Boxee Box Gets First Firmware Update, Sees Lots Of Changes

The Boxee Box, produced by D-Link, has been in the hands of consumers for just over two weeks now. The product was delayed a few times, but now that it's out there, the competition is probably looking at it for a newly set bar. But as with any brand new product, bugs and problems are sure to be present, big or small. Leader Avner Ronen has now posted an update thanking users for using the Box and providing them with bug reports, complaints, praises, feature suggestions, etc.

In order to give thanks properly, Boxee is today releasing the Boxee Box's first firmware update. A two-week turnaround is pretty great for something this significant, and this new update promises "numerous bug fixes and improvements." The Box 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.

The company is already working on the next version of the firmware, showing that Boxee's a smaller company with less hassle in coding their software. Bigger companies tend to take a lot longer when turning around updates. The list of changes is below, and if you have held off on buying one to see how the kinks were worked out, here you go!

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