Smart Home Blog

Boxee team officially confirmed LiveTV feature. It’ll be available in January 2012 for US and Canada users Boxee Box only. PC version of Boxee won’t have such possibility. Also there is a clear explanation that PVR (Personal Video Recorder) functionality won’t be available. It’ll be truly Live TV without recording or pausing.

The main goal of LiveTV on Boxee Box is to replace many devices by only one and to bring a competitor of existing cable boxes and services. Boxee promises a good range of channels with reasonable price. And it’ll be really cool advantage to existing Boxee features – playback various media types from different sources and integration with online media and social services. Also Boxee Box LiveTV looks much better then any GoogleTV box.

As I already mentioned, the LiveTV will be available in January 2012. But LiveTV USB stick can be pre-ordered even now.

Boxee finalized the periodicity of firmware updates for Boxee Box and other Boxee-based devices. It’ll be released every three months. So, next update should be available in May. It’ll include following improvements – faster loading and scrolling, favorites and history in browser, improved ffwd/rwd controls, new look for on-screen-display, possibility to sort by source, .nfo support, new languages and support for iPad.

Also Boxee promised fix a log of bugs in the upcoming update, such as generating of duplicate button presses in case of using USB IR receiver, impossibility to invoke HTTPS URLs from search bar, wrongly displaying of special characters etc.

Boxee team made a good present for all Netflix and Boxee fans on the Valentine’s Day. Netflix finally arrived to the Boxee Box! It’ll be available after firmware update (1.0.4.17443) manually or automatically. The Netflix Boxee App gives access to the huge collection of movies and TV shows in SD and HD quality. But unfortunately for US and Canada. The rest world is still waiting for Netflix expansion or some similar service. In any case, if you live in US or Canada and have Boxee Box and Netflix subscription just update it and enjoy!

A big fan of Boxee Box Janko Roettgers from Cord Cutters shared his three tips and tricks for Boxee Box users – bookmarklets, Delicious bookmarks and sharing of Boxee Box content over network. To add any web video to Watch Later queue on your Boxee Box in one click from any browser just follow by this simple instruction. After adding the video you may watch it on your Boxee Box.

The tip with using Delicious bookmarks via Boxee RSS Feeds will help a lot till Boxee team will add bookmarks to the embeded browser.

Good news for Boxee Boxes owners and VUDU subscribers. With the latest firmware update you’ll have access to the VUDU content from your Boxee Boxes. Moreover, Boxee supports 1080p HD video at 24 fps and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround thanks to VUDU TruFilm technology which optimizes the encoding, transmission and display of HDX movies.

Unfortunately VUDU is available for the US only. But you still should upgrade your Boxee Box. Because except VUDU the latest firmware brings a lot of other changes and bugfxies, i. e. forcing of subtitle automatic selection during MKV file playback, support for language selection in subtitle/audio or settings to control de-interlacing and video filters configuration. To run upgrade procedure just go to Settings>System>Update and wait till the system download and install it.