EF BB BF represents UTF-8 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark
Don’t know if this EF BB BF clue thing is a clue at all.

Okey, i just got PM on YouTube from Timacious. He said that we don’t have all parts to open The Box. We need to wait a little more, that’s what he said.

If you LOWER the contrast on the HQ “Whats in the box? test film” page (gained by pressing the upper “section” of the box on http://www.whatsinthebox.nl” you can see “Its just a non-commercial test!” below the “DISCLAIMER” sign.

Also, the second “anti” image (the “exposed” one) appears to be the overlay that was on the box when the protagonist in the WITB film pointed The Box at the gigantic portal above the three towers of babel. If we overlay it there, and then overlay the first “anti” image (circle-arrow to circle-arrow, which lines up!) something may become apparent. IDK.

As far as the ef bb bf thing, look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark

Hey… Was pretty interested in the whole concept of WITB myself, I discovered some stuff as well (amongst those mainly digging and grabbing all code), like the full list of question-response pairs on the WITB site:

operation2347 = [THIS REDIRECTS YOU TO “http://babel-research.eu/witb/UE/”]
please = who are you, Dennis Nedry?
tenacious d = simply the greatest band on earth
babel = why are you giving me the directions, if you are the one who needs them
thebox = what’s in it
whatsinthebox = soon the world will find out
babelresearch = babel re-search
saga = noevilsagasliveon
hanso = 4 8 15 16 23 42
4 8 15 16 23 42 = SYSTEM FAILURE ((((a movie reference? I think so, but I forgot where it was…))))
pandora = Copay Pales
date = 06-08-2018
help = high contrast
[ANYTHING ELSE] = uh uh uh, you didn’t say the magic word

I also send timacious an email (english unfortunately) but no response… I guess he gets a lot of those.

SUGGESTION: Does anybody know any more advanced methods of steganography? And if so, try to decode as many pictures as possible using those? Just look on wikipedia Steganography for a reference how well can a message/image/file be hidden in a picture.

[@rhadEE] Although it scared the living shit out of me when it happened, this is true i also got it. At the end of Tims mythbuster video on his website, just when they confirm the myth, Tim’s partner takes a step towards him and the video ‘shorts’; a loud buzzing is heard as well as red text on the video saying:
“CAVIStream Synth: System Exception – Access Violation at 0×27df7b1, writing to 0×0”
This plays for about the last 10-20 seconds or so of the video. I’m sorry if this has been busted already, but i guess it’s worth a look.

This is a little far fetched but I am still posting it any way I am referring back to both my previous comments. I think that a SAGA is some sort of alien and the box is it’s device this would explain how babel has to search for it and no evil sagas probably means there are good and bad sagas. Or maybe the box is the saga alien/aliens or it contains an evil saga. I think this explains a few things but I say again this is rather far fetched.
Also I am pretty sure this has nothing to do with half life!!!!!!

to Olav

I aint seeing the symbol in Chrome or ie8
also the numbers wont wont on this site in de following combo
http://babel-research.eu/239/187/191.html
then same site but with these numbers instead
239/191/197
187/191/239
187/239/191
191/187/239
191/239/187

@Aurel300

4 8 15 16 23 42 is a reference to Lost. So is Hanso. Man, Lost ended some months ago and people already forgot these numbers… Shameful.

to mark

Well, it was my fail. There is symbol like this in EVERY youtube comment, so I gave you a false track, sry.

SYSTEM FAILURE, another thing from LOST series…

I am just announcing that timsmit uploaded a video on his YT – just a trailer for a next daybroke music video.
I couldn’t see any clues hidden there.
But the effects are epic and I think that the full version will have something in it.

hey look this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWGUHcpIuVI

is a new video but i didn’t find anything about WITB.
maybe you can.

( i know my english is so bad but i studing yet)

From the last video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWGUHcpIuVI) from Timacious -thank you Santiago didn’t notice the video before : ) – At this moment i’ve just seen two websites: http://mustsee.nl/miface.asp & http://www.daybroke.com/ both are dutch. Someone that can help us? (google translate isn’t enought for me : /). Other details:
-The numbers on the knob(while covered by fingers) of the guitar that are visible: 1257 and 0 or 10
-The square that is flippin on the street appears to be the same on the video of the girl who nose bleeds.
Note: the knob and some other things appears on http://www.timsmit.info/

I think i saw Babel at 00:13 in the video
“Daybroke – Sabotage Teaser”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWGUHcpIuVI
if it was babel, im the first to get the WITB connection :D

Ok i don’t know if this has been said yet, but i can’t find anything referencing it yet, so here it goes.

There are multiple items in the film and the babel research website that are Half-Life 2 related. For those who don’t know what Half-Life 2 is, it’s a very mysterious in story video game that, much like the first half-life, puts you into the shoes of a scientist, named Gordan Freeman, who worked in an underground facility named Black Mesa (1st TIE-IN: The Black Mesa logo is placed on the bottom of the main page of the Babel-Research website). Black Mesa’s main project was being worked on by you, Gordan Freeman, to accomplish various different outcomes, but something bad happens and before you have a chance to stop the project entirely, the project goes haywire and causes a rift, or portal, to a world of aliens/monsters to be unleashed into our world.

Sorry about the way i’m wording all of this, im not the best summarizer :-P

*SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT BEATEN HALF-LIFE 1* At the end the first game, after you defeat the source of what was controlling the monsters/aliens *Or so you think…..* you finally get introduced THE MAN, who looks like your average “large firm” business worker, who you see through out the game, that tells you all the events you have just went through were a test to see if his advisors were really interested in giving you a job to work for them. By you, the gamer, deciding to play the 2nd game, you decide to take the offer and work for THE MAN and his business partners.

Now this is where more of the references come into play.

In beginning of the 2nd game you get an ire wake-up pep talk by THE MAN and get “placed” into an area not like Black Mesa. You have no idea what the time period is, but know that it has be a good amount of time after the first game because the weapons you see in the game and the technology is nothing in comparison to what you saw in the first game. The place that you are in is called City 17 and it’s where the game takes place the whole time (2nd TIE-IN: Everything from the abandon cars, to the urban/dutch looking houses and apartments you see in the the Test Film, look like City 17). As you continue on to observe the city, you see how the society is mistreated by the authority in the game, called The Combine, and that the population diminishes drastically every day. The Combine, at first, look like your average humans in a authoritative outfits, but then you start to see the rest of the Combine and you get to see these giant tripod looking warmachines that are very organic and alien looking in many ways, and the flying machines are the same way. It’s quite interesting. Every noise you hear the Combine make in the game, soldiers and organic machines, are heard the “Test Film” (3rd TIE-IN: The noises you hear from the men in white, the flying vehicle, the gun shots, and most of the loud speaker phrases spoken in the film are all from Half-Life 2).

The last two references i noticed were the tower with the storm above it and the logo at the bottom of home page of Babel-Research website, known as Aperture Science. The tower resembles alot of the main structure in the middle of City 17 that houses all of the combines projects and warmachines. In Episode 1 of Half-Life 2, you see this tower in a fragile state as a rift appears over the top causing a storm, if you will, tearing apart various key components of the foundation that could cause a catastrophic event to happen (4th TIE-IN: The event we were about see at the end of the film right before it ended resembles a lot of the same idea). And finally the Logo. The logo is from 2 games actually, but are related in some ways. Towards the end of Episode 2 of Half-Life 2, you figure out that there was a competing company with Black Mesa, known as Aperture Science, that had a science vessel/Ship that got lost in a undisclosed Arctic location that had unimaginable technology the company Aperture Science created. The logo is also from a game called Portal. The whole game you are a test subject in Aperture Science Main Facility. At one point you can see that Aperture and Black Mesa were competing with each other. Portal was made also by Valve who made the Half-Life games (5th TIE-IN: The logo can be found on the bottom of the main page of the Babel-Research website).

Sorry for the long read, but I felt giving a little knowledge with the references I found would be helpful. So, that being said, my question to anyone who can shed some insight in this is, “Were the similarities between the film, it’s websites and the Half-Life games unintentional? and if they were intentional, Was the point of the film supposed to be a bridge between Half-life 1 and 2?” Just something to ponder…

PS: The film is awesome! :-D Hopefully it can become a full feature film.

@jordan – tl;dr ;)

@jordan:
You made it a little bit clearer, but answer to your question is I would say NO. Why? This film is not by Valve (nor is somehow supported by them) – the only way this would be a bridge would be a fanmade bridge. Also – as you said, if it were a bridge, it would have to include many years… Finally, WITB (or at least the test film) is already inside the City 17, therefore AFTER HL1… This catastrophe coming in WITB might look similar to the one in HL, but I think it is a different one, somehow related to the box and/or controlled by it.

I suppose Jordan was going to say “Was the point of the film supposed to be a bridge between Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2 Episode One?” If so – then I think that similarities were intentional and film IS supposed to be a bridge. BUT IT’S NOT HL.

Obviously, people recognize many of the film’s references to the Half Life saga. It’s plain as day and right in everyone’s face, but what i want to know is to what in Half Life is the film referring to?
My theory is it has to be the beginning of the initial portal storms, invasion of earth by The Combine, and the resulting Seven Hour War.
information on the Seven Hour War can be found here http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Seven_Hour_War
This war is only mentioned in passing during the Half Life saga, but it is the turning point of the human race in the Half Life universe.
As is mentioned in the article on CombineOverWiki, after Gordon Freeman (the main protagonist) defeats Nihilanth, leader of the Xen aliens, he is put in stasis by the G Man. The G Man claims that if he hadn’t done this “all the effort in the world would have gone to waste”, hinting that his emplyers wanted Gordon to be saved from the destruction that was about to happen.
The Seven Hour was, in short, a brief conflict where The Combine defeated the forces of Earth in only 7 hours.
This war resulted in the enslavement of mankind, the creation of the suppression field(a field making all humans on earth sterile) and Earth’s assimilation in the Combine Empire.
The footage in the original video “What Is In The Box?” shows what looks like a portal storm above the three towers. A portal storm is an event that creates multitudes of portals to other dimensions. These portals cause havoc wherever they hit.
The Combine may have learned about Earth through Portal Storms, and used these storms to invade Earth.
My advice : look up the portal storm scene from Half Life 2: Episode 2, and watch it carefully. Then, watch the “Last Footage” video and see how the two waves of energy are extremely similar in form.
This, among with the huge number of references to Half Life, leads me to believe that this is the story of what happened after the Black Mesa incident, and the beginning of the Seven Hour War.

Hm…
Still – WITB is going to be a full-feature movie sponsored (or whatever) by Hollywood something… It is nice as an inspiration and a setup place, but not the real story – such a giant movie would never be good with copyrights and stuff from Valve.

@Rustedcage

And once again to one more human I tell that the box has nothing to do with half-life, look for proofs yourself.

hey if you click the part of the circle which will show you the the 9 minute film
watch it
and wait a few second another movie will be shown
it shows the beginning of the apocalypse

I was just sitting here and thinking, staring at numbers and figures on this site. Suddenly, i realized a thing, it might be tiny and random, but here it is nonetheless.

“129″, “222″, and “315″
129 + 93 = 222
222 + 93 = 315

And as a sitenote

39 + 93 = 129

39 + 93 = 132 no 129

idiot

Oh dear, i made a typo. I find it hard to see how your message ever made it this far, but that attitude of yours is not really very teamwork inspiring. I bring something i personally found interesting to the table, and i made a typy, and now im an idiot. I dont know if you have contributed with anything so far, but would you please not insult the rest of us while we try to have some fun solving this? Critizism and corrections are okay, but there’s no need to start being insulting towards others for making a silly mistake.. Thats pretty much just childish.

This message is directed towards Santiago, who apparently feels like the way to solve a riddle is to insult someone for trying.

New daybroke music video on his YT channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIiZeZb2nk
the boxblip clip appears on one of the TV’s at 1:18. haven’t seen anything else yet

I’ve watched at the movie closely, and the hazard sign from 2:31 reads this:

RESTRICTED
UEC Missile Site
Under direct authority of [crossed out]
General commision

==

Also, do the windmills have an (altered?) Babel logo on them? Best seen on 2:15;12.

==

There are some other unmentioned ‘easter eggs?’ / references, but I haven’t looked at them yet.

I’m starting to wonder..

Maybe this whole thing is just a sort of wicked promotion project for Darybroke? I mean, they certainly have gained quite some popularity from all of this, and all the clues seems to always lead us back towards them..

Maybe its not half life or lost related, just.. a new album coming out?

okey okey sorryyyy it was a mistake, but i said that as a joke but perhaps you didn’t took very well, i said again, sorry

and the number 132 never appears, i said “THAT” for this.

why is important the number 132 if you write this wrong?

sorry my inglish :$

the car’s license plate is write in the normal form, beginns on left side. But the sing for Netherlands (NL) is right. in europe the national id is left too

later you can see that the cola-truck rides on the wrong side because in netherland you must drive on right side.

The car has an alternated license plate at 1:14, but later at 1:20, you see an unaltered license plate of another car, 53-DR-JG.

When you lookup this license plate in the dutch license database, it states that there is no license with that combination known (check yourself at https://ovi.rdw.nl/default.aspx )

When the Mitsubishi Canter truck drives through the wall, you see a mirrored code on the left side: “LV-52”

The Cola truck at 2:26 also says “Babel Products”

The first hit on google on the query “the d” is the Tenacious D website:

http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22the+d%22

That would confirm the relevance of the Tenacious D t-shirt..

The license plate “The D” stands for “The Defender”, as stated in Tim Smit’s submission for Mythbusters in 2007. So, a good chance it is unrelated to WITB.

The licence plate (and Tim) can be seen in his video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sIB2kL-BWc

The license plate is visible at 2:41. Tim points at it, and the subtitles state “and the other end to The Defender”. He also says it (in Dutch).

In this video there’s also a link to “Tenacious D” present, see the illustration at 1:47 in the bottomright corner.

I’m guessing Tim just has a thing for The D, and it’s unrelated to the whole WITB story…

I decompiled the SWF, looking what else could be entered into the text box and what result, everything here is mentioned, there is no password to anywhere else than the UEC site, i guess we’ll have to wait

@Marcus
Did that already on 357.

On Sabotage video we ca also see The Pick of Destiny in 0:10-0:13.
53-DR-JG is written on cars license plate in 1:19.
59-WTP-7 is trucks license plate in 1:28.
Same truck destroys the wall and there is reversed LV-52 writtenleft from it.
in 1:56 sing says “keuze uit wel 60 soolten”, which means “choice of as many as 60 species”(Google tranlslator).
Sorry for my bad English, I’m from Poland and I’m fourteen, I’m still learning…

i found this picture of Tim Smit on google from flickr it was uploaded by kalitchoutwo and i discover something strange

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55347656@N04/5131651265/

look closely in tim’s t shirt (hight contrast and the luminosity and ajust it ) there are letters and numbers i think it say machoerosagape it would be macho- eros-agape or maybe saga somthing . plus there is the box symbol and the ? and look closly below the box 31-12 i think maybe it a date or something . fu** this chi* maybe some noobs works

Well I was looking up on it and I found this:

http://whatsinthebox.nl/pro.swf
Its the box, with a question mark, related to the magazine’s from a college in their area.
http://leoserver.science.ru.nl/natuurwetenschappen

http://leoserver.science.ru.nl/images/bodes/bode3web.pdf
http://leoserver.science.ru.nl/images/bodes/bode4web.pdf

This was discovered in the photo: http://araag.free.fr//yourteube/site_whatsinthebox.nl6.png

which comes out to mean: ” The Pick of Destiny”

Also, this image was found too: http://whatsinthebox.nl/anti.gif

I don’t know if this will be a clue,but if you go to http://whatsinthebox.nl/pro.swf you’ll see that when you put the mouse on the box, there appears a lot of question simbols down, hiding some text).
So, if read the second line you’ll read something like:
Write TIM THIBAUT NIELS music ted by SEN RETERS dir of photogra TIMSMIT production design THI NIELS IT.
Maybe (Write TIM THIBAUT NIELS) tell us something?

When box is red on pro.swf there is a letters on it. i only see “NOW I’M COMP…” and “Tenancius D”. i thing there is a clue but somone must read all on this box.
http://img831.imageshack.us/i/46128592.jpg/
http://img228.imageshack.us/i/46128592.jpg/

I found another three things in sabotage video:
1) At 1:04 on pipe is the box with red ring.
2) At 1:19 on other TV screen is Hey Girl video
3) At 2:15 on the fallen wind-tower is babel research logo.
Sorry for my bad english

there are pics from the sabotage video:

the box


hey girl video


babel research logo

@kowal1221PL

The text on the box that you can read on the /pro.swf page are the lyrics of a song called BEELZEBOSS (THE FINAL SHOWDOWN) from TENACIOUS D. I read it on another forum (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27633&start=15). ;)

Shit man, I hope we’ll find out what to do now very, very soon!:O

In pro.sfw there is something written in these changing letters and numbers at the bottom. I could read “Fast”, “read”, “Saga”, but others were too fast.
I also read all the letters at the bottom that were “crossed out” by question marks:
O TIO nts ST WHAT IS IN THE BOX ers TI crea TE O rector phy BAUT MSM S TH IMS MEU S dito IM ce t ec MIT UT dit RTE LE R UR OOST d AR.
I don’t know if it does help, but…

My roommates and I have been just WITBing all night. I think this is the 3rd hour? Anyway, I drew from my notpr0n experience and checked the page source for the last_footage and testfilm page. Clicked on footage.html (about two thirds down the window). At the bottom of the page it brought me to, there is a highlighted comment reading:

Any help? :)

Also!
We tried to use a=b b=c as a codex for the jumbled sentences. Didn’t make it much better…. at all…

Ucnwvg vq vjg etgy cv wphkevkqp. Yg ycvej gxgta uver