitement and interest going. November 25 was the last post? Is Boxee dead already?!! You're launch was the most important milestone in your company's history. Seems like it passed by without anyone noticing. Sad.