boxee for mac/atv 0.9.11.5774 and ubuntu linux 0.9.11.5777

[tsella]

i'm very pleased to announce general availability of the long awaited linux update, finally up to par with our 0.9.11 series.

this release includes our new API, as documented at http://developer.boxee.tv, bringing a wealth of applications to boxee for linux such as Pandora and RadioTime through App Box, our application store. also new with this release for linux are integration with the XUL framework, the same framework behind mozilla and firefox, enabling playback of virtually any content site, along with numerous bug fixes, improved performance and stability.

known issues

under certain circumstances, boxee for linux may run extremely slow or crash on start-up. this is usually a result of improper graphics drivers, lack of proper opengl version support or no direct rendering support. please see http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=345.
boxee for linux is available for 32bit operating systems only. if you wish to try and run it under 64bit, you may try following: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=374. this is unsupported.


along side this release, we have also updated our mac and atv version, improving playback of flash content, performance and stability.

for ubuntu, if you already have an older version installed, the new update will automatically show as an package update, like any other software installed. if this is your first time installing boxee for ubuntu, go to http://app.boxee.tv/download for setup instructions.

for mac, the update will show up in boxee, allowing for a direct install. you can also download this version manually at http://app.boxee.tv/download.

for apple tv, exit boxee, and update the version via the launcher (Launcher > Downloads). we also highly recommend you update the Launcher to the latest and greatest 3.0 version.

sources are available, as usual, at http://app.boxee.tv/download.

next up for us is the Windows release, which we hope to release and open to the public in June.

[luv2hike]

Great! Thank you! I am looking forward to getting consistent Hulu support now in Linux.

[tipsymonkey]

awesome. Just installed on my appletv. It may be my imagination but everything seems to be smoother, more responsive.

I noticed that people could recomend apps. I saw that people had recomended netflix and pandora. Is this a new feature or could you always do it?

[grytpype]

For AMD64 users, we have scripts for downloading and building Boxee from source code, see this thread:

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=7497&page=6

[damienkis]

woah. much snappier on atv! nice! really happy to see a performance upgrade in between feature-releases!

[00j9]

The upgrade is great. I'd given up watching Boxee on atv for awhile because it was choppy, slow to react to my remote, couldn't pause or ffwd (observations while on hulu and cbs). All of that seems fixed now. Thanks!

[Beckfield]

This is an Alpha build, not a release. "Release" implies a ready-for-general-use product.

Aside from general usability issues, I think one of the greatest roadblocks to Linux and OSS is the blurring or outright ignoring of these terms. When you don't make it clear in all announcements that a new revision is a pre-release, and possibly buggy, product, you only discourage those who are trying to give the non-Microsoft world a chance.

Alpha testing is supposed to be done by people who have agreed to be alpha testers. The same goes for Beta testing, and release candidate testing. When you lead people to believe (by omitting or misrepresenting the actual status of your product) that they are installing a finished product, and they see "alpha" labels in the software, or they see serious bugs that should never have gotten to a finished product, you hurt your own reputation, and you do a disservice to the whole open source movement.

[jlr1001]

Whoa...

I'm just a simple user here, but I think we've all been operating under the knowledge that these are alpha--soon to be beta--releases (or versions).

I'm still relatively new to Boxee and I found statements about the current state of the application to be very clear. Sorry if you didn't feel likewise...


-J.L.

[mrotz]

Neophyte ATV user. Installed new version of Boxee from Launcher. When I go into Boxee now I get the "flash" and then nothing happens, just a blank screen. Any ideas?

[Beckfield]

Go to the boxee.tv website as if you were going there for the first time. There is not one mention that this is a pre-release product. Go to the blog, where you'll see the same announcement that you see at the top of this thread. No indication that this is a pre-release product.

Until you create a login, you have no idea that you are not looking at a ready-for-general-use product. Even then, once you log in, all you have is the red letter "Alpha User Area" above your name. Whoa! I never signed up to be an "Alpha" user! I don't even know what an "Alpha User" is.

There's nothing on the Wiki, nothing on the download page, nothing in the EULA, nothing beyond that unexplained "Alpha User Area" text to even remotely suggest that this is not ready-for-primetime software.

Probably, by the time someone gets to the point of logging into this forum, they've figured it out. But I stand by my original statement, and I do so in the interest of helping Boxee, and OSS in general, become something that has a chance of surviving.

[Beckfield]

Neophyte ATV user. Installed new version of Boxee from Launcher. When I go into Boxee now I get the "flash" and then nothing happens, just a blank screen. Any ideas?

Best to look around in the "Boxee for Appletv Help forum." There may be others having the same problem.

Good luck!

[elangsru]

Haven't tried it very much, but I still experience the Exit-issue. Which means that Boxee and ATV freeze on the Boxee exit-screen. Only a reboot will fix it.

Very anoying

[nswint]

If I must say, you guys rock!

[damienkis]

This is an Alpha build, not a release. "Release" implies a ready-for-general-use product.

Aside from general usability issues, I think one of the greatest roadblocks to Linux and OSS is the blurring or outright ignoring of these terms. When you don't make it clear in all announcements that a new revision is a pre-release, and possibly buggy, product, you only discourage those who are trying to give the non-Microsoft world a chance.

Alpha testing is supposed to be done by people who have agreed to be alpha testers. The same goes for Beta testing, and release candidate testing. When you lead people to believe (by omitting or misrepresenting the actual status of your product) that they are installing a finished product, and they see "alpha" labels in the software, or they see serious bugs that should never have gotten to a finished product, you hurt your own reputation, and you do a disservice to the whole open source movement.

haha wow. but they released the alpha... stop being so anal.

[uncle_salty]

Thanks for the upgrade. Attaching to the NAS drive is much improved and navigation within movies works much better as well. Overall I'd say the whole package feels faster.:cool:

[gr8npwrfl]

Have installed on Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 and is one heck of a great upgrade !

Hulu and web video much better, more stable, faster.

Only bug I have found so far is Podcasts from internet stream do not run, they start and sit with program counter at 0

The new plug in interface ROCKS !!!!

Running this system with NAS and Samba servers to store the movies on the network. SO far running three copies of boxee on three computers watching 3 different movies at 720p works great !

Have one computer that runs all versions of Ubuntu as well as OS X 10.5.6 and the Ubuntu versions are much faster in menus and video program loading.

I am currently documenting the bug report with all library versions, installed hardware, and installed software on systems for report.

Good Work GUYS !!!! Was well worth the wait for the amount that was fixed in this version.

[Tom Dibble]

This is an Alpha build, not a release. "Release" implies a ready-for-general-use product.


Terminology may differ from company to company, but where I work, a "release" is anything which goes out the door, be that an alpha, beta, gamma, or general availability release. That's why all those adjectives exist. A "build" is when the whole stack gets built, which may or may not go out the door.

You can see these bits, I believe, in the version numbering scheme for "0.9.11.5774":

"0": This is pre-first-general-release. That means it's alpha or beta (usually beta would be signified with the full version number and a suffix, so the "0." tends to point towards alpha).

"9.11": This is getting close to the full version, but there have been quite a few alphas that are this close to general release. That "11" somewhat tells me that the team is probably not as close as they thought they were to release when they put out 0.9.0 and 0.9.1 (although I don't think there ever were such releases; the version numbering scheme seems to have shifted in around 0.9.5 or so).

"5774": that's the build number. There have been either 5,774 builds of the "0.9.11" line (that's how we'd label it here), or there have been 5,774 builds of the "0.9" or "0.*" alpha lines, which 5,774th of which has been denoted "0.9.11" (which appears to be Boxee's labeling approach).



Aside from general usability issues, I think one of the greatest roadblocks to Linux and OSS is the blurring or outright ignoring of these terms. When you don't make it clear in all announcements that a new revision is a pre-release, and possibly buggy, product, you only discourage those who are trying to give the non-Microsoft world a chance.


This I can agree with, though: it always needs to be clear what level of release we are at (and what "alpha" means). I personally thought it was pretty clear, but I haven't gone in as an unknowing investigator since last October, so things might be less clear now than they used to be.

IMHO, a visit to boxee.tv leads me to the same place it did in October: the lack of a "This is alpha software" notification is the least of the problems here. More pressing: there is very little information on what the software is or hopes to one day be, other than a screenshot of a bunch of logos on a screen.

So, coming all the way around: it seems like there's enough information for a user to infer the state of the software, assuming:

1. They are technically adept enough to get it working
2. They are referred to Boxee by someone else who is up-front about Boxee's alpha status

If either of these is not met, the potential user is more likely to turn and exit the room than plunge forward assuming Boxee is general-release-ready software.

Again, it'd be nice if the main site were more informative in this regard as well as many others, but I don't see it as the most pressing thing to make sure someone coming in "fresh" knows.

[afrancoeur]

thanks for the prompt update.
hulu works again!

[VirtualEnder]

Any particular reason there's not ./configure script in the src tarball? I copied the one out of the .5591 release, and am trying to compile now. I hope no dependancies have changed. If anyone can give me more information on this, I'd appreciate it.

[pauloslf]

this is what i get when i run it:

sergio@sergio:~/Desktop$ /opt/boxee/run-boxee-desktop
28/04/09 07:50:24#DEBUG#bxbgprocess.cpp:142(Start)#bg process initialized. 1 worker threads created.
28/04/09 07:50:24#DEBUG#bxcurl.cpp:63(Initialize)#curl initialized. version <7.18.2>

Running Boxee test...
* Enable platform firectoriesAnd the log goes to... /tmp/sergio-
unknown chip id 0x9591, can't guess.
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 1 (X_CreateWindow)
Serial number of failed request: 29
Current serial number in output stream: 30
Boxee: asked to stop
Boxee: already stopped
BXBGProcess, Resolver Audio Processor, asked to stop, this = 0x8fa38e0
BXBGProcess, Resolver Video Processor, asked to stop, this = 0x8fa3874
BXBGProcess, , asked to stop, this = 0x8fa339c
BXBGProcess, Application Messenger, asked to stop, this = 0x8f0e7e4
BXBGProcess, Application Messenger, asked to stop, this = 0x8f0e7e4

running ubuntu 9.04 on a laptop with a intel centrino 2 dual core 2.6 and ati 36xx, i'm using the open-source driver and i have an external monitor (samsung syncmaster 2243nwx )

boxee does not event start.

any help?

[pablosound]

Sorry gays. I was off.
I´ll will tray to help.
Thanks for all

[Beckfield]

haha wow. but they released the alpha... stop being so anal.

Thanks for your... what do you call that... help??

[VirtualEnder]

this is what i get when i run it:

sergio@sergio:~/Desktop$ /opt/boxee/run-boxee-desktop
28/04/09 07:50:24#DEBUG#bxbgprocess.cpp:142(Start)#bg process initialized. 1 worker threads created.
28/04/09 07:50:24#DEBUG#bxcurl.cpp:63(Initialize)#curl initialized. version <7.18.2>

Running Boxee test...
* Enable platform firectoriesAnd the log goes to... /tmp/sergio-
unknown chip id 0x9591, can't guess.
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 1 (X_CreateWindow)
Serial number of failed request: 29
Current serial number in output stream: 30
Boxee: asked to stop
Boxee: already stopped
BXBGProcess, Resolver Audio Processor, asked to stop, this = 0x8fa38e0
BXBGProcess, Resolver Video Processor, asked to stop, this = 0x8fa3874
BXBGProcess, , asked to stop, this = 0x8fa339c
BXBGProcess, Application Messenger, asked to stop, this = 0x8f0e7e4
BXBGProcess, Application Messenger, asked to stop, this = 0x8f0e7e4

running ubuntu 9.04 on a laptop with a intel centrino 2 dual core 2.6 and ati 36xx, i'm using the open-source driver and i have an external monitor (samsung syncmaster 2243nwx )

boxee does not event start.

any help?




Your graphics chipset probably does not support hardware accelleration, this is required by Boxee, did it work in the old Boxee? Try upgrading the graphics driver, or try to use the Ubuntu utility that manages third party drivers to install a manufacturers driver for the ATI. It's definitely an issue with the video card though.

[damienkis]

Thanks for your... what do you call that... help??

thanks for your rant?

[sfsmiley]

thanks for your rant?

Beckfield = http://tinyurl.com/aeezf5

[baker13]

The Update was running very nicely on the ATV. However, after I put ATV to sleep for the night, the next day atv just blinks and will not start. is anyone having same issue? It might just be bad unit, only 15 months old.
Thank you for you time.:eek:

[ennsba]

I am having the same problem! I have got some errors to come up every once in a while like 10 or 5. Not sure what to do! HELP!

[rwagner337]

Very nice... smoother, more responsive and indexing FINALLY work correctly... can't wait for the beta.

[Spaceman]

Just a quick note. Once I installed the update, I clicked on the icon (Mac version) and did a 'Get Info' to check that the install had worked. However, it still showed the old version number. I finally found the version number in the settings window and it was the new one. Just thought you might like to fix the 'get info' window so it shows the correct version number.

Regards,

[marcel]

cheers for the update ...guys any problem with the Atv please send your boxee logs (http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1366&highlight=allyourbugs)

[lukeleal]

The Update was running very nicely on the ATV. However, after I put ATV to sleep for the night, the next day atv just blinks and will not start. is anyone having same issue? It might just be bad unit, only 15 months old.
Thank you for you time.:eek:

I'm having the same problem; worked perfectly after initial installation of all the latest software (Boxee & Launcher) but now when logging in a message warns there is no internet connection (yet there is) and after clicking continue from there the screens blinks and an error 10 message comes up. Help? :confused:

AppleTV 2.3.1
Boxee alpha 0.9.11.5774
launcher 3.0
Windows XP

[kerriskandiesinc]

Just installed , on a 2Ghz MacMini, so far, only a few very small problems..but I gotta say, I am coming over from 'the dark side..Plex, 0.8.1, which...whislt visually stunning, is just TOO unpredictable, at least compared to Boxee...!!

( now, don't go all 'whizz bang':) and lose the very good functionality......!!!)

[silsurf]

Ever since running the updater yesterday (0.9.11.5774) I have not been able to restart Boxee, I just get this error:

xmbc/boxee exiting with status:1

It is not a 10 or an 11, but a 1.

I cannot find any info on this error, Please pass along anything that might help me get my Boxee back.

Thanks,

Henry

[silsurf]

I installed the latest version of XMBC (I had not done so before) and it runs fine, still getting the same error on Boxee though.

Henry