A Fireside Chat With Boxee’s Avner Ronen On The State Of Boxee And Smart TVs

Matt Burns

Matt is a Senior Editor at TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail side of... → Learn More

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Boxee is one of the rare success stories of a software company making the leap to consumer electronics. The formula is simple: a clear message combined with a solid product. Having smart and passionate people help too. And as shown by this video shot at TechCrunch’s CES booth, Boxee has both.

Boxee’s Avner Ronen, CEO & co-founder, sat down with John Biggs to talk about Boxee’s upcoming releases but also the emergence of smart TVs.

Boxee has a very unique perspective having participated in the smart tv platform before it was called such a thing. Boxee hopes to be there to the end. As Avner explained, the future of TV is not apps. TV is a passive device and the challenge is to get real content to the consumer. That’s where the Boxee Box comes in.

Starting yesterday, January 11th, Boxee is accepting pre-orders for the ATSC USB tuner. Just plug this guy into a Boxee Box and connect an antenna to add OTA stations to the Boxee Box. As Avner says, it’s great for cable cutters. But as a Boxee Box owner myself, the device is perfect to supplement live TV as well.


Company: Boxee
Website: boxee.tv
Launch Date: 2004
Funding: $26.5M

Boxee is a partially open-source freeware media player software platform that integrates personal locally stored media with Internet streaming media along with social networking features. Boxee’s social networking component allows users to share information about what they are watching or listening to with other boxee users or friends on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc. Since it is partially open source, users can create their own apps, plug-ins, and skins for it. The framework for Boxee is based on source...

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