Unofficial usvideo.org Boxee Box support thread for Canadians

[mike71]

I figured that there are a good number of people like me who live in Canada, own a nice Boxee Box, and also use the service from usvideo.org in order to be able to use Pandora,Hulu, US Netflix, and various other US only apps on their Boxee Box.

As of today when I was forced to update to the new 1.4xxxx (netflix) firmware with the app signing in place, I began to have all kinds of problems with apps that were working fine before the update. The first issue was when I tried to load Navi-X. This gave me an unable to obtain certification error (not sure exactly what the error said, just paraphrasing), then I tried some of the other "US only" apps and got the same error from Pandora and NHL Gamecenter. Netflix and Vudu seemed to work fine. As well none of the third party apps from fuzzthed's repo work either. They all give the same error. This must have something to do with the new app signing process although I don't really see why certain apps work and certain apps don't.

I contacted usvideo.org and opened up a support ticket explaining the situation but they don't officially list the Boxee Box as supported so I'm not sure if they will be familiar with it or know how to solve the problem.

The purpose of this thread is to hopefully see how many other people are having the same issue, create a dialog to look towards solving the problem, and help each other with other various issues regarding the Boxee Box and the usvideo.org service. Hopefully as a group we can get this problem solved so we can go back to enjoying our Boxee Box's as we were before

[darcilicious]

Try a factory restore.

[mike71]

Try a factory restore.

As I said earlier I did a factory restore already and it didn't help.

[Look30]

Same here. Used to be able to watch Youtube and browse the web.
After the last "upgrade" I only get errors about signature.

I used to recommend Boxee to everyone now lawyers are running the show and ruined a good thing.
Nice work !!!!

[tsella]

Same here. Used to be able to watch Youtube and browse the web.
After the last "upgrade" I only get errors about signature.

I used to recommend Boxee to everyone now lawyers are running the show and ruined a good thing.
Nice work !!!!

Ha! Love them lawyers!

Seriously. This service hijacks DNS records, rerouting all traffic through their servers so it looks like coming from USA, and they have a few issues. For one, they seem to no distinguish between individual user sessions properly, and they cache aggressively.

This means, for instance, that under Boxee you would see other people old feeds. It also means that they have not cached the applications keys yet, which is what is breaking the apps. And after that is fixed over time when the cache refreshes, you may "lose" apps again when we update them and their signatures, until the cache refreshes again.

Sample of how this works:

tsella@tsella-xps:~$ nslookup
> boxee.tv
Server:		192.168.1.1 my local DNS masq caching DNS results
Address:	192.168.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer: Non-auth because it comes from a DNS server other than Boxee's
Name:	boxee.tv
Address: 67.225.149.139 Our service ingress
> server 184.106.242.193 usvideo.org DNS server
Default server: 184.106.242.193
Address: 184.106.242.193#53
> boxee.tv
Server:		184.106.242.193 Missing non-auth. They claim they are SOA
Address:	184.106.242.193#53

Name:	boxee.tv
Address: 50.22.92.203 and return IP of their servers
Name:	boxee.tv
Address: 69.89.9.175
> 

You should be aware that when using this sort of service may have significant security ramifications to you, depending on how they implemented it.

Tom

[Look30]

Hmm... Interesting point. I had no clue how their service worked but definitely Security wise is flaky.

[Lilo]

It looks like this issue was resolved by usavideo.org:

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=28036#26

[Look30]

Is there a way to add the TWO DNS servers in Boxee Box only without changing the router ?
I could add only one DNS server last time I tried, is there a way to add two DNS servers ?

[mike71]

Ha! Love them lawyers!

Seriously. This service hijacks DNS records, rerouting all traffic through their servers so it looks like coming from USA, and they have a few issues. For one, they seem to no distinguish between individual user sessions properly, and they cache aggressively.

This means, for instance, that under Boxee you would see other people old feeds. It also means that they have not cached the applications keys yet, which is what is breaking the apps. And after that is fixed over time when the cache refreshes, you may "lose" apps again when we update them and their signatures, until the cache refreshes again.

Sample of how this works:

tsella@tsella-xps:~$ nslookup
> boxee.tv
Server:		192.168.1.1 my local DNS masq caching DNS results
Address:	192.168.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer: Non-auth because it comes from a DNS server other than Boxee's
Name:	boxee.tv
Address: 67.225.149.139 Our service ingress
> server 184.106.242.193 usvideo.org DNS server
Default server: 184.106.242.193
Address: 184.106.242.193#53
> boxee.tv
Server:		184.106.242.193 Missing non-auth. They claim they are SOA
Address:	184.106.242.193#53

Name:	boxee.tv
Address: 50.22.92.203 and return IP of their servers
Name:	boxee.tv
Address: 69.89.9.175
> 

You should be aware that when using this sort of service may have significant security ramifications to you, depending on how they implemented it.

Tom

Thanks for the explanation and info. I better understand how their service works now. It was my understanding that they didn't reroute all traffic through their DNS servers but only from certain websites that they list that aren't available to use in Canada, and even then their DNS is just used to get through the "gate" to access the site. Granted, my technical knowledge of the subject is very limited so I couldn't say for sure how it works one way or the other. It is nice to be able to use Vudu,US Netflix, Pandora and other apps on my Boxee though, that is for sure.

[mike71]

Is there a way to add the TWO DNS servers in Boxee Box only without changing the router ?
I could add only one DNS server last time I tried, is there a way to add two DNS servers ?

As far as I can tell there is only one place to enter in the DNS server on the Boxee Box. Not a primary and secondary as is needed by usvideo.org DNS service. I believe you need both entered for the service to work properly but maybe someone from Boxee could offer a solution for how to enter the network info into the boxee options to enable it to work.