Boxee Box

Boxee Box from D-Link is a Linux-based media player set-top-box, and while the company behind the Boxee software might be long dead, the community has finally hacked the Boxee Box to run a port of that is currently being improved on by independent developers, breathing new life into the still very decent hardware.

This wiki page is a collection of links, information, tips, and guides related to running Kodi on that Boxee Box hardware from D-Link. Please note that Team Kodi does not "officially" support on the Boxee Box and does therefor not directly provide any binaries for it. Not yet, at least.

Overview
Boxee Box by D-Link is a Linux based media player powered by Intel Atom CE4100 SoC (System-on-a-Chip), codename: Sodaville, with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500 (based on the PowerVR SGX535 OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU from Imagination Technologies), that is from what is referred to as "Intel CE" or " Intel CEx" series of x86 media processors designed for consumer electronics, which all feature advanced integrated "Intel Precision View Technology" display processors. Boxee Box first became available on the market bck in 2010, and the Boxee Box remote that comes with it is a dual-sided RF remote / QWERTY keyboard that probably inspired the design many of the other dual-sided air-mouse remotes that are available today.

The hardware box features many of the ports and connectors that are available on most Android media players today, namely an HDMI 1.3a port with CEC support, an optical SP/DIF for digital audio out, a stereo RCA analog audio out, RJ-45 GigaBit Ethernet port, and 802.11n Wi-Fi, two USB 2.0 ports, and an SD card slot. And its Intel Atom CE4100 SoC have dedicated integrated circuits for hardware acceleration video and image decoding of JPEG, MPEG-2 (MP@HL/MP@ML profiles), VC1/WM9 (AP@L1-L3 profiles), MPEG-4.2 ASP, and H.264 (MPEG-4.2 AVC HP@L4.1 profiles), with display processor capable of chroma up-sampling scaling, temporal noise reduction, de-interlacing, and output to 1080p@24 fps film format, as well as 1080p@50 and 1080p@60 fps with deep color in RGB/YUV. The integrated 24-bit 192KHz audio DSP (Digital Signal Processor) capable of hardware acceleration of DD/AC3, DD+, Dolby True HD, DTS, DTS-HD, MP3, WMA9, and AAC plus V2. Dedicated Transport Processor as security processor for hardware accelerated decryption of DES, 3DES, AES, MULTI2, and DVB-CSA transport stream descrambling. Most people was however disappointed with the initial firmware of the Boxee Box at launch time, and even if subsequent firmware updates did greatly improved the user experience, many considered the effort of porting to the device early on, but due to non-disclosure agreements with application makers like Netflix the Boxee Box shipped as a closed product and it is not until recently it has been made easy to hack.

Unofficial Builds
Kodi 14 (Helix) builds for Boxee Box: http://www.devil-strike.com/xbmc_boxee/index.php or http://boxeed.in/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=148

Installing
Gaining root access and installing on the Boxee box is today a relatively simple process and should not take longer than 15-30 minutes. All that you will need is a USB memory stick, external USB hard drive or an SD card. A high speed USB memory stick (3.0) is recommended to maximise the USB 2.0 port of the Boxee Box. When choosing what size you will need, keep in mind {{Kodi} addons and fanart will be stored whatever device you choose. If you choose to use a SD card, you may want to use a USB SD card reader as there are reports of heat destroying cards placed in the Boxee Box SD slot. For the remainder of this article a USB stick will be referred as the chosen external device.

Install Boxee+Hacks to gain root access
The first thing you will have to do is to gain root access to the Boxee Box, and to do that you need to install "Boxee+Hacks" which does exactly that. Boxee+Hacks is a mod of the stock operating system that opens up more features and options to you. Information and instructions on how to install Boxee+Hacks are found on their website, http://boxeed.in/ and on the wiki, https://github.com/cigamit/boxeehack/wiki

Once it is complete you will have a device with root access and can then run or install {{Kodi}.

Running {{Kodi} on Boxee Box
There are currently 3 ways to run {{Kodi} on your Boxee.
 * 1) Using external memory like a USB stick - Easiest option to install and uninstall
 * 2) Installing to the Boxee internal memory - Relatively easy to install but hard to uninstall
 * 3) From a network attached storage, NAS, drive via NFS - Hard to install but apparently the quickest to run: http://boxeed.in/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3097#p3097

Note: Be careful with the addons you choose to install. Boxee is not a supported operating system for {{Kodi} so you may run into issues.

Run from external memory
First you will need to download the latest version of {{Kodi} for Boxee; there are two ways to do this. The first is compiling a build yourself {{Kodi} from source using code by following the instructions available on https://github.com/quarnster/boxeebox-xbmc, or much simpler, download the latest pre-compiled version from http://www.devil-strike.com/xbmc_boxee/index.php (get the zip from the 'official' folder).

Once you finished building it or downloading the zip file, extract the files to the root of a USB stick formatted to FAT32. Making sure kodi.bin is in the root folder, insert the storage device in Boxee Box, power on the device, and it should automatically boot into {{Kodi}.

If you want to go back to Boxee original software just remove USB-memory/USB-disk/SD-card and reboot the Boxee Box. Once you remove the storage device, it will just load the "Boxee+Hacks" that you have installed previously, booting the original Boxee Box software.

Support can be found here: http://boxeed.in/forums/viewforum.php?f=13

Install to internal memory
This tutorial will have you wipe your Boxee and hard reset to factory settings. The reason this is recommended is because storage space is a premium on the Boxee Box so we need to make sure you have the maximum space available for the install. This tutorial assumes you have your Boxee connected to the internet.


 * 1) With your Boxee already powered off, hold the power button for at least 5 seconds but no longer than 8 seconds.
 * 2) In the recovery mode select Reset All Settings and after that is complete, select Factory Restore.
 * 3) Your Boxee will then update to the latest official software and ask you to log in to your Boxee account. Do this.
 * 4) Hack your Boxee by installing Boxee+Hacks to gain root access, see above.
 * 5) Format a USB stick to FAT32 and plug it into the Boxee. A high speed USB stick with enough storage to hold your addons and fanart should be used.
 * 6) Download the installer you can run from Windows here: http://192.227.134.64/~xbmc/install_xbmc.exe or use Telnet to your Boxee and run the following code:
 * 7) Follow the instructions of the installer: Select your USB stick to install {{Kodi} addons and data to, choose the latest official {{Kodi} release, leave the features the way they are if you don't know what they do and install.
 * 1) Follow the instructions of the installer: Select your USB stick to install {{Kodi} addons and data to, choose the latest official {{Kodi} release, leave the features the way they are if you don't know what they do and install.

When {{Kodi} runs for the first time, be sure to give it a few minutes to download the essential addons. The CPU will be maxed while it does this so it will feel unresponsive.

Support: http://boxeed.in/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=599

FAQ

 * http://boxeed.in/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=116

Known issues

 * It recommended to do a clean install of {{Kodi} (remove all files) if you have a previous version of {{Kodi} installed.
 * For now is recommended to always remove all files from USB-memory/USB-disk/SD-card when updating to a later version of {{Kodi}.
 * You might need to reboot the Boxee Box to make changes in {{Kodi} settings and configurations take effect.
 * TrueHD and DTS-HD are not working yet (while DD/AC3 and DTS inside TrueHD and DTS-HD respectively works fine).
 * Some users have some sort of audio-drops when enable HDMI or SP/DIF pass-through.
 * When {{Kodi} starts you mght get following error: "Failed to start common cache", this is a knows issue, try rebooting.

Random notes
Feel free to place various notes, tips, and links here. As this section of the wiki gets more organized, those notes will be properly sorted. Consider this like a dumping ground for when you're not sure where to put something.
 * If you like the look and feel of the original Boxee software but you want all the bells and whistles of {{Kodi} then you might also want to tryout a Boxee style skin for {{Kodi} called Boxee Inspirat, checkout it out at http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=124222
 * Myles McNamara have written good instructions on how to install {{Kodi} on Boxee Box D-Link which also include some back-story http://smyl.es/how-to-obtain-root-install-and-run-xbmc-on-d-link-boxee-box/
 * The original Boxee+Hacks repository and website/forums was previously https://github.com/boxeehacks/boxeehack and http://boxeeplus.com

Development
If you want to help develop {{Kodi} for Boxee Box then you can get the source code here on GitHub
 * https://github.com/quarnster/boxeebox-xbmc

Instructions for compiling {{Kodi} for Boxee Box can be found here
 * https://raw.githubusercontent.com/quarnster/boxeebox-xbmc/master/docs/README.boxeebox

Code repository of Boxee+Hacks for rooting access hack and other tools can be found here
 * https://github.com/cigamit/boxeehack (further discussion can be found at http://boxeed.in )

Other links

 * http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=192310 XBMC.org forum thread about Kodi for Boxee Box.
 * http://boxeed.in
 * http://boxeed.in/forums/viewforum.php?f=13