[DEV Thread] Open Boxee Box

[Luterin]

And all these restrictions aside, you're also making the assumption that the third-party development situation would be different if the Box were open. I don't think it would be. The product just isn't popular or widespread enough that it would get the same kind of attention as ATV to third-party hacking/development.

If the box had been open from start, it would have been the logical upgrade for all the people who still had a xbox running xbmc, but most of those already moved on, so yeah, as it is now it might very well be to late even if they open it up.

[Luterin]

But I know that what you're upset about is "broken promises." I guess I just don't see some casual remark made in an interview as any type of official "promise" or company position.

Did you miss when I quoted one of the mails I got from Avner? I'll requote...

Re running XBMC on the Box. It was indeed our original intention, but this became unrealistic once we were confronted with the security requirements required by the major content owners. To be able to offer the services of Netflix, Vudu and many more in the future we need to provide a secured environment.

Also other links have been provided to other official statements about them wanting it to be open and hacker friendly. It's not just some "casual remark"...

And sorry for the multiple posts, but Twistybox edited his original posts during my replies.

[twistybox]

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Did you miss when I quoted one of the mails I got from Avery?

I don't know who Avery is. Did you mean Avner?

Also other links have been provided

They're all "wishful thinking" type of mentions. No press releases, no official documentation, no advertisements, no contracts, etc.

And sorry for the multiple posts, but Twistybox edited his original posts during my replies.

You can cut and paste and edit your post as well to add more into it. That's what I did with this one.

But...

Developer or not, you don't know anything about the specifics of the Boxee situation. Legal agreements, code base, etc. So to call something "simple" is itself nothing but a simplistic and naive statement.

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes the relationship between all the parties involved. I'm saying this as an outsider, also without knowledge of specific agreements/contracts, etc. However, it's kind of plain to see that we, the participants in this forum, as far as Boxee goes are simply not the customers. We're the product. The customers are Netflix, Vudu and other content providers, plus anyone else Boxee is trying to sign up.

This is not dissimilar to Google, where again we are ultimately the product and its advertisers the customers.

Given this type of business arrangement, it's easy to understand why certain requirements exist and there're really nothing we can do about it by going to Boxee.

Here's an amusing analogy I just thought of.

The Zoo = Boxee Box
Zoo Keepers = Boxee Team/Developers
Animals = Us, the users of Boxee Box
Paying Visitors/Customers = Advertisers and Content providers like Netflix

In both cases, the Zoo keepers need to keep the Zoo locked down to keep the paying visitors safe, in case the animals get rowdy.

Sure, it's possible to create an open Zoo or Safari, but the customers may not be interested in that. There may be other customers for that setup, but they're two different types of properties and ultimately the stakeholders have to decide which one is going to make the business case for them.

[Luterin]

Developer or not, you don't know anything about the specifics of the Boxee situation. Legal agreements, code base, etc. So to call something "simple" is itself nothing but a simplistic and naive statement.

No, that is true. But I do know the technical bit of it, and that it is doable, so it's still the Boxee team to blame if they have not managed to inform their partners how things really work and how this would be possible without making their partnership any less secure.

It's like a big economy company I worked with a long time ago who refused to have a modem hooked up to any computer, because their bosses had read that anyone could hack their way in thru a modem if they had the phone number. Took quite a while to make them understand and accept that it required that there was some software that did the answering, and this was not the case on those machines as they were only supposed to call out to fetch information/updates. Either way, it might be very hard and anoying to explain things, but it is possible.

[Pocalypse]

I've found a bug that lets us view the folder structure of the entire boxee box (and some files). Read only, as far as I can tell, but I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than me can take it further.

I'm on boxee firmware 1.5.0.23615-80d5f5b. This is the last beta before the latest official release, I just haven't updated yet. I suspect this bug exists in other firmwares too.

Basically, I connected a USB mouse and a USB hub with 1 hard drive to the box at the same time. I then went to add local sources, and instead of just showing me my drives, it started me off in the root directory "/".

This way I can add the root directory as a source, and view all the folders in the 'files' section. Unfortunately, it only shows me those files that count as a video/music/photo type.

I did, however, notice that it shows me some ".sh" files in /OPT/BOXEE. Those are script files, right? Nothing seems to happen when I try running them.

I'm hoping someone with more linux knowledge than myself can take this further.

Let me know if you have any questions on how I got here.

[bartsidee]

Could be that the box is actually mounting it root drive if you connect a usb drive + mouse to it, or just a bug in the python detection mechanism.

The problem for an open boxee are:
- secured boot process (can not install custom firmware)
- read only flash (can not install 3th party additions) (except user dir)
- no standard linux kernel
- no root (you can overcome this to restore to 0.9, but it will lack the 1.5 features)

So theoretically if you have rooted the box (which is possible). You should be able to launch something from a usb drive.

So one can install xbmc on the usb drive, but till now I was not able to run it because of some missing libraries. Which is maybe an easy fix but could also prove impossible. Next to that since we only got root on < 1.0 firmwares it leaves you with a box that has an old boxee version which you can not upgrade. (might not be a problem since you then have xbmc )

[jorwex]

Any news on this? I stopped reading all the pages in the beta release threads and now just check this every day

Ps. Bartsidee - glad your website and repo are back

[spacholka]

Bumping an old thread to see if any progress has been made or even if its possible. Loved to hear what I have to do to get xbmc on my boxee as boxee itself is useless to me.

[djfarrell]

... So theoretically if you have rooted the box (which is possible). You should be able to launch something from a usb drive.

I wonder, with root on an old version, if you could launch a new version of the boxee firmware? That could be useful.

[tronbrain]

The Boxee Box has been rooted as of August 2012. Check this thread for details.

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=63248

Some members have been attempting to compile the Boxee software from within the Boxee Box itself, using the released source code. But there are elements of the Intel SDK required that have not been released publicly, that are preventing a successful compile. Details of the progression are on that thread. Though they've come upon a wall, there are a few talented people there and it would be good to consolidate efforts and share wisdom, lest we waste a bunch of time retreading already worn paths. I think everybody who has already been down this path has come upon the same issues...