Why I'd Like To Be In SF On June 23rd

Comments (Archived):

1. The folks at Boxee have created a great platform, and opening up the API has been a fantastic way to show off its power.

2. Just looked at the Boxee site and there is no explination of what it is, how it works, or why I should use it. That’s a really bad site!

   1. another reason to attend the June 23rd event. a new boxee.tv too!

   2. It’s funny you say this. I’ve had trouble explaining exactly what Boxee is to several friends. To programmer friends, I say it’s a platform that makes your set-top box hackable, and to non-programmer friends, I say it’s like a Web browser for your TV.

      1. Those are my two lines as well

3. I think this is great, but what I really want is the “stuff you and your friends will like” channel. Is anybody building that combo of social networking & machine learning?

   1. that’s native in the boxee software

   2. We’re doing this with WatchUWant.tv. We’re focused more on the collective community than simply your friends. That will be further down the road for us.

      1. In general, I want my friends’ stuff. I know that Two and a Half Men is the most popular sitcom, and that every geek seems to like anime, but I don’t really like those shows and neither do most of my non-internet friends. I want to find more arrested developments, freaks & geeks, etcI’m not able to download the client (windows), but apparently there’s more in the software that does this. I’m excited!

4. We know a possible set-top box is in the works; but will cable/telecomm companies put restrictions on the full fuctionality of Boxee?

   1. It’s unlikely, as that would violate the very reason boxee exists in the first place. How would you get an XBMC app on a set-top box, anyway?

      1. Set-top boxes as a physical platform would have to evolve. Just like the cell phone has evolved to stream live video. Personally, I love watching video on my TV. I just wish I could queue up a line of videos and have at it when I feel like watching.

   2. I sure hope not

5. I was there for the first Boxee SF meetup but I bet this is going to be lot more exciting. I cannot be there either for the next week meetup but I am sure going to checkout all the apps.

6. Yesterday I moved Boxee up to the top of my to do list and spent and hour fumbling (literally) around with it. Fred, your “app store” comparison for TV is right on. What a tectonic shift in the delivery platform for “new media”.Those of you unfamiliar with Boxee (www.boxee.tv) fumble around with it a bit, I assure you it will be worth your while. You will like their platform and the ease it provides in managing ALL of your content. Just like any new technology, allow yourself to gradually become immersed in it.

   1. i sure wish “fumble around” wasn’t the description of the “out of the box”experiencethat means we need to do more work

      1. i will be sure to quickly point out that the “fumble” really has more to do with me than Boxee!I did look around a very briefly for a product manual of some sorts- with no luck…

         1. I know the feeling- I do that all the time with a lot of physical and mediated items.I’m reading a lot of Donald Norman- I don’t think it is you Kevin. Items should be innate to use.Items should also be designed so that you discover their uses, and designed for an emotional attachment. It is extraordinarily difficult. I wish Boxee and most start-ups much luck (though the field is progressing a lot since my first interaction with a computer.) You might be running into excessive bugs, your own fears, our just excessive complications for what you think is seemingly simple activity, or just how humans process basic information. The Design of Everyday Things became a manifesto for a reason, since it outlines a way out of the complexity of bad design.And definitely- we might want to start giving up partially for a little bit on the idea computers thinking like us. Definitely the best explanation of why computer-human interfaces can go wretchedly is the funny conversation in the back of The Design of Future Things. Finding the bridge between the two- alas- is something unclear to me at this moment in time.

7. This is great for Boxee and Boxee users. And the tip of the tip of the iceberg at that. I love Boxee and its open, aggregated media structure, which I like to call user-accessed video or UV, despite the fact it’s buggy as hell (granted it’s Alpha) and has a really poor user interface.My question to you, Fred, as someone who is so ahead of the curve you’ve circled around and are looking at your own back, when do you see something like Boxee being adopted by the mainstream? 3 years? 5 years? Longer? My guess is somewhere between 5 and 10. And I mean something that doesn’t require hacks or jumping through hoops to get it to work on say an ATV? Rather like TV plop down push a button and voila – instant gratification. (Despite its many weaknesses regular TV still wins this one hands down).In the end, the real winner in UV will be the site or service that can organize this amazing yet overwhelming deluge of content the way the user wants it, make digestible sense of it, and deliver it quickly and pain free. Nice to see Boxee is tapping into the community to get there. Kudos to them and the developers for their hard work.

   1. I think it happens way sooner. if boxee is going to be one of the primary interfaces to make that happen, they’ll have to clean up the code and simplify the UI. I can assure you they are working super hard on both and my money is on them (as you well know)

8. Boxee, once they get together and learn to quickly decode for the average TV user who does not have a powerful CPU and graphics card on hand, will have one of the best databases of TV viewing preferences in the US, and the world.That is immensely powerful in the current advertising market. They’ll likely be able to pinpoint by market the type of vers who are watching each kind of show and when. Great for the people who believe in product placement. I get why Hulu is running scared.

   1. Yup. But let’s keep that quiet please

9. comment

10. Format shifting provides music companies like Amie Street to hit a new audience. The TV is still the largest marketing treasure but how many people are buying Boxees. Why aren’t the cable companies hooking making Internet connected TVs?

    1. Its all coming. You’ll be able to get a boxee device soon enough

11. You will find me there. Thanks for the heads up. Chuck Fishman

    1. 🙂

12. This will certainly send a chill up big medias spine. Especially when they find out that folks are watching on their TV: PCTVCables.com