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Media Television The Almighty Buck Entertainment Hardware

Boxee Scores $16.5M Investment 77

Posted by CmdrTaco from the take-the-money-and-run dept.
DeviceGuru writes "Boxee, maker of the free Boxee multimedia-player software platform for PCs and Macs, and the smarts behind D-Link's recently introduced Boxee Box, has just received $16.5 million more funding. Following several significant firmware updates and the addition of new apps for Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and other content sources, all pushed automatically out to users' devices, the $199 D-Link Boxee Box is finally stating to feel more like a finished product than a beta-test device. What's next for Boxee? The D-Link device will soon be joined by two more Boxee-powered devices: a Boxee NAS device from Iomega and a ViewSonic TV running Boxee, and one of the main uses of the company's new funding will be to 'sign up more device and distribution partners,' says Boxee CEO Avner Ronen."
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Boxee Scores $16.5M Investment More

Boxee Scores $16.5M Investment

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  • Now they can buy even more Slashvertisments!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      yea seriously, I figured the link to the $199 Boxee would have at least taken me to the Boxee website.
      fuck the DeviceGuru blog ass-hat. http://www.boxee.tv/buy [boxee.tv]

  • I don't see an RF out, Video out, or S-video connector?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      You get a new TV with an HDMI port.

    • Re:How the heck do I attach to my TV? (Score:4, Funny)

      by eric_brissette ( 778634 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @02:09PM (#35349958)

      Yeah, it sure is awful trying to hook up blu-ray players, video game consoles, and these new-fangled internet devices to my 1982 Zenith television.

      Luckily, Amazon still sells those 75-to-300 ohm adapters with the forks on the end that you have to screw down.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by commodore6502 ( 1981532 )

        >>>Yeah, it sure is awful trying to hook up blu-ray players, video game consoles, and these new-fangled internet devices to my [2008] Zenith television.

        Fixed that for you.
        It is ridiculous that engineers think anything three years old is too old to support. On the other hand: Maybe it's marketers desiring to obsolete perfectly working TVs, in order to sell more shit.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          HDMI first appeared in products around 2003. Five years later Zenith wanted to sell and you wanted to buy a device that didn't have the connector that was clearly the future proof choice -- not smart but probably you got a good deal.

          Now, the rest of the world can now wait until you decide upgrade, or we can move on and let you handle this with a converter box. Guess which one makes sense?

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Jeng ( 926980 )

            The one that makes sense is that there are options out there.

            There is competition, and some of that competition has the connectors he needs. That means that basically Boxee has excluded everyone without HDMI from their customer base, while Boxee's competitors have not.

            Which do you think is the better option? To limit yourself to a single output method and limit your customer base, or give options and open up your customer base?

            It's not like TV's only have one input type.

            • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

              by jjohnson ( 62583 )

              To limit yourself to a single output method and limit your customer base

              ... that is growing, while not wasting dollars on investing in the shrinking "legacy connector" customer base.

              The more time passes, the more your connectors will be irrelevant, and the less money Boxee will have wasted on trying to capture your smaller and smaller slice of the market.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Seriously, you bought an analog TV in 2008? One year before the total analog shutoff (2009?)

          And you blame others for not supporting you?

          • >>>you bought an analog TV in 2008? One year before the total analog shutoff (2009)

            Analog TVs with only RF, Video, or s-video inputs can show digital television just fine.
            Duh.

            >>>HDMI first appeared in products around 2003.....- not smart but probably you got a good deal.

            In 2003 Firewire was the future. It had even been chosen by the US-FCC to be the "standard" connector on cable boxes and televisions, and legally-mandated that CATV companies provide that output to customers. Look how tha

        • >On the other hand: Maybe it's marketers desiring to obsolete perfectly working TVs, in order to sell more shit.
          And so the big machine keeps going....making all its consumers consume!

  • I'm sick of boxee constantly advertising that it has a hulu app. There is no official hulu app for boxee. You have hit or miss hacks that may let you watch hulu. It's not like netflix.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Rob Spectre of Boxee said during his SCALE 9x presentation [socallinuxexpo.org] last weekend, that regular Hulu is not available because Hulu only licenses Hulu-Plus for embedded devices like Boxee and internet enabled TV's. Hulu-Plus is available for Boxee (subscription required).

      • Well if it is it's only available for the boxee box. I downloaded boxee and hulu was not available there on my mac mini. I have done a few hundred google searches and not found any proof that hulu plus is even available on the boxee box, but only "coming soon". It is also not on their list of apps and I can not find any confirmation of hulu plus on their website or forums.

        I'd be happy with hulu plus honestly, it works fine on my ps3 and I need something for upstairs. Currently I'm using a mac mini with xbmc

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by unrtst ( 777550 )

      Mod parent up. It's as close to false advertising as it gets. There isn't even a planned release date for Hulu yet, and that word isn't even present on their blog.

      Their claims that netflix would be ready be end of year failed too, as did their Feb 1 date.

      I understand that things slip and that the netflix support was not completely in their control, but their product page and their blog is within their control. A little forthright honesty isn't too much to ask for. Their boxee box product page has had netfli

  • Only good in the USA... (Score:5, Informative)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @01:58PM (#35349860)
    My buddy bought his wife a Boxee Box as a present last Christmas. On Boxing Day they returned it. Why? Here in Canada, most of the content is unavailable due to region blocking. They should stop selling the thing here in America's hat if you can't use it to its fullest potential.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by squidflakes ( 905524 )

      Careful mate, returning a Boxee Box on Boxing Day is one step away from creating a linguistic tesseract.

    • There are ways to get it working, using vpn, proxies, dns tricks... I don't want to say the exact solution that I used because it was easy and inexpensive enough that anyone can do it. This isn't exactly a good thing as stuff that easy tends to get blocked too. Lets just say if you want to watch US VIDEOs there is an ORGanization that can help you with that. But, please just be a sucker and pay for the crappy Canadian version of Netflix, that is the only way they will make enough money to license all the co

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by MaXMC ( 138127 )

        At least Canada has a Canadian version of Netflix..

        Nothing except for youtube works in the BoxeeBox that is sold in Sweden...

        • Yeah, and they wonder why there is a piracy problem.
          "Can I watch this show? Here is $8 US"
          "No, the binary data would become unlicensed and therefore Illegal if it crossed an imaginary line while being transferred over the Internet."
          I'd understand if they wanted to charge less money in countries with worthless currency, but I really don't get why these idiot network executives shun the global market and then cancel all the cool sci-fi shows I like because "nobody wants to watch them".

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I hope they know many times that amount of needs to be returned some day.
  • all hail to our queen
  • As a Boxee Box owner from almost day 1 of its release, I would say they finally made it out of the alpha stage and into the beta. While I love it, it is still riddled with bugs and poor design choices. Plus, as a non US resident (like the other 90% of the planet), Hulu (which btw, doesn't exist on Boxee), Netflix and Vudu mean nothing to me. I originally bought the Boxee Box because I believed it would be more open (ie. the firmware being open to hacking), as opposed to the other options where they are base

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kent_eh ( 543303 )

      I originally bought the Boxee Box because I believed it would be more open

      So does anyone have experience with the other players in this market?
      WDTV Live, Asus O Play, Patriot Box Office, popcorn Hour, something else?
      Openness, hackability, connectability, ease of use for low-tech family members, plays well with NAS and Ubuntu, formats/codecs supported, playback quality, heat, fan noise???

  • Following several significant firmware updates and the addition of new apps for Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and other content sources, all pushed automatically out to users' devices, the $199 D-Link Boxee Box is finally stating to feel more like a finished product than a beta-test device. What's next for Boxee?

    Well, given their company, I think that Boxee's next move will be to apologise and tell me that their services are no longer available in my country.

  • My Review. (Score:3)

    by NoPantsJim ( 1149003 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @02:49PM (#35350358) Homepage
    I actually held back. [amazon.com]

    Anyone on SlashDot is twice as intelligent as necessary to setup an XBMC install that would blow Boxee out of the water. I bought three Boxee Boxes and sent all three back, don't regret it for a second.

    • I actually held back. [amazon.com] Anyone on SlashDot is twice as intelligent as necessary to setup an XBMC install that would blow Boxee out of the water. I bought three Boxee Boxes and sent all three back, don't regret it for a second.

      I am just not interested in the work to get XBMC working. When I have tried to get XBMC software installed nothing ever works as easily as Boxee. For example, title scraping, box art, etc I couldn't get to work in XBMC. Boxee, it instantly all worked, categorized my content, got the IMDB information, everything. XBMC the design is lacking if you just want everything to work right after install. Also, I found the XBMC interface just not clear or as intuitive to figure out.

      • Ok, serious question here; has the intelligence level of Slashdot dropped sharply since last I came around?

        You're right though, the Boxee tagging system is completely foolproof [imgur.com].

        • Ok, serious question here; has the intelligence level of Slashdot dropped sharply since last I came around? You're right though, the Boxee tagging system is completely foolproof [imgur.com].

          I installed both XBMC and Boxee on the same exact HTPC. Boxee (as early as the Alpha version) worked within 1 minute after going to settings and pointing it at my data folder the software started scraping. As for your example, I had that happen to me once with a video. Not a big deal compared to the thousands of other videos Boxee properly identified. BTW your error in Boxee scrapping was not in the suggested format of title.year so perhaps that was the problem with the identification or it wasn't the late

          • If you're genuinely interested in improving XBMC (by pointing out why it didn't work for you) please go to the XBMC forums and let them know of ideas to make it better. "It didn't work" is useless both ways as you quite rightly point out. It's not going to get any better unless you give folk reasons to improve it! XBMC is 100% open. Boxee is not - both the hardware and (parts of) the software are closed. Which is an incredible shame, given it's origins. Just imagine what the XBMC guys could do with ev

    • Can XBMC index a TV show that is available for streaming online, by episode, with episode summaries? Is there a repository of information on available TV shows?

      I'm not being facetious, I really want to know. Last time I tried XBMC I couldn't figure out how to show metadata for my ripped movies and shows, and I definitely couldn't figure out how to stream flash videos. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, since I was running it on an Atom pc with a GMA945 integrated video, which sucked.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        Can XBMC index a TV show that is available for streaming online, by episode, with episode summaries? Is there a repository of information on available TV shows?

        I don't know about the streaming part (prefer to download and watch), but Sick Beard [sickbeard.com] will manage metadata for TV shows in an XBMC-compatible way.

  • When pricing for playing video on a PC or device like this is different I am never going to remove the Computer from my living room. Why pay more to see the same thing on another box?

  • Shape (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @03:13PM (#35350612)
    From one of TFA:

    The unusually shaped box measures 4.7-inches on a side ... It was designed by Astro Studios, which counts among its past accomplishments Microsoft’s stylish Xbox 360+.

    Ya, thanks for making it un-stackable - horiz or vert. (sigh)

  • a little do it yourself and you don't have to watch commercials on shows you record among other niceties.
    • They're not comparable. MythTV is a PVR, whereas Boxee is primarily a streaming client/movie file organizer. Myth is more comparable to another XBMC fork, MediaPortal, which aims to add PVR functionality to the XBMC core.
  • First, good for them (Boxee), and I wish them success in their niche. That being said.....

    I've been using the Dell Zino with Win 7 Media Center for several months now (since Sept 10) with wireless keyboard with trackball. The Zino is an extremely small box (8 in x 8 in) with a HDMI connector, so it plugs right into the TV. As far as I know, it does everything the Boxee does, plus more because its a regular Windows computer. Vudu, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Slashcontrol, etc all have regular web interfa
  • For a minute, I thought Boxxy became a millionaire. That could have been a real news for nerds.
  • Ronen's inclusion of 'social' stuff in his software feels creepy. It's bad enough Netflix knows what I watch; I don't want Avner (and his customers) looking over my shoulder as well.

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