So I pre-ordered a Boxee Box

PogMoThoin

I bit the bullet and pre-ordered the Boxee Box on amazon.com the other day as My Mam is visiting the USA from the 12-16th and will bring it back. Its some saving when You compare the price ($225 delivered to My Sister in NY) to the UK£199 on amazon.co.uk. Its not officially released until the 12th (available from the 10th in USA) so I'm hoping it gets delivered on time.

I'll keep Ye posted as to how it works out and give My impressions on it when it finally arrives. I'm not a massive fan of Boxee, but this box is open, they've promised its hackable from the start as it has a card reader, I'll be flashing XBMC on it as I prefer that. Boxee and XBMC are based on the same code so it should be pretty easy to flash, there should be guides up within a few days of release. I like the box for its functionality,the amount of connections and the fact that it comes with a nice remote with a qwerty, I don't want another pc in the house, this house has too many pc's

Fat_Fingers

Thanks for your post. I’m (was) very interested in getting boxee box. So in order to sort of dry test it I’ve loaded boxee software but i wasn’t overly impressed.
My main requirements would be to have media platform that looks better , not worse than my current one! I’m running WDTV with mod and "AEON" interface.
I was hoping boxee would support / have catch-up app for RTE player; TV3 and 4oD but unfortunately RTE one doesn’t work, and there is no TV3 or 40D
No web browser within app but i hear that boxee box might have one and they might support flash 10.1

But if you can remove boxee UI and load up XBMC then that would be very nice.

An.Duine.Eile

I had the same experience, at first thought it was great, downloaded it and was disappointed that I could not use any of the tv players in the downlaod version.

But there is a new browser in the boxee box.

From Avner Ronen, CEO Boxee
"The Boxee Box has a webkit browser that enables the user to access any webpage and play the videos on that page, view the banners and watch the in-stream ads. Boxee is by no means the only company offering a TV browser and I don’t believe we will be singled out by content owners.
Apple and Roku “found” a way to sell a device for $99 because they are both using hardware that is underpowered compared with Intel Atom and therefore can’t do stuff like play 1080p at 60fps, support Flash 10.1, run a full-featured browser and more…"

Here are 2 interesting links
http://gigaom.com/video/why-im-ordering-the-boxee-box/

http://gigaom.com/video/why-im-not-buying-a-boxee-box/

Think I will preorder one...it will get rid of all that messing I do at moment connecting and disconnecting laptops, cables and power cords.

PogMoThoin

It will have a browser based on Mozilla.

I understand where both of You are coming from, I've been trying out Boxee for the last few days and I've a few gripes with it, unlike XBMC, it only does Library mode. I've all my media in the order I like, I've it sorted in collections in folders. My tv shows are all in seperate folders but library mode leaves out anything it cannot identify, therefore 25% of my media goes missing as its unidentified even though its in the right folder. An example of this is that I've a collection of 19 seasons (no guesses ) of a certain tv show, they are in seperate season folders, each season folder contains episodes 1-25, all just simply named 01, 02, 03 etc but in the right season folder, Boxee doesn't know what they are so doesn't add it to my library, I'd need to rename them all. You can browse through the files but is awkward, You'll only get a thumbnail, no media info. I've not really come across many apps that interest me either so I'm not really gettin all this web integration, the iPlayer would be great, if it worked. As I said I'll be flashing this box to XBMC as soon as its possible, a neat piece of hardware is what interests me.

leahcim

was disappointed that I could not use any of the tv players in the downlaod version

Thats the big problem with all these IP TV boxes isn't it.

The content you want is either geo locked to the uk or usa or the content creater makes it very difficult for people like boxee to create an app to browse their content (such as Rte Player).

Google Tv and Apple Tv have the same problem, most of the big US tv networks have blocked access from their boxes.

You can see their reasons all the same, if their shows are brodcast for free on the web over boxes like boxee who is going to pay for the content. I think eventually some sort of subscription model will appear to allow more networks deliver their shows over the web.

I myself listen to and watch a fair few pod/video casts so boxee suits me perfectly.

PogMoThoin

Ok, so i posted on the boxee forum and was advised to get a tv show renamer as Boxee needs the media properly named. I tried a few, but this one wins hands down, although I did have to edit the output format to "Tv Show - S02E02 - Episode name" to be perfect for Boxee
http://filebot.sourceforge.net/

PogMoThoin

Some people have it already, here's the unboxing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLvIDUOTfBM

An.Duine.Eile

This video shows the boxee box 1.0 browser in action. Looks like we will be able to access catch-up content that there is no boxee app for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUGoo1J1iYo

I now looking forward to getting my hands on one, sitting back in the couch, and using the remote to get the episode I missed. [Might just have to deliberately missed stuff so I can catch up]

Now let's see when I can get one.

PogMoThoin

Lots of complaints on the Boxee forum about the new 1.0 GUI, all the new users dont like it, all the long-time users are outraged. At first I wasn't a fan of Boxee, but after spending a while organizing all my media I've grown to like 0.9 beta, which is the GUI they showed us. I'll be wishing to flash to XBMC as soon as its possible, thats if I don't offer it for sale

They sold out to the paid for content providers, its no longer local content orientated. The movies tab from the home screen takes You to online content only, to access local content You need to navigate through the files tab a few menus deep, where in 0.9 beta You could toggle between online and local in the movies tab.
Music and Photos have been removed from the home screen. Boxee is a MEDIA player not just a VIDEO player.
They've completely dropped some apps which show free films online and it won't be getting an official torrent app after Hulu's influence, they don't like these.
They've removed continual folder monitoring, the box is seriously underpowered if it can't add the details of a file to a database whilst playing video (Xbox could). I will not be able to download something, save it locally and turn on the Boxee box and watch it, something I've been doing on an Xbox for years.
The box only has ethernet where they saved a few cents on the price of a gigabit chip. Now I know ethernet is fine for transferring a Bluray HD rip, but I've a gigabit network here in the house, I'd prefer if it had gigabit.

yllw.ldbttr

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Lots of complaints on the Boxee forum about the new 1.0 GUI, all the new users dont like it, all the long-time users are outraged. At first I wasn't a fan of Boxee, but after spending a while organizing all my media I've grown to like 0.9 beta, which is the GUI they showed us. I'll be wishing to flash to XBMC as soon as its possible, thats if I don't offer it for sale

They sold out to the paid for content providers, its no longer local content orientated. The movies tab from the home screen takes You to online content only, to access local content You need to navigate through the files tab a few menus deep, where in 0.9 beta You could toggle between online and local in the movies tab.
Music and Photos have been removed from the home screen. Boxee is a MEDIA player not just a VIDEO player.
They've completely dropped some apps which show free films online and it won't be getting an official torrent app after Hulu's influence, they don't like these.
They've removed continual folder monitoring, the box is seriously underpowered if it can't add the details of a file to a database whilst playing video (Xbox could). I will not be able to download something, save it locally and turn on the Boxee box and watch it, something I've been doing on an Xbox for years.
The box only has ethernet where they saved a few cents on the price of a gigabit chip. Now I know ethernet is fine for transferring a Bluray HD rip, but I've a gigabit network here in the house, I'd prefer if it had gigabit.

This all sounds pretty disappointing, I was dead set on buying one,
not so sure now.

PogMoThoin

They've promised to fix it in a future update, maybe give the option of either GUI. Theres alot of anger on their forum, but they've said they're listening. What You can do is not update it until they release a new firmware. It ships with 0.9 beta which is fine and is what everyone is used to. I've blocked the update on my router so it cannot update itself "app.boxee.tv/chkupd/dlink.dsm380".

All reports are that the hardware is absolutely fine, it plays everything and has all the connections I want and a pretty neat remote. Course some people are bitching about stupid things, like it not having a backlit remote, I've never seen a backlit remote, nor would I want one eating batteries like crazy. I'm still glad I bought it, though I won't have mine till my Mam returns on Wed. I'm waiting for someone to hack XBMC on it, then I'll probably use that.

banquo

Haven't updated yet, LOVED 0.9 GUI. Is the 1.0 that bad, yeah? I found 0.9 beautiful and really easy to use - like, Apple simplicity. This is a shame.

(still gonna get one, nerd in me demands it)

Wcool

Would the boxee box run XBMC as well (considering it is based on it)?
I don't like the boxee interface and the whole concept that you have to log in to view something does not sound right to me.

Edit: Oops my proxy cache is playing tricks on, I did not see the follow up suggesting that XBMC is possible.

PogMoThoin

The Boxee team have made a post and acknowledged the issues and have stated that there will be an update later this week and weekly from then on. He seems fairly straight and honest about it.

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=22313

An.Duine.Eile

Just got a note from Amazon that my boxee box is on the way. I had a previous email that said it was delayed until next month, so this was a surprise.

Expectations are not high having seen how badly 1.0 ui was recieved.

PogMoThoin

Got mine, I'm having a play around with it at the moment, I've left it scanning. I've not even seen the 1,0 gui, I've it blocked so I am happy using 0.9 until they sort some issues. First impressions are very good, Scrolling through the menu's its very nice and quite snappy but I can see why they disabled frequent scanning in 1.0, it really slows down when scanning remote folders and I've 1.5Tb's of stuff, hopefully they'll add a scan on boot option so a simple reboot will pick up new files. I've not played any media yet, I'm waiting for it to gather it all and will report on that later. The controller is very neat, although the querty takes getting used to shift and caps etc, especially initially with having to enter passwords. Its wireless not infra red, so no need to point, in fact because of this I can place the box behind the tv altogether out of sight.

PogMoThoin

I'm loving my purchase but I've a few little niggles, it can be slow with so much media to scan through and it cant really do anything when scanning. Thumbnails and covers for media aren't cached, they're dl'ed as u scroll which isn't great (7mbit connection), they've promised to allow either sd or network metadata database cache in a later update. There were very slight glitches in high bitrate audio on mkv's but they've acknowleged that and said it'll be fixed.

Wcool

Any more details Pog? I am very interested still. Do any of the online services work through VPN? How 'messable' is the box, do you have root access?

Once your media is scanned, I presume Boxee does not scan everytime you fire up the box? How fast is the the boot time?

An.Duine.Eile

http://boxeeboxwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

This should be an interesting wiki for info

PogMoThoin

Wcool wrote: »

Any more details Pog? I am very interested still. Do any of the online services work through VPN? How 'messable' is the box, do you have root access?

Once your media is scanned, I presume Boxee does not scan everytime you fire up the box? How fast is the the boot time?

I've not tried many of the online services yet, its more for local content I got and thats what I've been doing, have lots of HD content queued up that I've been holding off on watching till I got it. My daughter was impressed with the Vevo music player, works fine here. I'll probably mess around with these apps at a later date. I've not updated the box so some of these apps may disappear when I do, other new apps will turn up too. I intend to configure a Linksys wrt54gl router with dd-wrt with a vpn setup and send it to my sister in NY, but Boxee are going with Hulu plus (paid for only), therefore the free Hulu player won't officially be available.

They've always said the box would be wide open, thats why they included a card reader. From reading the forum the hackers are already trying out stuff, they've got telnet access to all the config scripts, just a matter of time before its opened right up. I'm waiting for XBMC to be hacked onto it.

Once the media is scanned its best to disable scanning as it really slows the thing right down. I'm running 0.9 so I've got frequent scanning options, but I'll not be using them. I'm a little annoyed that the thumbnails don't cache at all, they stream everytime You turn it on, I've it left on for this reason. They've said they'll allow sd card or network share thumbnail cache in the future, they better or I'll be selling it.

I'm finding it a little slow with network shares when my pc can browse through the directories lots quicker, instant in fact. I've got a big collection, about 600Gb of tv shows and it takes about 10secs+ for tv shows to list. I expected faster than this, the harddrive is an f3 samsung sata 2Tb so its not the hd. They've aknowleged the issues with samba shares and said future updates will handle it better. The box itself takes over a minute to boot, the first 30 secs are with a dull grey logo, then it shows a Boxee animation, but its 1min 10secs before its fully logged in and usable. I've been leaving it on, it works better when left on. There's a slight whir off the fan when running, but its fine and nowhere near as loud as my old Xbox

An.Duine.Eile

boxee box arrived from amazon today.just started it up. UI is still 0.9 no update. Not sure why it has not,i havn't blocked it.may happen later. Just playing with it now.

PogMoThoin

Silly me, I just realised it has a standby, no need to leave it on, it remembers the thumbnails after power on from standby and opens instantly as soon as You touch the remote

Wcool

It seems to me the box is fine except for the displaying a directory with lots of entries?

How many entries do you have in directory and how long does it take?

I have a Aspire Revo 3600 nettop -> best buy ever as an HTPC and i divide my media into a lot of separate directories. The biggest one has about 100 entries but will still display in 1 sec over samba.

So is Boxee slower than that??

PogMoThoin

Its hard to tell, I've 2 directories in movies, an sd movies directory with 450 files(380GB) and a hd movies directory with 40 files(250Gb), they take 10 seconds to display. My tv shows contains over 600Gb's split in seperate tv show directories and displays in half the time. The thumbnails get dl'ed every time for now tho, that takes 5 mins in movies and is annoying everytime You power up the box and I don't like leaving it on standby as it keeps the fan running. Its something they could improve on. They say the box needs to touch each file to prove it exists, which is what causes the slowness. If they add a local cache of thumbnails I'll be happy.

They've fixed lots of bugs (including a few in samba) in the new firmware (including the one bug that annoys me, the bluray slight sound stuttering issue, just needed increase the buffer). The new firmware won't be fixing the gui yet, so I'm staying on the 0.9 beta for another while.

Here's their statement about the new firmware:

We have spent the past week or so to fix almost all major issues reported by our forum users, Amazon commenters, twitterers, emailers, bloggers, Jira and support ticket openers.

This version does not include the UI changes Avner has written about, but rather laser focused on making the software work great on so many varied configurations the "real world" represents.

The version is currently in testing, and if all is well in the next couple of days, you will receive it as an automatic software update.

Once it's out, share your thoughts here and on Amazon.

I would like to thank you all for helping us making Boxee better!

Tom & Team Boxee

Here is what has been fixed:

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 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 containining 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 long length online videos
Select subtitles from hard-drive screen does not work

Wireless Connectivity
Wireless signal levels display (showing one bar when in fact 3 bars should be displayed)
Missing WiFi encryption schemes
First time WiFi setup takes excessive time

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)

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
Leave/stay prompt shows up multiple times for some online content
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

And here is what has been added and improved:
Support .mkv with header compression
Support switching from PC black level to video black level
Default overscan is now 3% on top and left and 6% on right and bottom
Add a global subtitles toggle, set to off by default
Support for showing password for Wireless connections
Support for reporting HDMI/HDCP handshake status
__________________

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=22906

Wcool

Strange they have so many bugs of that caliber after developing for about 2 years. It must the late change to the Intel processor I guess.

Well 10 seconds is way too long for me, I am going to wait a bit until everything is under control. 't is a shame as the box and remote look the business.

PogMoThoin

Yes, they developed the old Boxee upto 0.9 for 2 years, then completely changed it without consulting those who beta tested. I feel we're beta testing those changes now and are being pushed towards web content over local (maybe pirated) content. Dlink have an abysmal support record for their products, so its up to the software makers to save face and try get it working better, doubt Dlink would be any help. At this stage I can't wait for Xbmc to be hacked on it, the hardware is fine. The reason I went for this over a nettop pc is the optical out and the neat remote

PogMoThoin

Good honest review here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4029/the-boxee-box-review

PogMoThoin

The first firmware update came out 2 days ago. I've been holding off until I've read the reports and I finally bit the bullet and installed it today as it has lots of fixes. Some of the fixes do affect me, like the slight audio glitches when playing a bdrip, they had to increase the buffer slightly.

Its my first encounter with the new gui, I don't like the way it mixes Your local media with the online stuff but I've gotta admit its quicker, much quicker than the stock firmware. Its also much easier to search, the interface is simplified. They've removed the left hand menu, the layout is better, thumbnails and text are bigger. Now if they add the ability to toggle between local and online content on the home screen I'll be satisfied, at the moment to see local content only, I've gotta enter files then select movies, movies from the main home screen brings all content. They've promised gui changes in the next firmware.

PogMoThoin

Just an update now that I've been playing around with it and the new firmware since yesterday. Its unbelievably faster, no complaints at all about its speed, its a different product when compared to the 0.9 stock software. No samba share issues for me, no more buffer issues, everything plays fine, even opens files quicker. All the apps that appear on it seem to work well, pity they're pretty shíte, but web Tv is at its infancy, it can only get better.

I'm pretty happy with the box, I'm looking forward to the next firmware update later this week that introduces gui changes

mdwexford

Was planning to build a HTPC but this looks tempting.

PogMoThoin

mdwexford wrote: »

Was planning to build a HTPC but this looks tempting.

Remember, its UK£200 on amazon.co.uk, $200 on amazon.com, so its a no-brainer to buy in the UK if You know someone in the States who'll send it home or is coming home for Xmas

silvine

I am undecided about this box. What kind of changes are they making to the UI?

Also is there anything the box does to make it more useful or even easier to use than a PC with boxee installed?

PogMoThoin

silvine wrote: »

I am undecided about this box. What kind of changes are they making to the UI?

This is how the old Ui everyone was used to looked. It focused on local content with a lefthand opening menu in Movies and Tv Shows that allowed You to toggle between local and online content:



This is how the new Ui looks. As You can see they removed photo and music, local content is all accessed through files. Shows and Movies from the home screen brings You to online content, with local content listed at the end of a long list of online content.

silvine wrote: »

Also is there anything the box does to make it more useful or even easier to use than a PC with boxee installed?

No, Its just a neat box with usb ports, card reader and a fancy remote. It doesn't have the overheads of running Boxee on top of an OS.
Edit: Has optical surround sound out, nettops don't have that

PogMoThoin

Anver has posted on the Boxee forums about the new UI changes in the next release:
http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?p=131322

An.Duine.Eile

Just thought I would should share my experience using Boxee.

So far it has been great fun. Love the remote control, it is a bit slow entering stuff with one finger, but beats having an larger keyboard and mouse. Biggest problem is finding the remote controller when the kids have been using it.

Initially connected to a old PC for local media via wireless. Between the poor wireless reception and the old pc, local media didn't play great with lots of buffering. Attached a WD USB driver and now works great.

Also got 2 plugon ethernet connections and changed the boxee to a wired network connection. This helped with the accessing of internet content. The girls have been using vevo and Youtube leanback.

Turn on windows sharing, so i can now access the WD drive from my pc, which makes it easy to transfer files.

The movie section has nothing that I would ever want to watch.

The majority of Apps looks like more dross. The RSS Feed has some interesting stuff.

TV Shows looked great until you discovered you can't access any of it. But then I discovered Chanel 4 in the channel listing. This is great, loads of shows and had no problems playing the ones I tried. I even found an episode of Father Ted that I had not seen before.

I was looking for a device that would enable me to

- get rid of the DVD's and player
- look at home movies and photo's
- play background music when I want to sit in the living room ( get rid of Stereo )
- Access Internet players ( rte, channel 4, iPlayer etc...) only got channel 4 to work
- access to sopcast for the occasional football match have not tried that yet.
- access video on demand ( blinkbox.com) ( have not tried this yet )

without getting off the couch.

So for the most part the boxee is doing what I want.

PogMoThoin

An.Duine.Eile wrote: »

So far it has been great fun. Love the remote control, it is a bit slow entering stuff with one finger, but beats having an larger keyboard and mouse.

The remote is absolutely fine, one of its best features. Just hold it in both hands and use both your thumbs (thats why the buttons on the other side of the remote are centred, so Your fingers don't accidentally press them), if You're anyways used to a qwerty keyboard it'll just come naturally. You don't need to point it as its a wireless remote, it will even work with the Boxee Box inside a cabinet, I've My Boxee hidden behind the TV. The only grievances I got is that caps is caps lock, not a shift state like alt, nobody used to a qwerty uses caps lock.

PogMoThoin

New update out for Boxee this evening puts local shows back in the Home screen (through a choice on 1st startup) and adds an a-z scroll bar as well as other slight changes and lots of fixes. Movies are laid out with 4 in a row instead of 3, looks much better IMO. It even feels snappier too. Glad they're putting in the time and ironing out the kinks. Hopefully some of the sites that reviewed it will redo their reviews. Its gone from a 6 out of 10 to a solid 8 out of 10 with this update. I have little interest in online content, (although it was handy to show visitors the Rubberbandits video on Youtube yesterday) but this appears to be unchanged. They really need to get Hulu, Netflix and Vudu onboard quickly for the American market though

Changes in this version:
Enabling user flavor selection (online/local inclination) during first login and via Settings - defaults for users selecting local will direct to local content and will not mandate multiple clicks to get to local content
Added alphabetical scrollbar for local content
Enhanced sorting options in browse screens (A-Z, Z-A, most popular, newest/oldest...)
Main menu supports additional filter options
Mark items as watched/unwatched from the Action menu
Added option for hourly scan of local libraries
When watching side-by-side or over/under video, the subtitles and OSD would not be visible when wearing 3D glasses. The user now has the option, under Settings, to have the user interface properly displayed when watching this kind of content
Added SMB client defaults to network settings

Full release notes, including bug fixes, here.

Wcool

Pog, look at this!

Gesture control Boxee

That must be the ultimate Christmas gift for you

PogMoThoin

Wcool wrote: »

Pog, look at this!

Gesture control Boxee

That must be the ultimate Christmas gift for you

Think I'll give that a miss, it looks annoying
Remote is fine for me

PogMoThoin

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/04/iomega-tv-with-boxee-chooses-function-over-form-packs-in-a-hard/
http://blog.boxee.tv/2011/01/04/boxee-partners-with-iomega-nas-device-running-boxee-is-coming/

Ewwww, looks fugly, yuck
Remote looks like a brick

It has the advantage of having internal storage and can be bought without storage for around the same price as the Boxee. It also has composite out, Dlink has Hdmi only. Both boxes have identical Intel chips so the new firmware releases would be compatible with both

davidsatelle100

thinking of picking up the boxee, just one question that i cant seem to find a straight answer for

is the database of local files from the nas etc stored on the boxee or on a file share on a server or similar?? I would have multiple sources around the house and not all of them would be on all the time for scanning etc

thanks

PogMoThoin

davidsatelle100 wrote: »

thinking of picking up the boxee, just one question that i cant seem to find a straight answer for

is the database of local files from the nas etc stored on the boxee or on a file share on a server or similar?? I would have multiple sources around the house and not all of them would be on all the time for scanning etc

thanks

The database is stored on the Boxee, it doesn't store the thumbanils though, these come from the internet from their own IMDB database. When it boots it touches each file to make sure its still there, then downloads and caches the thumbnails as You scroll. In service pack 2 they added the ability to use local thumbanails by adding thumbnail.jpg's into the folder with the media , I'm unsure how much further they expanded this with SP 3, but they've promised to improve it in future updates.

BArra

An.Duine.Eile wrote: »

This video shows the boxee box 1.0 browser in action. Looks like we will be able to access catch-up content that there is no boxee app for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUGoo1J1iYo

I now looking forward to getting my hands on one, sitting back in the couch, and using the remote to get the episode I missed. [Might just have to deliberately missed stuff so I can catch up]

Now let's see when I can get one.

Sorry for bump

I just got the boxee box yesterday, is there any further tips on maximizing its content?

Can you get Rte player to work?

Any other tips n tricks?

BionicRasher

I don’t have the Boxee Box but have Boxee installed on a HTPC and use it for all my local content. Its great.

We have just moved house so don’t have a TV set up yet and I am using Boxee for a lot of stuff. I also use it to view some online content and there is a few apps that I have been using which work great. There is loads of stuff here http://fuzzthed.com/
If you check out the Nexthop Repository – (Official Nexthop.ie repository. All apps developed by dkane) there is some RTE stuff there. The developer also has an RTE Player type app – see the details below
I have also developed an RTE Player App. This app is not 100% working so it is in my development repository which must be added separately. The development repository is at http://dir.nexthop.ie/testing


I have been trying to add the TV3 Catch Up Player and the RTE Player and MagnetWebTV via RSS feeds and the Watch Later button (you can get that on the Boxee.TV website) but no luck so far. I have yet to try to watch content via the built in browser or via Navi-X. Hopefully I will get to try that out soon and will post any details here

PogMoThoin

I had the free months trial of both Netflix and Vudu running fine on the free vpn provided by these guys, SD only mind you as the speed of this free vpn topped off at 1.5-2mbit, their paid for vpn is faster, some UK users posted in the Boxee forums that they have HD running absolutely fine on the paid one.
https://www.overplay.net/
https://www.overplay.net/blog/overplay-vpn-on-the-boxee-box

To get the details of the free vpn, register but don't select any package and then just select server details, its listed at the top

An.Duine.Eile

There some handy tips on this
http://gigaom.com/video/boxee-box-tips/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newteevee+%28GigaOM%3A+Video%29

You can access the rte player using the boxee browser. The video sometimes does not show but if you maximise it, it will sort out. Watch the Munster match on it last night.

BionicRasher

An.Duine.Eile wrote: »

There some handy tips on this
http://gigaom.com/video/boxee-box-tips/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newteevee+%28GigaOM%3A+Video%29

You can access the rte player using the boxee browser. The video sometimes does not show but if you maximise it, it will sort out. Watch the Munster match on it last night.

So would TV3 catch up and MagnetWebTV work on the browser on Boxee also? I hope so - I can nearly ditch the TV in that case:D

PogMoThoin

The latest firmware I just installed adds much better local thumbnail and .nfo support for all media. I spent a few hours last night with Ember Media Manager and got all local thumbnails from thetvdb.com and nfo's with all the info from IMDB. The thumbnails are now pretty much instant (well would be if I hadn't 550 movies and 3TB total of media) when I turn it on. I now also have the ability to change the thumbnails at any time or make my own for any media without info.

This version includes New Features / Enhancements such as:

• Browser enhancements

• Faster Browser Launch
• Faster Page Loading Speed.
• Improved HTML 5 support.
• Added ability to “Favorite” web sites for quick access.
• New “Favorites” section in the browser.
• New “History” section for browsing previously visited web pages.
• New confirmation pop-up when exiting HTML applications (YouTube Leanback, Netflix, etc.).
• Support for drop down lists.
• Current URL is now displayed in the address bar
• Removed auto full screen button for consistency across websites

• *NEW* - Trailer Library - added a trailer section to the Boxee movie library.
• Enhanced UI look and feel.
• Modified look & feel for On Screen Display (OSD).

• *NEW* Seek Slider allowing for precise fast forward and rewind.
• Reduced OSD size so users see more playing content.
• Added Seek ability for Music playback

• *NEW* “Share” menu allowing users to select where there message will be shared (Facebook, Twitter, and/or Tumblr).
• *NEW* Support for NFO files (see this support entry on how to use.)
• Boxee uses IMDB and other sources to identify and tag files. This meant that Boxee could not identify home movies and that correctly identified files were not able to be customized. This new release allows users to:

• Tag home movies with custom meta-data and artwork
• Update movie metadata with alternate artwork and information
• Customize the genres of films, TV shows for better personal categorization
• Customize how TV Show Episodes are tagged and displayed in Boxee.

• *NEW* Support additional languages and keyboards

• German
• French
• Italian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Hebrew
• Danish
• Dutch
• Turkish
• Russian
• Arabic
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
• Czech
• Norwegian
• Finnish
• Polish

• Keyboard shortcuts during playback:

• I - Video info
• Z - Toggle zoom
• Numeric keys - jump to time in video in minutes:seconds

• Ability to filter local content by source (USB, Network, SD).
• Remote control low battery indication.
• Ability to delete browser cache and cookies (Settings -> System -> Browser)
• Removed volume control to maintain consistency across playback experience
• Without the ability to control volume in HTML 5 apps like Netflix and YouTube Leanback and apps like VUDU we decided to remove the volume control to make the experience consistent across any app, movie, or show on Boxee. Now, volume control is similar to that of a Blu-Ray player or game console where users can control via their TV or A/V receiver.
• Added Leave/Stay pop-up when exiting Apps
• New MLB application
  
• Watch live and recorded games
• Improved ffwd and rewind functionality
• Ability to jump to a specific inning or game event
• Added pitch f/x statistics overlay
  
• All 2 channels PCM audio is output as DD 5.1 (on Dolby Digital capable receivers)

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=35140
http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=33055

The new firmware seems better optimised than before, the Boxee boots up and logs in much quicker. The browser has much improved also, its now much more usable than before. My outstanding issues have all been resolved.

BArra

What about this dolby issue? Would you mind explaining it as I can't get my head around it

PogMoThoin

BArra wrote: »

What about this dolby issue? Would you mind explaining it as I can't get my head around it

Only reading about this now, its a bug that doesn't affect me as I just use HDMI to the tv (for now until I buy a surround system). I expect they'll hotfix it as its an issue that they introduced with this latest firmware that wasn't there before.
http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=35232&highlight=dolby+issue

BArra

My boxee goes into a new onkyo 509 via hdmi with 5 speakers, and from there to a projector

Does this mean I am not getting true surround sound and its being downmixed to two speakers even though I have five speakers

Ps a bug? Is it not a licence issue