Bye-bye Boxee: how a startup failed to conquer the living room

http://gigaom.com/2013/07/04/boxee-acquired-cloud-dvr-shutting-down-post-mortem/

by antr • 13 years ago

58 52 13 years ago

gesman• 13 years ago

I used boxee mostly for it's unparalleled ability to play all kinds of downloaded [did i just say that?] movie formats from external sources and 10% for it's WiFi + ability to render all kinds of movie resolutions on all kinds of TV screens correctly.

It's design though was clunky and awkward and I never was going to pay for any subscriptions and BS along these lines.

I still think that it's future could [or may] be in improving, enhancing and "universalling" it's hardware to add more capabilities.

No one needs yet-another-stupid-platform used to monetize it's owners and de-monetize your pocket.

Everyone needs simple, working and supported solutions.

trotsky• 13 years ago

Boxee's main problem is they built a platform for pirates, sold it at break-even and expected to make their money selling said pirates $5 VOD movies from walmart.

MatthewPhillips• 13 years ago

They built a platform for pirates, tried to pivot to be a legit business, was met with resistance from companies they had previously been empowering pirates against, and so tried to pivot again to something no one, pirate or non-pirate, really wanted (cloud dvr).

laumars• 13 years ago

I was drawn to Boxee over XBMC because of the legitimate media sources it worked well with (YouTube, BBC iPlayer, etc). Granted I could do the same with XBMC (in fact I do do the same with XBMC), but Boxee just worked nicer out of the box.

Plus most of the local storage stuff I had was CD and vinyl rips.

Boxee organised it's content by metatags, so I'd imagine it would be slightly annoying for pirates (which, more often than not, are labelled wrong) than other similar solutions which place a higher precedence on organisation via directory hierarchy (Boxee could do this too - but it was much more awkward to get to than in XBMC et al)

rrrrtttt• 13 years ago

The same can be said about the iPod.

clarky07• 13 years ago

Except for the sold at break even part.

josteink3• 13 years ago

As a Boxee Box owner, I think they had a chance, a niche of their own and they blew it.

When I bought the Boxee Box, it was because I had sampled the software for free on a regular PC first. Yes, you could actually download the software, see that it met your needs, and then buy it, prepacked as a dedicated device, an appliance.

It was genius marketing and it had me throwing out my old setup instantly. Everything just worked. The remote was unmatched. Simple on one side. Qwerty on the other side, for apps, searches, etc.

The box itself played all kinds of file-formats & sources without a hitch. It extracted, identified and unified meta-data much better than any other software I have seen, and auto-combined it into a huge database, all without having performance degraded, like much software does when the library goes big.

Everything was great. They even shipped updates, and with a simple checkbox, you could join the beta-channel to get early releases.

And you did get releases often enough to feel that you were using a living product. It was great.

But then, suddenly they seemed to shift focus. You could no longer download and sample the software. You had to buy the box, unsampled. Then they shifted focus away from the one thing it did great (play your media, from your storage and network devices) to the one everyone fails at: Creating a "unified livingroom media experience".

Big surprise: They failed at it.

They wanted me to sign up for an account, have it integrate with everything social, pull all my friends embarassing youtube likes and linked facebook content, in my face, everytime I turned the device on.

And then they stopped updating the apps and app-repos. That Youtube app which was kinda shit, but sorta worked? Yeah, no longer working after Youtube introduced couch-mode. And they're not fixing it either.

There also seems to be some performance problems arising. But nobody has been pushing any updates to fix that. So you need to reboot the device every now and then.

They went from being what everyone wished XBMC could be, to something completely without focus. They took and sacrificed the one thing they did well trying to be "everything to everyone".

They took something which worked well and let it rot, super-busy failing at something else.

I hope Samsung buying these guys means they will be going back to doing what they used to do well. Because I need a new media-box soon and I still haven't found anything which looks like a worthwhile replacement for my old Boxee box.

_pmf_• 13 years ago

to the one everyone fails at: Creating a "unified livingroom media experience"

Indeed. What I wouldn't give to have simple media playback from USB storage instead of "unified livingroom media experience" on consoles ...

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

The Xbox 360 media player will play stuff of USB storage.

thejosh• 13 years ago

I used Boxee a while back when it was on the original AppleTV's, then before that way before the whole Boxee Box thing begun.

It was very buggy, SMB shares always very slow no matter which computer the boxee client ran on.

Now adays I run everything through Plex and couldn't be happier, it runs on Samsung TVs as well which is a bonus, as well as a lot of other devices (and computers).

antocv4• 13 years ago

If you have a SmartTV you already have a simple media playback from any of your devices, and from usb storage its dumb easy just stick it in the tv... if you want the output to your smartphone then setup a dlna/upnp server somewhere and stick the usb storage into that.

Run a minidlna server there, and thats about it, now the TV can browse and play all the things Ive pointed minidlna too, and I can control the TV using upnp apps on my phone, its a nice touchy interface with UPnPlay that can also render the content on the phone if Id like.

A raspberry pi can run xbmc if you dont have a place/smallish-server where to run minidlna, and xbmc has a upnp-server, so you can mount your content over ftp/samba/http/upnp/nfs, or just plug your NAS into the raspberry.

Different networks? No problem, bridge them or use VPN and set a route for multicast.

EDIT: If anyone is interested I can write a blogpost about it as it wasnt long ago I tinkered with these setups. Especially IP multicasting was hairy.

jcastro• 13 years ago

I was a Boxee Box early adopter and got it as soon as it came out. I think what crippled it is that what you got with the Box wasn't anything like Boxee was before, it was an entirely new Beta UI, and then right around the same time they killed the standalone version. So in one fell swoop I went from an awesome media center to the buggy Boxee Box.

Unfortunately the thing just barely worked. They patched over the next few months and eventually it became okayish but at that point it was just too much of a hassle and I returned it. It never met the user experience of the downloaded version + a standalone computer; which is weird because I bought the box to skip the hassles of a normal PC, updates, noise, OS issues, etc.

The remote is brilliant though, I bought a standalone version of the remote that I still use today.

I mostly use Roku's now, and while the older ones were sluggish the new Roku 3 has a nice fast UI that lets me watch what I want. It's nice to have a system level search that looks for content on both Netflix and Amazon at the same time.

But the Boxee had this awesome feature where it put the content first, the TV show was the top level item. So you would find the show you want, and then it would present you the sources. On the Roku I have to remember if the show I was watching was on Netflix or Amazon. I can't imagine content providers would be happy with this though, it basically backshelves their brand.

For local content Plex with a Roku is a pretty nice setup.

engtech4• 13 years ago

"There also seems to be some performance problems arising. But nobody has been pushing any updates to fix that. So you need to reboot the device every now and then."

I've been having the same problem. I've configured it to stop scanning my Windows PC network shared and that seems to have fixed the "endlessly rebooting every 30 seconds" problem I was having... but I'm still having a problem where if I leave it on for over a day then it will lock up or lose internet connectivity.

My other big gripe is that when I use the menu to shutdown it just locks up the box instead of shutting down.

I've be consider giving the hacked boxeeplus firmware a try, but I haven't bothered because I know it's not supported either.

zavulon• 13 years ago

I still use Boxee software I downloaded in 2010 on my living room HTPC I built myself. It's ability to organize show and play all downloaded content is unparalleled still. And I love controlling it all with a remote as an app in my iPhone.

I would gladly pay $10/month to use the software, but I would never buy that stupid box with all it's limitations. Yet Boxee did everything to alienate users like me to try to sell those boxes. They discontinued the software, updated the iPhone app to NOT work with the software without the box, etc. Those things generated an outcry from all software users, but Boxee ignored it, because if these are not paying users, then who cares? And no one still bought those boxes anyway.

Lesson is: listen to your most passionate users. You will find a way to turn them into paying users, it's much better strategy than to ignore them and try to co quer new unknown markets.

simcop2387• 13 years ago

Have a look at XBMC, boxee was originally (I don't know how much it ended up that way in the end) on it. I believe there's also remote apps for XBMC like that too. If that's not to your liking, Plex (also based on XBMC) has a number of UI changes/improvements to help keep things organized.

YeahKIA• 13 years ago

When it comes to filling up the gap, I am surprised that Xbox was not mentioned particularly given how much Microsoft has tried to portray it as a complete living room entertainment package as opposed to just a gaming console.

inthewind3• 13 years ago

What sort of power would the XboxOne hum along at? I figure it would be a power drain. I once considered getting a Wii to turn into a media centre as it is meant to sip rather than burn juice.

Electricity in the UK costs so much, that even leaving appliances on standby soon adds up, we worked out that turning the things off at the wall saves us £1.50 a week, and we don't even have many appliances.

HeyLaughingBoy• 13 years ago

It could be if you didn't have to pay for XBox live to connect to the net. However, if you're not a (social) gamer, XBox live offers no benefit over a straight internet connection and costs $60/year.

As soon as my year is up, I'm moving back to a PC for streaming Netflix, and if I'm doing that, the PC might as well play all my local media as well so the XBox is going to be a games-only platform.

ComputerGuru2• 13 years ago

For anyone actually looking for the ultimate HTPC, I've tried pretty much everything and the absolute best I've found is a combo of an Apple TV with Beamer.app [0] to play just about anything and everything with a great UI, awesome Netflix support, iTunes renting/buying, etc. etc. etc.

0: http://beamer-app.com/ (I'm not affiliated in any way, other than being a very satisfied customer that has had several feature requests fulfilled by the author)

antr• 13 years ago

Never heard of Beamer, but I rarely stream/control video directly from the laptop. I've been using Air Video with both the iPad/iPhone (http://www.inmethod.com/air-video) + Drobo for media storage and it works like clockwork. I will still take a look at Beamer.

andybak3• 13 years ago

I'm not familiar with Apple TV. Why is beamer necessary. Can the Apple TV not play video files from a network share?

josteink3• 13 years ago

No. It requires your files to be a format iTunes understands (which mostly limits it to stuff bought in the i-store) and in a iTunes media-library on a PC running on your network. Which for most non-Appleheads is pretty bad and for some (like me) even a no-go.

It could be worse though. In the olden days you had to synch the media to your Apple TV before being able to play it.

yardie• 13 years ago

I bought this app 2 days ago. I have a video that plays perfectly fine on my laptop but on the Apple TV the video goes blank after 15 minutes. It was a choice between them and AirParrot. Although it was cheaper I didn't need the mirroring AirParrot provides.

bkoehler• 13 years ago

From: http://beamer-app.com/ "Without a license, playback is limited to the first 15 minutes of each movie."

freyr• 13 years ago

Why not just use Airplay? It's free and video that plays on your laptop can be mirrored onto your TV.

SippinLean• 13 years ago

Barebones box with intel atom, a bit of ram, and a small HDD is cheaper and does all that, and you don't have to deal with sidestepping Apple's odd file format restrictions. Throw XBMC on there and you're done, for about $150.

ComputerGuru2• 13 years ago

Apple TV is $99.

segacontroller• 13 years ago

if you already have a Mac, why not just use airplay?

WayneDB• 13 years ago

I just plug a cheap Windows laptop directly into my LCD TV.

That way I get more than just video. I can use the full operating system to do anything at all.

rbanffy3• 13 years ago

I'm seriously considering a Raspberry Pi or a cheap Android HDMI stick and run Netflix on it. Has anyone tried that?

paul_f• 13 years ago

I only use my Boxee Box as a Netflix device today. We simply can't get all the over-the=air channels where we live. And for some reason, Boxee is antagonistic to Aereo.

What I think the world wants is the ultimate cut-the-cord solution. Boxee could have been that.

andybak3• 13 years ago

Still regularly using my 1st gen Boxee box and in many ways I prefer it to XMBC. It's fairly solid and reliable, the UX is excellent. XBMC had a much clunkier and inconsistant UI - plus all the messing around with Linux distros or other host OS's made it much less appliaance-like.

I'm planning to play with Android TV sticks next but I think they are still pretty immature at this stage. However - it is a platform rather than an app so I think it can evolve quicker to fill the TV niche. I find it incredible that Google is doing so little themselves to help it.

GnarfGnarf• 13 years ago

It's very simple why Boxee failed. Have you tried the product? Did you not notice that Boxee restricted where you could go? Boxee had a built-in list of domains you couldn't visit, no doubt to encourage you to settle for the domains with which it had licensing agreements. Read the fine print on the box and you will see.

I couldn't access YouTube! I returned my unit to the store where I bought it, and made sure the manager understood what he was selling.

Boxee was a despicable concept, insidiously controlling where you could and could not go. I now use a $300 laptop to watch what I want, when I want, on my 42" screen.

andybak3• 13 years ago

I use my Boxee Box daily and I haven't noticed any of this. Do you mean via the web browser? Unless this is something specific to the Boxee 2?

AdrianRossouw• 13 years ago

I liked it because it had a passable file navigation view. I never really liked how it auto-detected files, and i was far too lazy at the time to organize my growing collection. After boxee stopped supporting the software, i finally replaced it with a proper plex setup.

I honestly think that the plex media server is the absolute 100% totally correct way to develop a system like this, and it will only get better over time. It's why Plex is so amazingly suited to having clients for smart tv's, or roku or mobile ... Hell, i'm even busy putting together a Rasplex (rasplex.com) setup on my raspberry pi.

Also a hint for anyone interested, the default Plex skin is atrocious, and probably puts more people off than anything else. I recommend PlexAeon or Refocus Blue.

stevewillows2• 13 years ago

Outside of everything, that boxee remote was one of the nicest designs.

engtech4• 13 years ago

except for the fact that you couldn't tell up from down in the dark because it was symetrical.

It was really annoying when you went to pause, and instead turned netflix on.

stevewillows2• 13 years ago

That is very true. I would like to see a remote like that with a slight bump on 'up'. Outside of the symmetrical design, I love the idea of a small keyboard on the bottom.

buster2• 13 years ago

As a Boxee owner i really liked it (the box itself is so nice in the living room, it's neat!), but unfortunately some dumbass in the management decided it would be better to fork xbmc, close the source.. that was the the problem. The hardware was nice, the UI was nice, but no updates, obviously D-Link couldn't keep up, they shut down many addons... a shame.

Fortunately i bought a Raspberry Pi last month, put XBMC on it and am happier then ever. For a for better price!

R.I.P. Boxee, your management blew it.

engtech4• 13 years ago

do you have Netflix working on that setup?

buster2• 13 years ago

I would like to find out but i'm in a country that has no netflix :(

ChrisNorstrom• 13 years ago

I gave up on those walled-garden crippled-pc set-top boxes and just took an old pc, hooked up the HDMI port to the living room TV, added a wireless mouse, and all was well with my family.

They have completely stopped watching regular TV. They now watch YouTube Videos, Foreign films, can play games on Steam, and Stream European cable tv nearly 24/7. Everything from bittorrent to youtube to netflix to Amazon to whatever can be played on a PC. Music and Video Games included. My Home Theatre PC is on 24/7.

The reason these Set top boxes like (GoogleTV AppleTV Boxee) keep failing is because they're just crippled PCs. It's not about the UI, it's the freedom, it's the usefulness. People will take something useful and ugly over something useless and shiny. Why get a set top box when you can just watch things on your laptop? What's the point? You want to watch on your big screen tv? Then hook it up using an HDMI cable to your big screen tv. Or grab your tech savvy son or daughter and have them hook up an old pc to the big screen tv.

Bye-bye Boxee: how a startup failed to conquer the living room

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