Hacking the Boxee Box (Violates GPL)

would love to this boxee box running custom content.....its been rooted in the past and being rooted again isn't going to magically generate interest.....i agree that it can be hacked and should have been by now i just don't think enough ppl have them...

Everybody go bump bump bump.

Aside from the (sometimes) lacking ability to shut down via remote, I have had no real issues with my Boxee Boxes (I have two).
I'm running the most current (non-beta) firmware, and use them to stream netflix as well as various media on my NAS. Although I'd love for this to be fully opened up, I see no real issues with the current performance. Don't get me wrong - I am all for unlocking and going fully custom, but these devices are working for me just fine.

I started off with XBMC (almost a decade ago) when I soldered my Xecuter 2.3b lite chip into my original xbox.
After that, I went a little crazy and equipped each room of my house with one (some chipped, some softmodded). But then HD took over, and the processors just couldn't hang... So I retired my clan of Microsoft hardware and picked up my first Boxee Box. It was fully functional right out of the box, and yes it has had its share of issues, but they seemed to always get worked out. I quickly started to prefer the Boxee layout to XBMC and still feel that way. Not to mention the RF/QWERTY remote (although back-lighting would have been nice). - Rii Mini works just fine for that.

Enough of the history rambling... I'd support this - especially since Boxee has turned its back from the Box, and moved on to a lesser device. I have no intention on picking up a BoxeeTV - the IR remote is the FIRST (of many) issues I have with it.

Just a heads up, there is already some movement on this front with Boxee+.
forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=64648
boxeeplus.com

actually they are not violating the gpl

you can customize the "look" of boxee box - but cannot remake the firmware since it's signed....

if anyone is reading this - i believe the best method of approach is to access it's boot console (i believe it uses redboot) - method i have tried is direct ethernet connection and the boxee box is at 192.168.0.1 port 9000 - usually you access the console by hitting ctrl+c - i haven't tried ctrl+a though (i found ctrl+a within an iso file - for minicom) - the ctrl+alt+del seems to "freeze" or pause the boxee box.... and no i cannot check at the moment... lol

there is a 2-second window only for the redboot however, i can't find it

good luck

oh, and curious as this is:

from buildinfo:
build by root@bamboo-agent-13-ota on Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:36:33 +0000
boxee 1.5.1.23735
ce_plumb dd2cb6584bd70454ebc4451d414f1ed77bb42b2f

and preflight.sh:
#!/bin/sh

# this is preflight.

# dump kernel
logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "dd'ing kernel"
dd conv=sync if=/dev/spectra of=/tmp/kernel.img bs=256k skip=20 count=12

# hash it
logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "hashing kernel"
kmdfive=$(md5sum /tmp/kernel.img | cut -f 1 -d " ")
logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "kernel md5 hash is $kmdfive"

# if version 1 kernel, copy kernel.1 to kernel.img
# if version 2 kernel (hatung), copy kernel.2 to kernel.img
# else unknown kernel, use dumped version and note hash in mr. wong for support pickup
case $kmdfive in
"9f2ed11d55a3750019d019470212bf36") cp /tmp/upgrade_iso/kernel.1 /tmp/kernel.img;;
"a81c639b7c21d98fdde0b55d4e5356c1") logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "doing nothing, this IS kernel.1";;
"d2ed7f9be38c0e0590a5680febd27502") cp /tmp/upgrade_iso/kernel.2 /tmp/kernel.img;;
"68777d9a8fede193ed434cf9a9cd3495") logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "doing nothing, this IS kernel.2";;
*) echo $kmdfive >/data/.persistent/.mrwong/boxee.khash;;
esac
logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "sync'ing"
sync;sync;sync
logger -t bxrec.preflight -s -p 0 "and we're outta here"
return


anyway... without accessing the box itself before it loads it's internal normal.img (ext2) and dlink_boxee_runtime.img (squashfs) - you are sol

the boxeeplus community is at least "hacking" - so does this mean boxee company is finally getting hacker interest?

My 2 pennies....

Boxee won't open source the box supposedly due to concerns from content providers. 1st off they are closed-sourcing a product which is based off of the hard work of the open sourced XBMC community. What really kind of sucks is that people who invested in the box are pretty much being left out in the cold. I invested in the box because I thought Boxee had the potential to be at the forefront of innovation for media boxes (which in some regards it was). Boxee needs to take a page from Google's playbook. Open source the box and benefit. Or, stagnate innovation and die....its your move Boxee. The set-top media box market will only continue to get more and more crowded. Why not have an army of innovators who will make your current and future products better.

Vision77 said:

Boxee won't open source the box supposedly due to concerns from content providers. 1st off they are closed-sourcing a product which is based off of the hard work of the open sourced XBMC community. What really kind of sucks is that people who invested in the box are pretty much being left out in the cold. I invested in the box because I thought Boxee had the potential to be at the forefront of innovation for media boxes (which in some regards it was). Boxee needs to take a page from Google's playbook. Open source the box and benefit. Or, stagnate innovation and die....its your move Boxee. The set-top media box market will only continue to get more and more crowded. Why not have an army of innovators who will make your current and future products better.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I absolutely agree with you. Desperate situation.

Coming from a fellow boxee user, it would be awesome to get this opened up. I'm tired of the audio drop outs. If it were hacked that issue could be eliminated and being able to really stretch boxee's legs to show the real power, would be awesome.

demoncamber said:

Coming from a fellow boxee user, it would be awesome to get this opened up. I'm tired of the audio drop outs. If it were hacked that issue could be eliminated and being able to really stretch boxee's legs to show the real power, would be awesome.

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Click to collapse

I never once have had audio drop outs. But have heard that a lot. Strange.

Use hdmi with lossless codes enabled and play back some dtsma or truehd content.

For me, it happens with .mkv's all the time.

You can already install a custom firmware to it, Boxee+

https://www.facebook.com/boxeeplus

http://boxeeplus.com

Dude!!! Never heard of this!!! Thanks I'm going to check it out right now!!!

Sent from my MyTouch 4G

mortenaa said:

You can already install a custom firmware to it, Boxee+

https://www.facebook.com/boxeeplus

http://boxeeplus.com

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Click to collapse

Thanks - checking this out now. Would still love to have an open system with a variety of choices. My Boxee box has basically been a dust collector since I got it. It sounded great and had fantastic potential, but like so many of these devices, support was not as it should have been and now its been dropped :crying:

EDIT: Ok, had a look at the Boxee+ Hacks. It's good for what it is however it's not really what I was looking for. It's not really a custom firmware, it's more of a boot-time patch that adds a bit of functionality.

Android

the main problem with the boxee and with boxee+ installed, it´s still slow, realy slow, if we could install Plex on it, the box could take care of the plkayback nothin else, and it would most probobly be faster?
Android or, plex straight into it would be lovley! the hardware is decent ant if i dont remember completly wrong there is stuff out there that uses the sama cpu running android, am i wrong?
xbmc is fine, but there is one problem with xbmc, watched content, if i start watching a movie in my livingroom i want to be able to continue in the kitchen and also know what i have seen and not seen.

Unfortunately boxee going to remain just as it is.

Its approaching its end of life as it would have if it had gotten continued support.
Boxee plus adds much needs features but other some minor tweaks it does nothing to fix the the core issues in the firmware.

Would have been great if it was open but for once boxee was probably being honest (go figure) that they were forced to not breach thier contracts with the likes of netflicks.
The added money from sales of box's still out there don't hurt either.

linusthaman said:

xbmc is fine, but there is one problem with xbmc, watched content, if i start watching a movie in my livingroom i want to be able to continue in the kitchen and also know what i have seen and not seen.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

You can do it with XBMC, you have to setup a MySQL server to host data between clients. It looks like a pain though. I do agree with you though, having a full Plex client on my Boxee Box would be awesome.

i dont know how useful any of this info will be but, boxee uses Intel Atom CE4110 processor. maybe one day, some version of android could be put on it?
i dont know much about it, but didnt intel release an intel atom x86 version of android? http://software.intel.com/en-us/art...ly-bean-installation-instructions-recommended


or, what about google tv? the boxee apparently uses many of the same system components as the logtiech review. logitech revue uses/used google tv. and seems as though there was an update for google tv for the revue recently http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Revue-and-Accessories/New-Revue-Update-Currently-Going-Out/td-p/906482
so maybe somehow, that could get showehorned into boxee. i know, a lot harder than i make it seem, but just putting the indo out there




here are the system specs from ifixit:

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Boxee+Box+Teardown/4109/2#s19326

(also mentioned on an earlier page)

Nordic Semiconductor NRF24LU1P (same as logitech revue)
Mini PCI-E wireless card: Broadcom BCM4319XKUBG

some other hardware info http://www.boxeeboxwiki.org/hardware

here is a link stating it has similar hardware as logitech review http://gtvhacker.com/index.php/Boxee and mentions some stuff about rooting.