So I pre-ordered a Boxee Box

davidsatelle100 · 15-09-2011 10:26PM

anyone ripped blurays to play on the boxee??

have done it to watch blurays over the boxee but cant get the menus up it only plays the main feature. ripped them into folders so they are m2ts files

ArthurG · 03-10-2011 09:40AM

Just got my Boxee yesterday and am very pleased with it. Have a UK VPN too so can access iPlayer, which is nice.

I've just really scratched the surface so far, and have some tidying up to do, e.g. sorting out some incorrectly identified files etc which I'll do tonight.

Just wondering, it there a list of 'must have/know' tips or something for the Boxee?. Already tried the RTE playerXL link, works great (shame the bitrate seems a bit low.....), but anything else I absolutely must have?.

Thanks in advance!

PogMoThoin · 03-10-2011 11:32AM

ArthurG wrote: »

Just got my Boxee yesterday and am very pleased with it. Have a UK VPN too so can access iPlayer, which is nice.

I've just really scratched the surface so far, and have some tidying up to do, e.g. sorting out some incorrectly identified files etc which I'll do tonight.

Just wondering, it there a list of 'must have/know' tips or something for the Boxee?. Already tried the RTE playerXL link, works great (shame the bitrate seems a bit low.....), but anything else I absolutely must have?.

Thanks in advance!

You can sort your media with your own local nfo's and better thumbnails from http://thetvdb.org/, it speeds things up by having Boxee pull them in locally rather than from the IMDB site everytime it boots as the Box only stores info, not thumbnails.
See my blog entry: http://leetstreet.net/blog/2011/05/embe/

Edit, http://thetvdb.org/ seems down atm, it happens the odd time, try later

ArthurG · 03-10-2011 12:17PM

Thanks, will give it a go tonight.

Great blog by the way

ArthurG · 04-10-2011 09:48AM

A few quick questions if I may.....

1) EMM seems to have identified a load of TV shows as films (and vice versa). Is there an easy way to fix that?.

2) Having spend laborious hours last night downloading tons of new artwork, Boxee didn't want to play with it and refused to display the new stuff. From your blog, I suspect this may be because you must:

"stop Ember adding the thumbnail location to the .nfo file, this is because the location for Boxee needs to start “smb://”, adding it with ember doesn’t allow this and the result is that the thumbnails will not work"

How do you do that?. May well be in one of your screenies, but I'm not quite sure where I should be looking.

Thanks!!

PogMoThoin · 04-10-2011 11:00AM

ArthurG wrote: »

A few quick questions if I may.....

1) EMM seems to have identified a load of TV shows as films (and vice versa). Is there an easy way to fix that?.

2) Having spend laborious hours last night downloading tons of new artwork, Boxee didn't want to play with it and refused to display the new stuff. From your blog, I suspect this may be because you must:

"stop Ember adding the thumbnail location to the .nfo file, this is because the location for Boxee needs to start “smb://”, adding it with ember doesn’t allow this and the result is that the thumbnails will not work"

How do you do that?. May well be in one of your screenies, but I'm not quite sure where I should be looking.

Thanks!!

1) Your media needs to be well sorted for for Ember, you can't just lump them all together.

In Ember you must add your Movies and TV Shows seperately, put them in 2 seperate folders Movies and Shows then add the Movie folder to Ember in the Movies tab, add Shows folder in the Shows tab following the instructions in my blog.

You can use filebot to rename your shows first, put them in Shows/TV Show/Season folders and use filebot to remane each episode to "TV Show - s01e01 - episode name" etc. Do them season at a time and doublecheck its getting them right, you only got one chance and it can mess up.
Movies can just be lumped into a Movies folder together, but its best to edit the name to show the release year, as in "Moviename (year)" and they'll be scraped perfectly then.

Once Ember has them named perfectly Boxee will distinguish between Movies and Shows from the nfo, therefore you can just add global link to the full collection to Boxee.

2)

ArthurG · 04-10-2011 11:23AM

Thanks again - will do some more organising tonight.

Big Lar · 05-10-2011 12:25PM

Once I get the movie name more or less correct my boxee scans the drive on a daily basis and automatically updates thumbnails and information, rarely it misses a file due to a name issue but I have the option to manually search the database for the correct TV episode or movie name.

Am I missing out on something by not using Ember ?

PogMoThoin · 05-10-2011 02:52PM

Big Lar wrote: »

Once I get the movie name more or less correct my boxee scans the drive on a daily basis and automatically updates thumbnails and information, rarely it misses a file due to a name issue but I have the option to manually search the database for the correct TV episode or movie name.

Am I missing out on something by not using Ember ?

Ember allows you dictate where the media info and images scrape from, Boxee only uses the IMDB (which I find very poor) as it's legit and is affiliated with the Movie and TV studios. With Ember you can scrape better community contributed images from themoviedb.org, themovieposterdb.com and thetvdb.com and it then saves them locally as .nfo and .tbn files. Saving locally means Boxee loads the thumbnails from a local drive and not from the internet each time it boots, which for me with 2.5TB of media means they're an awful lot quicker to appear. I can also change a thumbnail at any time with Ember, Boxee will pick up the new thumbnail on next boot as it will be named identically in the local folder.

These .nfos and .tbns also work for XBMC, by selecting a few more options in the settings you can easily get Ember to download show banners, season thumbnails and community uploaded fanart. I've XBMC on my pc and laptop, I can scroll down through my media with the app on my Android phone with thumbnails and select my media to play on the pc. I'm moving completely to XBMC soon (was using it on an old Xbox before I moved to Boxee), I will be picking up a nettop for the job as Boxee is not the open customisable option they promised it would be.

ArthurG · 05-10-2011 03:04PM

Having some weird issues where Boxee picks up the locally stored for some files and not others - not sure if its just a scanning thing. I'll leave it on for a few hours see what happens (I basically re-built the my whole catalogue to correctly name files etc).

Other than that EMM works nicely, takes a bit of getting used to, but its very powerful. Just need the Boxee to see everything I've done now.....

PogMoThoin · 05-10-2011 03:10PM

ArthurG wrote: »

Having some weird issues where Boxee picks up the locally stored for some files and not others - not sure if its just a scanning thing. I'll leave it on for a few hours see what happens (I basically re-built the my whole catalogue to correctly name files etc).

Leave it running, after it's scanned it will identify the thumbnails. It's a known issue that it sometimes gets stuck checking the nfos, just reboot and it will continue where it left off. You can see what it's at if you go to settings --> file sources, You'll see scanning/identifying on the bottom if it's doing something.

Delboy5 · 07-10-2011 10:22AM

Eventually took the plunge and got a Boxee box, only got it late last night so haven't tried alot with it yet, www.liveonlinefooty.com works a treat on it through the Browser, which is brilliant !

Have also installed Navi-x...........super app ;o)

Can anyone recommend any other apps that are very useful\cool !?
What about the BBC iplayer\itv player\channel 5\4OD do any or all of these work without a VPN ??

PogMoThoin wrote: »

If it plays in a browser without installing a helper plugin then it will work on the Boxee. Does this site install a plugin? The Boxee does flash and html5 so most stuff plays

ArthurG · 08-10-2011 09:38AM

I'm sure there are 'other' ways of getting a decent vpn, however I tried this place: www.overplay.net

Found them on some website.

$10 per month, and you have access to vpns all over the world - I'm mainly using UK for iPlayer (although it doesn't seem quite up to HD unfortunately). If I want to change to US, simply update the vpn in network settings and away we go,

Any other suggestions, would love to hear them.

PogMoThoin · 08-10-2011 09:43AM

I've read lots of great reports about Overplay vpns, lots of UK posters on the Boxee forum have HD streaming fine from the USA, Netflix, Vudu etc. What speed is your connection? HD will need 5Mbit+ minimum

ArthurG · 08-10-2011 09:45AM

UPC 100meg, hence my mild disappointment with the HD performance

PogMoThoin · 08-10-2011 09:47AM

Try the USA. You'll get a months free trial of Netflix and Vudu.

dixiefly · 09-10-2011 02:06AM

ArthurG wrote: »

Just got my Boxee yesterday and am very pleased with it. Have a UK VPN too so can access iPlayer, which is nice.

I've just really scratched the surface so far, and have some tidying up to do, e.g. sorting out some incorrectly identified files etc which I'll do tonight.

Just wondering, it there a list of 'must have/know' tips or something for the Boxee?. Already tried the RTE playerXL link, works great (shame the bitrate seems a bit low.....), but anything else I absolutely must have?.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Arthur,
What is the best way to get a UK VPN?

Thanks

ArthurG · 09-10-2011 12:57PM

I guess it really depends on whether or not you want to pay for one. Google 'free UK vpn' for lots of options, however anecdotally (and limited testing, I didn't really have the patience) would suggest they're not that great.

I'm trying www.overplay.net which seems to be working well - was watching HD content on iPlayer last night just fine. As mentioned above I can also access US proxies, but I haven't had a go at that yet, will do today.

It's cheap enough, but if you must have a free one, be prepared to do a bit of digging around to find a reliable option.

PogMoThoin · 09-10-2011 02:06PM

Free vpn's will wreck your head

dixiefly · 09-10-2011 08:03PM

Thanks Arthur.

It is necessarily a free one that I am looking for. I had used Tor & Mgeni but it is not working for me recently.

I hadnt bothered for a whil but will have a look at one of them paying sites.

Delboy5 · 10-10-2011 10:31AM

The RTE player link, http://www.rte.ie/playerxl, is great.

Am i right in saying the 2 below links are the best for viewing TV3 and TG4 ??

http://tv3.ie/3player
http://www.tg4.ie/en/tg4-player.html

GeorgeBailey · 10-10-2011 10:54AM

I've seen a browser mentioned here and can't see it anywhere on my boxee box.
Can someone let me know how/where you access a web browser within boxee?

PogMoThoin · 10-10-2011 10:57AM

It's in apps, save it to favorites

ArthurG · 10-10-2011 06:47PM

Registered for my free Netflix trial and all that - then loaded the App on the Boxee.

Turns out the feckers have blocked access to Netflix via the VPN in the Boxee itself, you just get a blank screen.

Will see what the story is with Vudu.

Edit: Bah a quick forum search suggests same thing for Vudu. Stupid licencing arrangements.

PogMoThoin · 11-10-2011 11:59PM

Not good news for Boxee
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4950/intel-focuses-on-tablets-winds-down-digital-home-group
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-11/intel-abandons-plans-to-get-its-processors-into-televisions.html

Big Lar · 14-10-2011 09:22AM

There was an update last night, anyone know what was involved ?

ArthurG · 14-10-2011 12:58PM

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=44555

As a complete aside (question for Mr. Pog)....

My TV series are acting a bit strange. Firstly, I couldn't for the life of me get the Boxee to recognise 30 Rock (2 series, it would only pick up 1 episode from S2). Tried everything, in the end deleted all the EMM data, and the Boxee then picked it up (oddly Boxee on my PC didn't have that trouble). Anyway, thats all good. But I just noticed that all my other series times seem to be captured in seconds rather than minutes.

I don't think there is a setting in EMM to change the format to mins (like there is in Films, using <m> in the appropriate option) - any idea?.

Thanks!!

Big Lar · 14-10-2011 01:30PM

Could be the way you have them named ?

ArthurG · 14-10-2011 01:51PM

Big Lar wrote: »

Could be the way you have them named ?

Assume you're referring to the non identification of episodes rather than the timing problem. I don't think it's that, as I used the exact same nomenclature as the other series, and confirmed this on various websites i.e. 30.Rock.S01E05 etc. No joy. As I said, when I deleted the EMM info Boxee got them straight away - its uses the EMM generaged images and nfo for everything else.

PogMoThoin · 14-10-2011 08:05PM

ArthurG wrote: »

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=44555

As a complete aside (question for Mr. Pog)....

My TV series are acting a bit strange. Firstly, I couldn't for the life of me get the Boxee to recognise 30 Rock (2 series, it would only pick up 1 episode from S2). Tried everything, in the end deleted all the EMM data, and the Boxee then picked it up (oddly Boxee on my PC didn't have that trouble). Anyway, thats all good. But I just noticed that all my other series times seem to be captured in seconds rather than minutes.

I don't think there is a setting in EMM to change the format to mins (like there is in Films, using <m> in the appropriate option) - any idea?.

Thanks!!

Are you sure Ember scraped them correctly and created proper .nfo's with the correct info?

Read the .nfo file and see what it contains, mine are in minutes as you see below. Get damn nfo viewer if you want to see .nfo's in something better than notepad

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<episodedetails>
<title>Desert Island</title>
<runtime>44</runtime>
<aired>2011-09-23</aired>
<rating>7.7</rating>
<season>2</season>
<episode>1</episode>
<plot>Karl makes his way through the 'Bucket List' that has been created. First up he ends up spending a a night on a private island.</plot>
<actor>
<name>Karl Pilkington</name>
<role>Himself</role>
<thumb>http://thetvdb.com/banners/actors/201861.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Stephen Merchant</name>
<role>Creator</role>
<thumb>http://thetvdb.com/banners/actors/247521.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Ricky Gervais</name>
<role>Creator</role>
<thumb>http://thetvdb.com/banners/actors/247511.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<fileinfo>
<streamdetails>
<audio>
<channels>2</channels>
<codec>aac</codec>
<language>eng</language>
<longlanguage>English</longlanguage>
</audio>
<video>
<aspect>1.778</aspect>
<codec>h264</codec>
<duration>44</duration>
<height>720</height>
<scantype>Progressive</scantype>
<width>1280</width>
</video>
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>
</episodedetails>

So I pre-ordered a Boxee Box

Comments