login to boxee at the Gizmodo Gallery

selecting a 1080p movie to show off the quality of the screen

movie looks great.
playing 1080p smoothly.
the Mac Mini running boxee is performing heroically

picture taken by @brianboyd

Gizmodo is showing off a bunch of cool Gadgets this weekend, one of them is the world’s largest HD plasma screen, a 103-inch screen from Panasonic. so when they reached out to us and suggested that we will put boxee on that screen we jumped on the opportunity!

now next to this humongous screen is sitting a Mac Mini running boxee and playing a bunch of movies in 1080p. will post photos later this evening. this is fun.

if you happen to be in NYC this weekend then make a plan to visit the Gizmodo Gallery:
Reed Annex
151 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002

it is open today from 11am – 8pm and tomorrow from 11am-4pm.

i am going to be there on and off during the weekend. will tweet when i am headed out there.

when we planned the Dec 4th release we had minor changes in mind, mainly bug-fixes…. but we were undisciplined and immature.. and it turned from a minor release into a big one..

we could not ignore the number of people asking for Netflix on boxee.. so we called, emailed, and in general harassed the Netflix team.. in the meantime, we went to the keyboards coding ferociously to make it work on boxee.

the good news: you can now access Netflix on boxee,  get your Instant Queue and Recommendations, browse Recently Added and Most Popular, sift through the entire Netflix Watch Instantly selection by Genre and  Search.

the bad news: we could not make it run on Apple TV ☹ . we tried real hard. vulkanr was almost able to tame it, but he was bucked by the Apple TV’s 1Gz processor.  it screamed back at him in thick Scots brogue, “I can’t do it captain, I just don’t have the power!” we’re still working on it, but don’t have a solution, yet.. also there is no Netflix for Ubuntu, yet (i believe Netflix mentioned they will support Linux later in 2009).

the latest version of the alpha is not just about Netflix, though. there is also:

• a new Hulu – looks more like hulu.com, enables you to login (so you can get your Hulu Queue), works faster, and playback should be greatly improved on Apple TV
• a new YouTube – new look, as well as higher quality video playback. some of these YouTube clips look pretty good on your 46” LCD
• a new CNN, Flickr, Picasa and Apple Movie Trailers – we’ve re-written all of these plug-ins to work faster and look better
• Boston Globe’s The Big Picture – it’s a great photo-blog, which we really like, and thought could be pretty cool in a 10-foot experience. if you’ll like it we could bring much more of these type of services (let us know!)
• integration with MTV Music – when you click on an album you’ll see a new option to let you watch music videos of the artist. check it out. MTV said they can give us higher quality videos, and we have a few more ideas for providing a great music video experience on boxee
• theWB – on our quest to bring more TV content to boxee theWB is the latest addition. it means shows like Buffy, Babylon5, Firefly, One Tree Hill and The O.C. are now available on boxee

on the bug fixing/polish front:

• support for skip forward, rewind in Hulu, CBS, etc. – this is a big one.. should work now. the code behind it is sooo ugly that yuvalt had to chew on anti-nausea tablets while writing it
• improved streaming of podcast, trailers and youtube videos – we rewrote the buffering/caching mechanism. Skip and rewind within video streams is now much better
• more boxee less crashee – it’s still alpha, and it will crash from time to time (we promise), but this version is supposed to be more stable. we are trying to weed out those nasty bugs – help us out by submitting bugs to support@boxee.tv or post in our forum
• faster scanning of local/network media – your movies, tv shows and albums should be identified faster. if you have a huge music collection then you could still cook a 7-course dinner, wash the dishes and read a telephone book before it will be done, but it’s greatly improved..
• new on-screen keyboard – as dave described when he reported the bug “typing a URL with our on-screen keyboard is a once in a lifetime experience. you do it once, and never want to do it again”. so we made it a bit better
• faster loading of the movies/music screen in case you have hundreds or thousands of albums..
• fixes and new look for to the lyrics and subtitles features – the new auto-scroll of the lyrics is arbitrary… but sometimes it works pretty well. fooled me the first time I tried it

if you’re on Apple TV run the Update to get the latest version. if you’re on Mac go here to download. for the Ubuntu crowd, an update will hit the APT repository in a few days, including an official release for Intrepid Ibex.

Windows user? we have not forgotten you. also released today is the pre-alpha of the Windows version. a select group of 214 users (no idea how we came up with this number) is starting to test our Windows release. based on their feedback we’re going to start opening it up for more testers.

want to be the first to know about all-things-boxee? follow us on Twitter

update: atv users with status 1 error, issue has been resolved. please update boxee again.

the way we consume entertainment is changing rapidly, and as usual the technology and the users are moving faster than the industry.. being the little guy in a market full of giants we figured we should use our size to our advantage..  we can move faster. we can take risks. we can have fun. and we can really listen.

if we let go of traditional concepts of how companies approach product development and give our users much more control and visibility over what goes into future versions of boxee, then maybe we can achieve something special.

while we have Twitter and our forums, it is not a very structured way to discuss ideas and collect feedback. the quick survey we conducted was an easy way to sort through a very defined set of alternatives, but determining where we should focus our effort in terms of new features and bug fixes is a much more complex challenge.

over the last few days we have been looking into potential solutions that will enable us to have a real conversation around what should be included in future releases of boxee.

ideally the platform to accommodate such a discussion should:

• be open for everyone
• enable users (including boxee employees..) to post an idea for a new feature
• facilitate a discussion around an idea (and let users track the discussions they care about)
• provide an easy way for users to express their interest level/priority for getting a feature in boxee
• find a way to reduce the number of duplicate discussions
• be flexible, but don’t require boxee to spend too much dev time customizing it.. (we should focus on building boxee..)
• keep it simple for the user

we looked at both UserVoice and GetSatisfaction as potential platforms. we ended up choosing Get Satisfaction. within a few days of our next version we will put together http://ideas.boxee.tv and will start the conversation. can’t wait!

as to why we chose getSatisfaction. it was not an easy choice. both services seem to be really well designed and thought out. we chose getSatisfaction because:

• we got over 40 replies on twitter with people recommending it (and we should listen to our users…)
• it has a single sign on support, which means our users can tie in their boxee login with getsatisfaction (a big one in my opinion)
• while uservoice is incredibly suited to get clear voting on features, and would have been our choice if that was the only thing we wanted to achieve, getsatisfaction is a better match for how we want to grow this conversation
• api api api. take a look at http://help.twitter.com. the faq is a winner, and tied with the twitter look and feel. we love the approach of “This API seeks to expose every and all functions of http://getsatisfaction.com“
• the founder & ceo of getsatisfaction is an early boxee alpha tester..

our next release will come out on Decmber 4th at 8am EST.

some of the things we improved/fixed: local media scanning, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and CNN. we also spent some more time on Hulu. making it better.

initially we planned for a bug fixing/polish release, but as usual we got a bit over excited and squeezed in a bunch of new stuff…

on Dec 4th we will also start pre-alpha testing of boxee for Windows (we originally planned it for this week, but the scramble around Apple TV 2.3 resulted in a short delay.. sorry). there are ~ 200 people who signed up to be part of the pre-alpha, and we’re going to gradually grow that list until we officially release it in alpha (probably early next year).

almost forgot. happy thanksgiving!

we posted instructions on how to get boxee running on Apple TV 2.3 manually, but it was a bit hackish (you had to open a Terminal, ssh into your Apple TV and run a few commands), which means fun for some of us, and a serious no-go for most of us.

so it was great to see Scott Davilla and Stephan Diederich to act quickly and come up with a new version of the USB Creator. now it is as easy as before to get boxee/xbmc on the Apple TV.  ~ 35,000 people have already done it! (maybe more). Scott and Stephan deserve all the credit for making it happen. and making it so easy.

a quick reminder, once you download the latest version of the USB Creator follow these steps:

1. insert a bootable USB key (1GB) to one of your USB slots and run the USB Creator (disconnect any external USB drives connected to your laptop to avoid crying once you discovered you just formatted a 1TB drive with all your media..). see a video how-to guide.
2. plug the patchstick into your Apple TV and reboot it (i.e. disconnect and reconnect power cord), you’ll see a penguin. this is good. now wait till it finishes the install.
3. take out the patchstick and reboot
4. you’ll see a new option in the Apple TV menu ‘xbmc/boxee’, go to Update and choose ‘Boxee’. let it do its thing.

that’s it. you’re done. now you can run boxee and start playing MKVs, streaming from last.fm, Hulu, etc.

known bug: sometimes when launching boxee you’ll see a blackscreen (instead of boxee’s login screen). click Menu (back) on your Apple Remote, and try again. Scott & Stephan are working on a new launcher that will eliminate this bug once and for all.

known bug 2: if freezing at boxee login screen, please see this forum thread. its a geeky solution, but beats factory restoring your atv.. our next release will take care of this, so the fix will no longer be necessary.

we had over 1,100 people fill the survey in less than 12hrs (thanks!!), telling us what content/services we need to add to boxee next.

the results so far:

which one of these TV networks would you like us to add?

HBO 27% (310 votes), Discovery 21% (237 votes), ABC 21% (236 votes)

HBO has been making great television for years. The Sopranos, OZ, Rome, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Entourage, etc. so i guess it shouldn’t be a surprise (especially with True Blood generating so much buzz). the BIG issue with HBO is that they don’t offer full episodes online…   they are making so much money from the cable companies, that they don’t want/can’t risk it. which means users have to go to ThePirateBay, TVRSS, or wherever to get them… that’s a shame. doesn’t make sense. hope TimeWarner/HBO will put their stuff online soon.

i was sure ABC (Lost, Desperate Housewives, etc.) is going to win this category, but the biggest surprise for me was the strong demand for the Discovery channel.

so…. since we can’t do much about HBO… we will bring you ABC and Discovery. they are both using the Move Networks player, so hopefully we can kill 2 birds with one code-base.

which one of these movie services would you like us to add?

clear winner here. Netflix with 80% of the vote. Amazon far behind with 14%.

the subscription model makes sense. you don’t have to think before you start watching a movie. click play and if you don’t like it you stop. no issues like movie expiring after 24hrs, and all that other stuff that comes with the gift of rentals with DRM…

i believe over 8 million people are using Netflix and most of them can take advantage of steaming the movies online for free, so it’s a pretty good value proposition. we should bring Netflix to boxee, and do it better than Xbox360

which one of these video services would you like us to add?

Joost with 55%, iPlayer only with 15%. Veoh 12%.

i was sure our UK users are going to give a fight. we already started working with Joost, so we should be able to deliver on this one.

(hmmm… pssst. Comcast. anyone listening? Fancast with only 7%?! it’s a really good service. may i suggest you give it a marketing push?)

which one of these Internet live broadcast services would you like us to add?

ustream.tv with 33%, qik 14%, justin.tv 13%

issue with this category is that many of the videos are in bad quality and will look like crap (sorry) on your big screen TV. but some of it is unique content, that you just can’t get in any other way. sometimes (most times) availability trumps quality. ustream it is.

which one of these music services would you like us to add?

Pandora owned this category with an amazing 70% of the vote. i was a bit surprised to see such a low demand for Rhapsody and eMusic. it seems the subscription-model for music is struggling (at least among our users).

pandora-bizdev@pandora.com check your inbox. boxee wants to talk.

which one of these photo sharing services would you like us to add?

Facebook Photos with 54% and .Mac/MobileMe with 19%. biggest surprise for me was that photobucket did not do better. the demand for .Mac support is to be expected given our strong bias towards Mac at this stage..

need to look into them Facebook APIs. hope it’s easy enough.

UPDATE: there is now a new version of the USB Creator. see here. (you can still go hard-core and do it manually..)

if you have Apple TV running the 2.3 firmware, want to run boxee and are not afraid of opening a terminal, then follow the instructions here: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?p=13301

so this is a pretty geeky solution. but it works. work is in progress to make it as plug-n-play as before. should be available soon.

this is where we got our inspiration. one of the greatest philosophers of our time. Rocky!

we need your help to get nominated for the Best Startup of 2008 Award… please click on the badge or here to support boxee’s nomination.

could be cool to get this sort of recognition. last year’s crunchies had an impressive list of winners, so we would love to try and get our name in there this year..

about The Crunchies:

The 2008 Crunchies is our second annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.

The Crunchies is co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch. Best of all, the internet community is invited to choose who wins.