1st impressions of new Oct 20th build

[vulkan]

guys - an update is available. 0.9.3940 - get it from your "update" option.
it should fix studdering hulu videos.

please report back if you got it to work

[wyattearp]

I did some looking into top while I was experiencing the same stuttering issue and found


Processes: 39 total, 3 running, 36 sleeping... 155 threads 04:58:31
Load Avg: 1.36, 1.14, 1.24 CPU usage: 64.9% user, 35.1% sys, 0.0% idle
SharedLibs: num = 138, resident = 10.9M code, 2.01M data, 5.61M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 2666, resident = 75.4M + 3.14M private, 110M shared
PhysMem: 76.0M wired, 114M active, 62.1M inactive, 252M used, 3.24M free
VM: 2.66G + 103M 177121(0) pageins, 28010(0) pageouts
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
278 top 0.2% 0:00.19 1 19 20 428K+ 416K- 900K+ 27.0M+
276 top 0.0% 0:00.79 1 17 19 416K 416K- 892K 26.9M
274 bxflplayer 28.7% 0:27.63 8 202 311 18.3M+ 7.12M- 26.5M+ 242M+
273 boxee-rtor 11.9% 0:15.84 1 15 70 664K 65.5M+ 1.76M- 40.2M
271 screen 0.0% 0:00.01 1 10 16 108K 408K- 224K 26.9M
264 boxeeservi 0.0% 0:00.07 2 56 49 340K 804K- 1.30M 92.5M
260 Boxee 42.0% 0:59.65 25 187 462 26.6M 34.5M- 45.5M 272M

From watching top and the tv at the same time, the stutters seemed to correlate with the Boxee process and not the bxflplayer (which I'm going to recklessly assume is the flash media player). I don't have any developer tools on the ATV so I can't really pull a ptrace on the Boxee app to see where it's spending it's time ... it's just so regular that it makes me think some sort of loop kludged up. I also did a top while the box was just sitting still, and found Boxee running at around 40% most of the time.

Other than that ... works great!

[altonc]

Comments based on version 0.9.3940

First - Love all the new features. Thanks for all the hard work
Second - a apologies of some of these are redundant to previous posts

- stuttering on hulu content is much better, however still stuttering a bit
- ATV volume control (from apple remote) doesn't seem to work on hulu pages. Works elsewhere
- I think it's really, really really important when there's a quality choice to present the higher quality feed (like on most hulu content). It's obvious we're getting the 360p feed now. hulu provides a 480p feed on most content. I would prefer 480p (or highest quality) be the default.
- accessing my hulu queue would be handy
- on all the Internet content (CBS, CNN, hulu) sorting in descending date order should be an option - newest shows first.
- time zone is still incorrect - it's an hour off. Weather is correct city.
- launching into this build is not as smooth as previous builds. I get a big flash of white OSX finder just as Boxee launches

Lastly, for now, I really, really don't like the cliché background (stage image) in this build. I looked for a way to change it back to the green (not my favorite, but better than current) and couldn't find the option. Please allow us to choose.

[vulkan]

thanks altonc for the feedback.
volume: known issue and a current limitation for flash based content. but we'll get it eventually
quality: boxee usually provides the higher quality (480p) version from hulu (where its available). however - for apple-tv the lower bitrate is used (320) due to performance issues. if you'll use boxee on your mac you'll get the 480p content from hulu.

the other issues are sent to the product team.
thanks again for the report!

[agentlame]

... however - for apple-tv the lower bitrate is used (320) due to performance issues.

will this content eventually be a user-configurable option? for lower-end linux systems, and the like.

[michaelm]

Hi there and thanks to all the Team Boxee for this great new update.

I have not not noticed anybody else chiming in about this so I thought I'll give some feedback.

First of all Hulu is very exciting and I can make it work on the mac by masking my IP address but to my knowledge there is no such trick for the ATV so naturally, Hulu does not work for all of us Boxee folk in the UK.

Secondly when I tried to play some CBS videos, the videos appeared to be playing as there was progress on the 'Now Playing' bar but there was no sound or video. Just a black screen. There goes my Macgyver episodes....

Any chance of adding BBC iPlayer in there for us humble UK users? Obviously it will not work for US users but - hey you all got Hulu right? :-)

I love the RSS feed options that you can now add on line. Tested it with some National Geographic links last night and it worked great. A good idea for the future would be a Newsgator - like service for video feeds on your web site where users could use existing templates/lists of feeds to add to their account or provide them with a decent search engine within the web site for adding new feeds based on their interests.

On other points, I personally like the new styling and interface and I really can't wait for the Beta as well as final release.

Thanks again guys

Michael

[thiagopires]

Hi there and thanks to all the Team Boxee for this great new update.

I have not not noticed anybody else chiming in about this so I thought I'll give some feedback.

First of all Hulu is very exciting and I can make it work on the mac by masking my IP address but to my knowledge there is no such trick for the ATV so naturally, Hulu does not work for all of us Boxee folk in the UK.

Secondly when I tried to play some CBS videos, the videos appeared to be playing as there was progress on the 'Now Playing' bar but there was no sound or video. Just a black screen. There goes my Macgyver episodes....

Any chance of adding BBC iPlayer in there for us humble UK users? Obviously it will not work for US users but - hey you all got Hulu right? :-)

I love the RSS feed options that you can now add on line. Tested it with some National Geographic links last night and it worked great. A good idea for the future would be a Newsgator - like service for video feeds on your web site where users could use existing templates/lists of feeds to add to their account or provide them with a decent search engine within the web site for adding new feeds based on their interests.

On other points, I personally like the new styling and interface and I really can't wait for the Beta as well as final release.

Thanks again guys

Michael

On the same subject, I'm worse than our british friend Michael, I'm in south america and pretty much every decent video streaming service are not available here. So, I know this is a long shot since apparently most user live in the US, but any chance we'll see a proxy setting in the future, to help us fellas down here?

[agentlame]

proxy info: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php...ght=hulu+proxy
iplayer info: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=289

hope this helps, guys.

[vulkan]

@agentlame - yes i guess eventually it will be user configurable and various other configurations we had in mind. lets keep something for the next release

@michaelm - i think there is a plugin available for iPlayer. maybe a quick search on the xbmc forum can bring something up. anyway - we'll also have a look at iPlayer. no promisess though....

@thiagopires - i know there are several commercial VPNs available that you can use to get an "american ip". i can't really recommend a specific one and i am not sure about the legality of such a solution...

@all - welcome to boxee and i hope you'll enjoy your stay

-vulkan

[raed_n]

First of all thanks for the invite....

as this is the first time i use boxee, i found the gui quite nice. the sidebar idea is great.

I'm not in the US so no hulu for me, but i tried around the other RSS feeds, podcasts and what others have watched and it seems to work great. The only limitation is my internet connection.

The background IS ugly. I'm new and all, but please have the option of changing the background.

I have not tried loading local sources, but will soon. so no opinion there.

I only faced two problems, 1) error 6 (once) and 2) when i would pause streaming content, it didn't work. the media kept on playing.

Otherwise, thanks to whoever is developing Boxee, to those who gave me an invite, and to those who keep posting their experience that make our experience alot easier. Congrats..

Will keep playing around for a while now...