D-Link Boxee Box is a Linux based media player powered by Intel Atom CE4100 processor that became available in 2010, and features a dual sided RF remote / QWERTY keyboard that probably inspired many of the air mouse that are available today.
The box features many of the ports and connectors that are available on most Android STB today, namely an HDMI port, an optical S/PDIF) out, a stereo analog audio out, Ethernet and 802.11n Wi-Fi, two USB ports, and an SD card slot. Many people however got disappointed with the firmware at launch time, and even if subsequent firmware updates have improved the user experience, some people have considered it was worth the effort to port XBMC to the device.
Myles McNamara wrote the instructions to install XBMC on D-Link Boxee Box. I’ll summarize the steps below, and it appears to be relatively easy.
- Installing Boxee+Hacks to gain root access
The first thing you’ll have to do is to gain root access by following these steps:- Download install.zip (Boxee+Hacks) from http://boxeed.in/
- Format a USB flash drive or SD card to FAT32 using the label BOXEE (case sensitive)
- Copy the files from the zip files to the USB drive or SD card.
- Plug it into the device, and boot Boxee Box
- Go into ‘Settings’->’Network’->’Servers’ to enable ‘Windows File Sharing’
- Add ‘;sh /media/BOXEE/install.sh‘ to your ‘Host Name’. Make sure it looks like ‘boxeebox;sh /media/BOXEE/install.sh‘ after you’re done.
- Reboot the device to start the install process.
- Once it’s complete, you’ll have a device with root access.
- Installing XBMC on Boxee Box
There are two ways to install XBMC on D-Link media player: building XBMC from source using code and instructions available on https://github.com/quarnster/boxeebox-xbmc, or much simpler, download the latest version from devil-strike.com which as of today is xbmc13.alpha12.boxeebox2014.01.18.early_alpha2_92146e8.zip. You’ll notice this is an alpha version, and this XBMC port to Boxee Box is new, so although the system will run, you can’t expect everything to magically work out of the box.Once you’ve downloaded the zip file, extract the files to the root of a storage device (USB flash drive or SD card) making sure xbmc.bin is in the root folder, insert the storage device in Boxee Box, power the device, and it should automatically boot into XBMC. If you remove the storage device, it will just boot Boxee+Hacks you’ve installed previously.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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all i read was how boxee let xbmc down. not once not twice but three times i think they let every one down too many times. and you look at xbmc on other devices and it works soo good on android i use it on my mk908 V5.0 and everything works 100%
@adem
Yes, that’s what I’ve read too. But this version of XBMC is not by D-Link, but some individual developers.
Now you would probably not want to buy a Boxee Box right now, but if you already have one it may be good to try the version above.
yeehh i did not think of that your right. i know i would of jumped on it straight away
To clarify; XBMC for D-Link Boxee Box is a source port of the XBMC with ‘only’ the code changes needed to get it running on Intel CE4100 hardware written done by independent third-parties instead of from xbmc.org’s Team-XBMC developers themselves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_port
So you can see it as a software fork of the original XBMC, as they are still using the original source code, and have only added code, not removed anything, to get the media player core working with hardware acceleration on Intel CE4100 and such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_fork
If and when the independent third-party developers working on XBMC for D-Link Boxee Box port submit the code changes as patches upstream to the official XBMC project at xbmc.org then it could be possible that xbmc.org’s Team-XBMC developers merge that code into XBMC mainline master too, and those independent third-party developers might even join Team-XBMC themselves.
That is anyway usually how large FOSS (free and open source software) projects work.
Has anyone tried the xbmc on boxee yet. I wonder how responsive it is with xbmc. All info I found so far is how to install only and befor I buy one I was wondering how it handles xbmc. Cheers
hi i tried for hours trying to get hack installed in my boxee box with no luck not sure whats going on
i am desperate can anyone help
I still use my boxee box every day, i have boxee hacks installed, i run hard drives and usb drives all the time with no issues, i also have the XMBC hack for boxee box running and it works great so far other than I’m having trouble sharing through smb. It’s a nice feature to have with the original boxee.
I too still use my Boxee. It’s the only device that can play ISO files properly! Will definitely try installing XBMC.