HOW TO: Ditch 1.1.0.19036 and go back to 1.0.4.17248 without update checks

[tronbrain]

Darcilicious - can you sticky this thread please?

[aaronwt]

tronbrain, Is your signature font getting larger and larger? I swear it looked smaller yesterday.

[neveroffline]

+1 on the sticky...

As for fonts increasing I have no idea but damn if you guys aren't making progress here. Congrats to BOTH of you.

We all want a better Boxee so it is in the BEST interest to voice your opinion, and please do it loudly, like a sticky.

[tronbrain]

tronbrain, Is your signature font getting larger and larger? I swear it looked smaller yesterday.

Font is the same size, but my sig has indeed gotten longer, and I added some red to it last week.

[vtxrider]

The screen saver has zero to do with updating.

Uh..wrong.
I don't have the ability to block updates, so I just turned off the screensaver, now when an update is pushed to the box I get an update icon in the top right corner of the Home Screen, and if I use the menu to power down I get the choice of either 'update' or 'sleep'. As i don't turn my box off very often this works fine, if for some reason I do need to turn it off I just use the power button on the box. When powering on from off the box displays a 'downloading update, boxee may be slow until finished' for a few seconds then boots normally. The screensaver forces updates to run, without it turned on you have a choice.... so i would say your blanket statement is off the mark.

[tronbrain]

Has the latest Boxee Box firmware got you down? Were you looking forward to a new firmware with improved performance and loads of bug fixes, only to get the opposite? Does it sometimes feel like the firmware coders are secretly working for Apple? Here's is a quick HOWTO on downgrading your firmware and bringing your Boxee Box back up to speed.

1) Download the old Boxee firmware ISO onto a USB thumb drive. The file can be downloaded from the following URL:

http://dl.boxee.tv/version/dlink.dsm...WARE/boxee.iso

replacing FIRMWARE in the URL above with the whole firmware version number, like 1.2.0.20310 (I've found that, of all the newer firmware revisions, 1.2.0.20310 is reasonably stable and usable; 1.1.1.19092 is also a good one prior to buffering issues in 1.2.X). So the resulting URL would be:

http://dl.boxee.tv/version/dlink.dsm...0310/boxee.iso

The firmware should be named "boxee.iso" and placed in the root directory of your thumb drive, or it won't work. Make sure it's not named "boxee.iso.iso" - quite a few users who have file name extensions turned off by default have been frustrated by that problem.

2) Power off your Boxee Box. Plug in your USB thumb drive into one of the two USB ports in back.

3) Power on your Boxee Box by holding the power button down in the upper left corner of the box for 10 seconds, then releasing it.

4) At this point, after a few seconds, the Boxee will boot up with a slightly yellowish green logo - not the usual lime green - and you will be given a menu of choices. One option will be to install firmware from the USB thumb drive. Select this option. After a few minutes, your old firmware will be installed and you can restart.

This post lists each of the firmware versions. It also gives more detailed instructions and is the source of this HOWTO.

One last point: you need to turn off automatic firmware updates, or you'll wind up being upgraded again. In Settings, simply turn off the screensaver. Without the screensaver, the Boxee Box will STILL download updates, but unless the screensaver is active, it will not install them without your explicit permission (but keep reading, there's more on this). It will simply download the new firmware and display an icon in the upper right corner indicating a firmware is ready to install. You can select the icon and say "Later," essentially allowing you to ignore the new firmware indefinitely. Finally, when turning off the Boxee Box, be sure to only use the physical power switch, because the option to turn off without updating will be gone from the power down menu.

For a more thorough way of blocking the automatic upgrades, visit the following post at the top of this thread. Warning: you need to be familiar with IP router filtering to use this approach.
http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=35225

And that's it!

Many thanks to forum users @Ronald, @neveroffline, @Darcilicious, and others, for expert guidance and posting this information in various places already.

[Danielorum]

Can anyone tell me why i should downgrade to version 1.0.4.17248? What is the benefit of doing that, as opposed to just downloading the newest version?

Thanks

[tronbrain]

Can anyone tell me why i should downgrade to version 1.0.4.17248? What is the benefit of doing that, as opposed to just downloading the newest version?

Thanks

This thread started out discussing downgrading to that particular firmware version, but that's not necessarily what anybody is advocating today, as this thread is several months old now.

Downgrade to whatever firmware last worked well for you. I found 1.2.0.20310 to be fairly stable and usable, with all the new features and new interface. If you don't like the new interface, 1.0.4.17248 is one of the last firmware releases with the older interface.

[darcilicious]

If you don't like the new interface, 1.0.4.17248 is one of the last firmware releases with the older interface.

I don't believe that's correct. IIRC the old UI is only available on v0.9.23 that is shipped with the box. As soon as you apply any update, you get the new interface.

A lot of people liked (still like?) v1.0.4.xxxx as the best last stable version when compared to the v1.1 releases. Now that we're up to v1.2, a lot of people are sticking with the last stable version of 1.1

[tronbrain]

I don't believe that's correct. IIRC the old UI is only available on v0.9.23 that is shipped with the box. As soon as you apply any update, you get the new interface.

A lot of people liked (still like?) v1.0.4.xxxx as the best last stable version when compared to the v1.1 releases. Now that we're up to v1.2, a lot of people are sticking with the last stable version of 1.1

When I said "older," I meant before the 1.2 changes to the UI. There were some major UI refinements between 1.0.X and 1.2.X. The 0.9.23 interface is pretty much gone forever, and AFAIAC that's just fine. I like the new interface much better.