Boxee Box Firmware v1.5.0.23615 released

The Boxee team have just released the v1.5.0.23615 beta firmware as the offical release to the masses. If you have not had a chance to check out the betas of 1.5.0 then you will be in for a far few big changes to the way you use your Boxee Box, below are the release notes for this version:

New Features / Enhancements

– Live TV (Requires a Boxee Live TV dongle)
* View Live TV channels with antenna or QAM via Boxee
* Unique Social Channel Listings with metadata
* See social recommendations in the channel listing based on what your Facebook friends are watching and have watched
* Share shows and currently viewed channels via Boxee and Facebook

– Social Account Pairing with Boxee user on device
* Create a new Boxee account using Facebook connect
* Pair Boxee with Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter on device to view videos from those services in the Friends section, and to easily share content

– Interface
* UI look and feel update
* UI Improvements to:
Main Menu
Home Screen
Browse Screens (Movies, TV Shows) – including new filtering options
Season selection for TV shows
Watch Later including filtering by content source
Indication for which movies and shows have been watched
Action/Info Menu
OSD and OSD settings
Search
Enhanced login flow

– Library and Play action
* Rotten Tomatoes rating integration for movies
* Launch trailers from the Media action screen

– Networking & File Playback
* Support simultaneous digital bitstream + stereo over analog

– Browser
* Added Popup management
* Support for HTML5 Local Storage in Boxee Browser

– Settings
* Toggle the Netflix Button on the remote to “Launch the Netflix application” or “Play /Pause “ from the Settings > General > Advanced options screen.
* Weather – full integration with Accuweather
* Added setting to disable full network scan of SMB sources.

Bug fixes

– Networking & File Playback
* No audio when switching between audio streams and video goes in fast forwarding
* “Loading Error” when browse into uPnP from the file/network menu when wireless
* Fail to mount password protected SMB file sources when the Settings client has same user name but a different password
* Fail to play SMB password protected videos from boxee Application python even when the SMB credentials are in Settings
* Seeking not working on WMV
* Boxee’s continuous scanning turns on Xerox Printers, Prevents Win7 64 from sleeping, keeps NAS from sleeping
* SMB scanning and network discovery should not be running when in playback
* Long delay when exiting a video in the file menu
* Rewinding to the beginning causes the video to rapidly skip to where the video was before the rewinding
* PGS subtitles timing is broken (AVCHD/.m2ts container)
* Some 720p XviD avi plays choppy & stuttering
* Navigation sounds overly loud after playing local video (720p mkv / ac3 audio)
* Mono audio is output only to the left channel

– Apps
* Custom repository is not loaded if there is no trailing line end at the end of the file repository.xml
* AccuWeather app finds my location but cannot download data

– Libraries
* Improve long lists in movies/tv
* Compilation albums not handled correctly, Boxee doesn’t use Album Artist tag

– Browser
* Boxee Box Browser : Popup management
* Support for HTML5 Local Storage in Boxee Browser
* Enhance drop down menu support
* Some HTML5 apps are now loading with browser scrollbars when there should be none
* Fail to load flash based website http://www.dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de

– Interface
* The weather icon just shows as the degree symbol in the dropdown menu and doesn’t display a temperature.
* Last subtitles name remains when going to video OSD > Settings > Subtitles
* Boxee hangs when scrolling through movie library

– Misc.
* Watchlater is not adding any videos to watchlater list
* Broken infolabels – MusicPlayer.Duration and Player.ProgressCache
* Multiple problems with .PushState()

Known issues

– Cannot browse for subtitles – local subtitles int eh same video directory work fine

** NB – The issues with 3TB hard drives, HD Audio dropouts, and Flash have not been addressed in this version.  They require a complete overhaul of our Intel SDK and are planned for the coming months.

You can find more info on the release in the forums here