1.5 Issues with Region, Streaming, Controls and Mouse, Scanning, Crashing

[Oo0Bailey0oO]

I'm having a number of issues with the latest 1.5.0.23596 version (and the late December version too). I've searched the forums for a couple of weeks and I see a few similar complaints, but not much and no solutions. So far I've performed a clean install as per the instructions, logged in and added back my local sources.

1 - Scanning of media after clean install... it's been days and it's barely found anything. Release previous to 1.5 had no problems identifying these files and I've verified the naming conventions are still fine.

2 - I can't find the region setting anywhere. I'm in Toronto and I like having the ability to change locations.
Before 1.5, I had all sources showing and I just had to log into the VPN before starting Boxee up. If I had the setting for sources in your geographical location set, setting the VPN and logging in to Boxee would provide that region's listing of shows.
Now, even if I set that I'm in Chicago and flip on a VPN to Chicago, it still only shows Canadian content and half of what used to be listed in the previous release. I have to go to the network website to watch them now.

3 - The few shows that do show up under Watch Later > Shows, either point to a different episode than listed and/or come up in the browser scrolled down and not fullscreen. This would be ok if you could use the mouse to fix the screen or press the media controls, but the mouse will only use half the screen before hitting what I'm assuming is the application's resolution vs the native resolution of the Mac. Another reason I have to use a proper web browser to a network's site.

4 - Crashing on display of unidentified files. I have a previous post about this that went unnoticed but I'm throwing it in here again in case it's related to the other issues

I'm not seeing much action in this forum anymore and I'm wondering if people have moved on or back to something else, or if they're not having these issues with 1.5.

I have to say, I took the 1.5 release blog post into consideration and was seriously looking at buying a Boxee Box after test driving this version, but I'm not sure what to do now. I know this is a beta for the box but it's really unusable. I don't really want to invest in a product and end up suffering problems like this for long. Hopefully, there are some easy solutions or these are known 1.5 issues that are going to be resolved.

Does anyone have any suggestions for the issues above or know of alternative media programs that include streaming and local content management?

Thanks!

[Oo0Bailey0oO]

So I've found a reason for #2. Apparently, the region setting was dropped in a previous Boxee Box version, and now the latest PC version.

http://forums.boxee.tv/showpost.php?...44&postcount=2

Supposedly, activating the VPN and waiting for the shows to populate should work, but didn't for me. Perhaps I have to wait longer than 10 minutes or perhaps Boxee is now actively blocking and dropping access via the more popular VPN exit servers.

This post suggests so, but more specific to Netflix and Vudu.

[Oo0Bailey0oO]

I've done another clean install and file identification (#1) seems to be working better now, although it still crashes on display of unidentified files (#4). I'll have to do a binary search to locate problem files I guess.

As for #3 Watch Later > Shows, I guess those mislabelled episodes were flukes because it hasn't been as much of an issue since.

Also, I finally discovered how to correct the display of non-full screen shows in the boxee browser. Two things:

- Put Boxee in windowed mode and stretch it out to full screen of your desktop (consider hiding your dock for this, unhide after if you want), then flip back to Boxee full screen. This allows the mouse to use the entire screen again
- You can scroll up and down if you hold the up and down keys for awhile. It takes around 3 seconds to start moving, the movement is really subtle until the keyboard repeat rate kicks in, then it flies. Useful enough to get to the video controls though.