with the latest release of boxee we’ve enhanced the experience, offering our alpha testers the ability to stream TV Shows, Movies and clips from sites like CBS, Comedy Central and Hulu. we think it is a big step towards making boxee a true alternative to expensive Cable/Sat subscriptions, as well as to those who revert to downloading pirated content. by making shows like CSI, Southpark or Heroes available for instant streaming, in good quality and with limited commercial interruptions we believe CBS and Hulu are helping make paying for Cable or pirating content both irrelevant.
while we don’t currently have a formal relationship with either content provider, we know that partnerships like these are what people want (x# of requests and counting). we hope to work closely with them in order to improve the experience and bring more content with even better quality to our users.
if you’re an alpha tester please tell us what other shows, services, content you’d like to see as part of boxee.
if you’re a content owner/aggregator and would like to have your content on boxee please contact us. boxee is an open-platform and we’ll work with you to bring your shows, movies, music, and business model to it.
subscribe to blog
join boxee
boxee on twitter
The big one, of course, is Pandora. They go to extreme lengths to obfuscate their protocol (hint: Blowfish) so I don't know how much luck you'll have making it work without their blessing, unless you just drop their Flash player into the Boxee UI somehow like you did with Hulu. I really hope you can partner with them or otherwise make it work somehow.
ABC Television shows! … I don't know how, but that would be awesome if you could do it!
@Jordan i think Pandora will require that we have an agreement with them. and maybe pay $ (which kind of sucks when you have free alternatives such as last.fm or jango)
we'll reach out to them and see what they say
@almeyerx ABC will be great. Lost, Desperate Housewives, Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy… lots of great stuff.
itunes content… podcasts and non-drm stuff…
ABC.com and the Move Networks player definitely! It would also be great to see higher quality playback of Hulu's programming.
I also would love to see Pandora. Their "music genome project" recommendation engine is unmatched.
I'd also like the YouTube access to be improved. One of the items that I miss is access to my subscriptions.
You guys are really doing great work. I suspect you're going to help Apple move quite a few Apple TVs once word gets out about Boxee.
i am an alpha tester, but havent had a chance to check it out yet. so im not sure if you support these, but id really love to request support for:
- bittorrent RSS (ala Miro)
- Shoutcast TV
these two technologies (platforms?) allow for the small, independent producer to compete against the big guys. for content producers of episodic content, bittorrent RSS automates delivery and decreases the cost substantially for independents to distribute high quality content (HD, large file size). and for producers of live streams, the technology behind Shoutcast TV is an open standard meaning no need to rely on Ustream, Stickam, etc.
and what you are doing is another extremely important piece of the puzzle. i see it as luring consumers in to getting the web on their nice HDTV with the big boys like Hulu, etc and then once the tech is there, the independent producers can win their hearts.
so, keep up the good work and please consider my suggestions. thanks.
With the Netflix API being released it would be awesome to see that incorporated into Boxee!
Before more content providers, I'd rather have the ability to search. Both inside of specific content providers (say YouTube) or all of them at once.
The more content providers their are the more difficult it will be find what you want to watch.
Also for looking up television show metadata, it would be sweet if you used http://www.thetvdb.com/. I was looking through some of the information they have on shows, and its just amazing. Everything from series banners, season graphics, etc. Pretty neat stuff. Oh and Boxee rocks, too!
I really love the streaming media things in boxee (though being a Dutch citizen and not having connection to all media) But I (and my girlfriend) still like the old fashioned TV and we have a mythtv setup for that. I really would like to see boxee connected and control the mythbackend with boxee.
BTW I had boxee connected, but after the update mythtv doesn't work anymore.
Hay guys, Hulu and CBS are only for people in USA. Maybe you could add something for european users
Hey guys, Hulu and CBS are only for people in USA. Maybe you could add something for european users
the spanish national broadcaster (rtve.es), plus bbc content would be great. keep up the top work!
@danb iTunes/iPhoto support is very important. there is a plug-in in the works.
non-drm stuff is an issue, as Apple does not license their FairPlay DRM..
@Rick Move Networks would be great. it's not just ABC, also CW and a bunch of others.
i agree re YouTube. much more is required to make it a good experience.
@Evan the Netflix API as far as I understand it is just access to their Queue, Recommendations, Metadata, but not to the actual streams..
would be cool to enhance the experience with the data from Netflix, but even better is being able to watch the movies!
@Mark totally agree re Search. it is becoming a major flaw of the user experience not having one.
we're actually using the TheTVDB for some stuff. great source.
@Foppe there is work being done by a guy in Scotland to connect to the MythTV backend. should be great once it works.
please check the forum http://forum.boxee.tv re the conflict between boxee and MythTV. is it just a remote issue? or did it stop working completely?
we do need to start paying more attention to European content. especially with the geo-restrictions on Hulu, CBS, etc.
i think we should be able to do the BBC pretty easily. not sure about others.. and also don't know how to prioritize them, yet..
Thanks for the update. Can't wait for my alpha acceptance. Keep up the great work guys. This is a perfect product for someone like myself who wants to dump cable and need to convince the wife to come along too!
+1 to ABC
+1 to CW — we gotta get our wives on board!
+1 to Lala.com (don't really use them yet but they are up and coming for music streaming)
Netflix would be awesome.
HBO, Showtime…some dexter would be great! I second Netflix as well.
@chris, @justin you know, i think we should do a petition lobbying Netflix to work with boxee
gather like 10,000 votes and send it to them.. what do you think?
How about discovery. They have some full episodes online (like Prototype This) that are not in Hulu.
http://video.discovery.com/
I would like to see SouthParkStudios.com and their viewer installed. Similar to the Hulu player I think. They have all the episodes.
Pandora would be nice
@mwunder: All of the SouthPark episodes (from season one through last night's episode) are available through the Comedy Central link that is in Boxee now.
In order of priority:
iTunes/iPhoto integration,
ABC (Fancast has much of this too),
Discovery,
Pandora,
SouthPark (Full Episodes),
Netflix
(also, on the UI side I would like to not have to hit the pause button twice to pause.. once to bring up the on screen menu, and then a second time to pause.. on the apple remote, default should be to pause immediately from the pause/play button, and use the "menu" button to bring up the on screen menu)
@William Maggos — there's a hidden ShoutcastTV channel. Any content you like there specifically?
Add a new source (though Settings) for the URL:
rss://dir.boxee.tv/shoutcasttv/
Enjoy
Hi guys, first let me say that Boxee Rocks big time !
Now for the requests, I am not a US citizen … so I would like it if we could find a work around this so everyone in the world could have all the same access (would be a major marketing tool)
then the others as follow:
-Itunes and Iphoto support
-BBC's I player
-ABC
-Discovery
I am pretty confidant that you guys can achieve this !
Also could someone from the Team email me to tell me if its even a possibility that we none US people could get Hulu and CBS on AppleTV (not a PC or an iMac)
thx again for all the hard work guys, you are turning AppleTV into what it should have been from the start !
Oh and i forgot … National Geographic has got a couple of videos going on too !
Hi,
Fantastic piece of code.
As a canadian without Hulu access. I'd like to have all the online show we can find on:
- -http://www.cbc.ca/video/ (CBC English)
- -http://www.radio-canada.ca/audio-video/ (Radio-Canada French)
Thanks
Bob
National Geographic Channel has a number of episodes and clips available in Hulu. They all come out under the clips, even though some of them are 45 minutes long.
Well, I would not try very hard to find and support a way to let non-US viewers get acceess to US-only streams. They can easily prevent Boxee from operating with their streams.
Otherwise, ABC (the US one) and Netflix is on top of my list.
Does the UK users have access to BBC?
NOVA has a lot of shows posted on its own website in addition to the ones they add to Hulu. National Geographic Channel has a lot more episodes on its website as well.
i would suggest setting up a section on your forum for this. as it is going to get out of hand the amount of options/things people want. like i requested on the forum already, i would like to be able to access vimeo from boxee
thanks
@avner Sure that sounds good. Write it up
Well I am all up for the 2 channels that bob talked about:
â€&ldquo http://www.cbc.ca/video/” rel=”nofollow”>;http://www.cbc.ca/video/ (CBC English)
â€&ldquo http://www.radio-canada.ca/audio-video/” rel=”nofollow”>;http://www.radio-canada.ca/audio-video/ (Radio-Canada French)
I am a Canadian and it would be great for us to have those,
also being french and all, there is this channel called TVA
that does live web shows just like watching TV, they stream it live at the same time it plays on TV.
Seriously it would be awsome if we could play this channel !
http://tva.canoe.ca/
just scroll down the page till you see on the right side a section called: "Diffusion Web Simultanee"
Speaking as UK user, my priorities would be the BBC iPlayer, tighter iTunes integration (or even just sorting music by ID3 tags rather than folder structure for those of us who let iTunes sort their filing), and maybe the ability to set separate proxies for each online media source.
My personal preference would be to see live streaming content added, specifically from Livestation (http://www.livestation.com/). Their partner streams are high quality, and users are adding new streaming channels all the time.
Ustream (http://www.ustream.tv/) is another fun source of live streaming content. I would use ALL of these services more if I could watch them on the big screen, and not tie up my computer.
I would also cast a vote for Shoutcast TV integration (similar to what’s included in VLC, I guess). There’s a certain amount of redundancy there, and some low-quality streams, but it’s fun for the randomness of “what’s on”.
Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/) doesn’t do live, I don’t think, but would be fun to include. Lots of HD content there especially.
Finally – what about Joost?
Thanks for a great product.
NHL.TV!
First, add yet another vote for ABC.com. For something unique: we have a house full of kids, and so spend a lot of time with kid programming on. Aside from the biggies you already support and ABC, the one site we visit most often for video is:
NickJR.com
It seems like they have their own clunky interface, so I don't know how easily the frameworks you have in place will work with them. However, it would be a HUGE win, and allow us to move the old G4 laptop away from the main TV for good (have everything going through the AppleTV).
I agree with others. ABC and the CW would be a amazing!
so far it seems:
#1 – ABC
#2 – Netflix
#3 – International content
we need to collect this type of feedback in an organized fashion, so we could focus our attention on the right content sources/partners.
will put something together.
I'd like to see the ability to stream the MLB and NHL sports packages.
My girlfriend currently watches anime streamed from a site called AnimeSquish (I believe), it would be great if Boxee could incorporate some anime streaming sites.
Hi,
Firstly, I want to say that Boxee ROCKS!!!
The requests I would like to make are…
1. Boxee should be able to read meta data from the file and use that to search for info on imdb or cddb. This would make the incidence of misidentified files (huge problem for me) much lower.
2. Netflix access.
Thanks again for the awesome product. Looking forward to the beta.
Keep up the awesome work..
ill throw my chips in for NETFLIX…
and custom identification via browsing to IMDB
Hi,
BBC iPlayer would be fantastic – if you need anyone in the UK to be able to test it just give me a shout! As it is done via flash streaming (a la Hulu) I would hope that integrating in would be a fairly similar process.
Thanks for all your hard work – boxee is turning into an amazing app!
Will
Under XBMC Bas Rieter has done great work for Dutch content with the XOT-UZG plugin/script. (http://code.google.com/p/xot-uzg/) Perhaps it's an idea to look at some of his sources for content? Or ask him directly.
Hulu and CBS are very sweet – but since you asked… Fancast would be neat.
[...] of what makes Boxee interesting is pretty much unsupported – a hack to run Boxee on Apple TV and scraping of web video (Hulu, CBS, etc) without formal distribution deals. Having said that, cash (hard to come by in the current climate) makes many more things possible [...]