Google TV is a mess. Apple TV is a joke. Using a Roku is about as exciting as cleaning my gutters. I like the Boxee Box, but my wife doesn’t understand why; she doesn’t get it and that says something. Downloading torrents or NZBs is time consuming and only a small portion of the population actually has the know-how and hardware to do it. Sorry. Cord cutting is a lost cause.
Listen, I’m all for canceling Comcast and joining the ranks of the cord cutters. I hate Comcast so much. If Comcast had a large, fluffy mascot, I would punch it in the face. That’s saying something if you know me. But the fact remains that there is simply no way to replicate Comcast’s or any other cable provider’s service right now. If you want to watch TV, you have to pay for it — but you can still complain along the way.
Cable is damn expensive and so through various media streamers, game systems, and services, I’ve tried just about everything to replace it, but nothing gives you the same experience and service as *shock* cable — or satellite — TV. → Read More
Tomorrow, the first shipments of the $199 Boxee Box go out to people who pre-ordered them. I got a preview demo today at Boxee HQ from CEO Avner Ronen. Check out the video. → Read More
Tomorrow, the first shipments of the $199 Boxee Box go out to people who pre-ordered them. I got a preview demo today at Boxee HQ from CEO Avner Ronen. The video above shows what it looks like on a big-screen TV.
The Boxee Box is a small set-top device that connects your TV to the Internet and displays Web video. It is similar to the Boxee service you can download onto your computer, except with a new user-interface designed for the the TV. There are many ways to browse video on Boxee—by channel, genre, or what your friends are watching. You can search for shows, and it fetches them wherever they may be on the Web (if available and not blocked, which is a big if these days). It supports HD video in 1080p, and plays all video from HTML5 sites. → Read More
TV is coming to the Web and there is nothing that can stop it. Just ask Avner Ronen, the CEO of Web TV startup Boxee. Later tonight, he will announce the general availability of his Boxee Box, a small device you hook up to your TV and the Internet so you can watch video from the Web on your TV. The videos come not only from YouTube, but also from ABC.com, NBC.com, CBS.com, Comedy Central, and many other video sites on the Web. I visited Ronen today at his New York City offices where he gave me a demo of the Boxee Box (more on that in a later post), but we also got into a very interesting discussion about how the major TV networks and media companies are reacting to seeing their Web videos increasingly turning up on large-screen TVs.
As he describes in the video below, Ronen argues that the media companies should be more consistent: either charge for videos on the Web or make it free, or go for the freemium model and offer premium video watching experiences on devices like Boxee and the iPad or an additional fee. He reveals that Boxee is working on a payments platform to support such subscription business models on the Boxee service. Furthermore, Hulu Plus will become available on Boxee as a paid option. Yup, the same Hulu that previously blocked Boxee → Read More
In a post this weekend, I wrote about how the cable tv industry was finally stepping towards the cliff. And we’d learn more today when Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, reported earnings. Well, the numbers are out, and it’s not a surprise.
275,000 Comcast subscribers cut the cord last quarter. Its subscriber count is down 3.5% from the same quarter last year. To be fair, some of that loss was offset by a gain in 219,000 digital cable subs. Revenue was up as customers bought higher priced bundles of tv, internet and phone service.
During the earnings call, Comcast blamed the drop on the lousy economy. Always a handy excuse. Sure, many people are struggling right now, and it makes sense that the high cost of cable is an expense they can no longer afford. Comcast said, based on exit interviews, only a ‘small number‘ seemed to cut the cord for over-the-air signals, and they are not planning to switch to internet tv alternatives. But …. → Read More
The title of this post is both a very old idea and a very new one. With the prevalence of fiber connectivity and pervasive broadband speeds, this year has been a hot one for bringing together the home computer and the living room TV. While companies like Apple and Google battle over share of TV viewers, they have left open and promoted the web for content distributors to control their own experience through HTML (and, especially, HTML5).
To that end, it looks like Apple has one-upped Google by opting to privately pre-arrange distribution deals with traditional studio networks beginning with ABC and FOX, while Google has no deals in place at all, hoping the networks will just “allow” consumers to watch Web videos on their TVs. But Google TV is getting a slap in the face from several networks who pulled the plug, right on the big release day. Just as reviews were rolling out in favor of Google’s new living room effort, ABC, CBS and NBC are exiting stage left.
As for the rest of the world, you can’t stop us. Developers of Web video distribution platforms forge ahead. Apple is offering to lure them in with partnerships, Google is giving them the opportunity to figure it out for free. Neither Apple nor Google, nor anyone else is waiting any longer. The time is now. You can feel it. The rest of the video world marches on, bringing the internet and the TV closer together. → Read More
Among companies I loathe, Comcast is right up there. Alongside Expedia and AT&T, they share the common thread of having typically poor service, and even worse customer service. But I’m a forgiving guy. I’m willing to give Comcast a second chance. Well, for 6 months at least.
I’ve been a Comcast customer a few different times at various points of my life. Each time I’ve had an awful experience. My favorite was two years ago when I was continually getting billed for services I didn’t have (nor had I ever had, actually). Each month I was told it was resolved, and each month it was right back on my bill. It took me bitching up a storm on Twitter to get it actually resolved by the higher-ups at the company. And I know my situation wasn’t unique — and sadly, many people have an even bigger nightmare resolving things. → Read More
Boxee, the social network-y media center for Windows, Mac, and Linux, has a fancy new App that may interest you, particularly if you’re a sports fan. It allows you to watch live games of the United Football League right from within the Boxee software. → Read More
The other players are scrambling to set themselves in opposition to the new Apple TV: earlier this week, Roku dropped their prices preemptively; Amazon is touting 99-cent shows; now, Boxee is pricing their long-awaited Boxee Box. It’s $199, and they defend the price in a blog post, saying that people really do want the extra features it offers. I’d tend to agree, but in the end it’s the consumers who will decide it. → Read More
The Boxee Box is now one step closer to your livingroom seeing as the FCC recently put the remote through its testing process. There’s not a whole lot of new info to be found. It still sports the oh-so-helpful QWERTY keypad on one side and simple navigational controls on the other. The FCC boys did find it necessary to tear it apart, reveling the single circuit control board. Hopefully this means Boxee will meet its November launch window. I for one wouldn’t mind seeing a sinking box wrapped under my Christmas tree. [FCC via Engadget] → Read More
Some Boxee news for you, as we all sit back and watch the Barcelona-Milan friendly. (Good to see Ronaldinho get such a nice reaction from the Camp Nou crowd. I haven’t seen him this happy in years!) The company has decided to add a Movie component to its much celebrated TV-watching interface. The gist is, just as you can watch TV programming with Boxee, you’ll be able to watch movies. Boxee has initially teamed up with EZTakes, Indie Movies Online, MUBI, and Openfilm. → Read More
The future is almost here for Boxee. A few months ago the company announced plans to bring premium for-pay content to the platform. This goal is now one step closer thanks to an agreement with Vindicia who will handle the payment transactions.
The goal is to provide a one-click payment scheme using Vincdicia robust CashBox system as a back-end. The powerful solution currently handles currency exchanges, VAT, and GST automatically, and allows users to pay via credit cards, gift cards, or PayPal. Other sites such as Blizzard’s online gaming store, DeviantArt, Symantec already use the payment system. → Read More
The news is a bit aged but Boxee Beta is now on the Apple TV which means folks who updated to the latest ATV firmware can now get their media fix on. How do you get it? Hop over here, make a nice little patchstick, and rock out.
Boxee has full instructions right here and here’s our quick how-to. → Read More
Finding quality video content on the web is hard. There’s too much porn, or too many lolcats derivatives, and not enough crazy music videos involving LEGOs. Following John’s Posterous is one good way to find serendipitous content you might enjoy, but there’s only one John, and he does occasionally sleep. If only someone would make an app to crowdsource my web viewing, so that only the best of the best floats up to my screen. Oh, look! Redux does exactly that. And today they’re announcing their new Boxee app, to bring all that great content to your television, so you can passively enjoy all that the web has to offer without all that tedious typing and clicking! → Read More
Both Boxee and Windows Media Center are amazing and among the most popular media playback programs. However, they don’t really work together as they are both more platforms than anything else. You have to close out of one program to start the other and that’s not an easy task if you’re controlling your HTPC with just a remote from your couch. Enter Boxee Windows 7 Media Center Integration 1.0 plug-in. → Read More
If I may, I’d like to play devil’s advocate to something I wrote a few days ago. To quickly summarize, Boxee took issue with NBCU’s Jeff Zucker’s characterization that Boxee was some sort of rogue piece of software, and that Hulu is in the right whenever it blocks access to the XBMC-derived media player. How about this: maybe Hulu is right to block Boxee? Let’s see where this takes us. → Read More
The world’s worst manager, Jeff Zucker, who just so happens to be the president of NBC Universal, was on Capitol Hill today trying to persuade lawmakers to allow the proposed merger with Comcast go through. Interesting to note his take on Boxee’s relationship with Hulu, which, you’ll recall, has been something of a mess. Boxee adds Hulu compatibility, Hulu breaks said compatability, Boxee re-works its code so that Hulu works again, Hulu breaks compatability again, etc. And on and on and on. → Read More
Boxee has just announced their new Payment Platform, a system to offer pay-per-view and subscription content to paying customers. Boxee expects to take a small percentage of the payment – under 30% – for the service. This would in turn enable services like PayTV and a la carte media downloads, an important part of Boxee’s monetization plan. With the launch of the Boxee Box and the appearance of the new Beta version. → Read More
As far as XBMC forks go, Boxee certainly appears to have the most heat. It has VC money pouring in, flashy deals with content providers, and you’ll soon be able to buy a dedicated D-Link box to more easily use it on your TV. But Boxee isn’t the only XBMC-based media center that’s worth your time. It’s not even the first XBMC fork to go out and make a name for itself. Plex, which is exclusive to Mac OS X, was Boxee before Boxee was cool. I recently talked to the lead developer, Elan Feingold, to get a better understand of what Plex is, what it does, and where it’s going. Needless to say, if you’re running Mac OS X, you ought to give it a shot. It’s good. → Read More
Boxee fans, today’s your lucky day: the service has just released its Beta to the general public. You can download the new version of the streaming video hub here.
The new version is really a complete overhaul of the app — it’s received a new, sexier UI that makes it easier to browse through the service’s content (and anything you might have saved locally too). Niceties include the ability to filter a show by season and episode and easier sharing using Boxee’s social features. There’s a lot that’s changed in the background too, including a switch from OpenGL to DirectX and support for hardware-accelerated video decoding for Windows users. → Read More
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