Boxee Box Firmware Update Now Available, Brings Vudu & Leaves Netflix Promised For "Later This Month"

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Boxee Box users have a little bit of good news coming in this morning — a new firmware update has come available. The update has brought support for Vudu along with numerous enhancements and even some bug fixes. Now lets just hope that Vudu, unlike the last time, does not get pulled.

That said, we are going to remain positive and hope this is an update that will stick around. So yes, Vudu is now available and that means Boxee Box users can rent SD movies for $2 and HD movies for $6. And each movie comes with a two-day rental period. Furthermore, users that are new to Vudu can sign up now and get a $5.99 credit that you can use to try out the movie rentals.

For those wondering, one of the perks with Vudu and their movie rentals comes in with the fact that you do not have the extended wait time. According to the posting on the Boxee Blog, Vudu offers “access to the largest selection of HD movies on-demand, new releases (same day as DVD), thousands of movies available for rental at $2 for 2 nights (in standard definition).

And while it is nice to see that Vudu has finally arrived, that still leaves Netflix and according to the official word coming from the Boxee team;

“We’ve heard from many of you about Netflix as well – we are still on track for a release later this month.  We will post another update next week on the subject.”

Lastly, as to those numerous enhancements and bug fixes. Those include;

Enhancements:

• Settings to control de-interlacing and video filters configuration
• Support for language selection in subtitle/audio
• Forced subtitle automatic selection during MKV file playback
• An option to ignore the prefix in the sort order for movies/albums/artists which start with ‘The’ and ‘A’ (big one!)
• Enhancements to Browser performance
• Browser opens in lower resolution to allow easier reading of text
• Browser is zoomed into Video by default for non auto full screen websites
• Direct launch of website when defining full URL in the search bar
• Preselecting the current chapter when opening chapter selector for MKV/BluRay

Bug Fixes:

• HTTPS support for the browser
• 4:3 Videos Stretched to 16:9
• MKV Chapter Time is Displayed Incorrectly
• Audio dropouts in DTS-HD audio
• Improved WTV support
• 3gp playback errors
• Improve BluRay titles loading time
• Allow larger subtitles time offsets
• Audio re-buffering when entering commercials in TV episodes.
• Viewing “Info Menu” while watching 24hz videos cause temp reversion back 60hz
• With playlist over 999 items, track numbers overlap repeat icon in OSD
• TV Shows no longer show as watched and can’t set to watched/unwatched
• Crash at manual resolve if the user rapidly presses the menu/back button whilst the OS tries to apply details to files in a folder
• When choosing from search suggestion list -> update the search editbox
• Embedded fonts ignored on MKV playback with embedded SSA/ASS subtitles
• SSA/ASS Subtitles position and font
• Overlapping text when network settings changed
• Empty state for App Favorites appearing for empty third-party repository
• Crashing while resolving metadata for movies from UPNP
• Listview mode is not preserved when returning from an artist selection
• In certain cases video freezes when selecting play after pausing
• Playing a video and after several times of pausing and skipping the video freezes and audio continues
• Boxee remembers wrong PGS subtitle track in MKV file after leaving and then resuming playback
• All subtitles (PGS) appears as ‘unknown’ for some BluRay titles
• Crash when attempting to identify media via UPNP
• Some .mkv and .m4v files with 2.35:1 AR are playing back vertically stretched to 1.78:1
• Hang and video freezes or black screen when Pause Resume and or seeking FF/RWD during playback
• Hang on WMV Stream Seeking
• Crashed on shutdown and restarted automatically
• Scrolling in Files Browse list results in partial control of Files menu and also crash
• SMB credentials are not saved on reboot
• When deleting an item from the watch later list the focus location of the last item is not remembered
• Music tracks which are longer than an hour appears as “01:00:…” on the OSD
• Rear channels on AAC 5.1 are not played properly w/ LPCM 5.1 out
• Prompting user for credentials that are not used in accessing shares
• Can’t access network share due to Window Live on Windows 7
• large flash videos stop playback when reaching Boxee file system limit
• Reconnecting to disconnected shares disables selection in the Movies database view
• Subtitles is disabled in the playback OSD for local content
• No video only audio while playing certain m4v files
• Flash video audio drops out for long length online videos
• Disconnects from OSX SMB sources
• Occasional loss of focus on main menu
• Unidentified files in File Source with “Movies” in path name are being identified as a title called ”Movies”
• Crashed on shutdown and restarted automatically
• Scrolling in Files Browse list results in partial control of Files menu and also crash