@tempo and @TeddyG from getsatisfaction are putting together a boxee meetup in San Francisco next week. tom, gidon and i are going to be there. come join us, should be fun.

following a flurry of interest from device makers during CES we posted a survey asking people whether and what they’d like to see in a boxee box. the response has been great, ~ 10,000 people filled the survey.

we realize that for boxee to appeal to the mainstream consumer it needs to run on a device rather than on a computer. our goal will be to get boxee running on existing devices (e.g. Game Consoles, Internet-connected TVs, Net Gen Set-top Boxes, BluRay players, NAS devices) as well as on dedicated boxee boxes that could be offered by different hardware makers.

following are the results:

how much would you be willing to pay for a boxee box?

1. 41% up to $199
2. 24% up to $299
3. 12% up to $99

15% would not buy a box and rather wait for boxee to come to their TV/STB/Game Console. 8% are happy to stay with their current setup.

so 77% of the people answering the survey are interested in a dedicated boxee box.. will send these results to all the CE makers that stopped by our booth at CES..

which one of these features would you most like to see in a boxee box?

1. 38% none. keep it simple
2. 20% each for CableCard and Over the Air (OTA) Tuner support
3. 14% a big hard drive
4. 9% BluRay

my interpenetration of the results is that a boxee box should come in a basic configuration, and should have a robust add-on architecture that will enable users to add features to their box based on their needs. i am personally happy to see OTA generating the same level of interest as CableCard..

in case you want boxee to run on your game console, which one would you like us to support?

1. 38% XBox 360
2. 32% Wii
3. 30% PS3

no surprises here. XBox and PS3 definitely have the horsepower to run boxee (the Wii does not support anything beyond 480p, but could be a great platform for boxee), but the challenge here is on the business side. we will need the support of Microsoft and Sony in order to offer boxee on their systems..

according to Torrentfreak Lost was the most downloaded TV Show on Bittorrent in 2008.. ABC has two other shows on that Top 10 list (Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy). it is clear ABC is producing great content, and it is no surprise that our users want to stream it on boxee.

we have released a new version of boxee for Mac that includes support for ABC, click here to download. we hope to release an Apple TV version within the next few days (not available for Windows and Ubuntu).

we strongly believe that given the option most users will opt to stream a TV Show (with a reasonable amount of ads) rather than using a file-sharing service.  especially now that they can get most mainstream network content through boxee.

the online streaming offered by ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, etc. has made great progress over the past 12 months in terms of quality, breadth of selection and release windows (i.e. the time it takes for the show to be available online after it originally aired). in my opinion they have created a great alternative to file-sharing networks. if they want to really eliminate illegal downloads they should release it simultaneously online (in HD) and remove the geo-restrictions, but i’ll save that discussion for another post.

when we give demos of boxee we frequently get asked the question “looks great, but how do i get it running on my TV?”. today our answer is “you need to connect a mac/windows/linux computer to your TV, or install boxee on an Apple TV”.

the issue with connecting a computer to the TV is that if you don’t have an extra one lying around, then you’re looking at ~ $500 investment (Mac Mini or Dell Studio). getting boxee on Apple TV is not simple enough for many users (plus boxee is not optimized for the Apple TV hardware, Netflix doesn’t work on it, etc.).

during CES we were approached by several device makers that wanted to speak with us about embedding boxee into existing or future products. we would love to get your input on whether it is relevant for you, what will you want to see in a boxee-based device, and how much will you be willing to pay for it..

it will take a long time till boxee will get embedded into a device, but your feedback could help us as we start talking with these potential partners.

as you can see from the above pictures we worked hard and also partied a bit at CES..

the show has been great on many levels and was a success for us beyond our expectations. we had a chance to meet users, potential hardware and content partners, press and bloggers.

boxee was featured on NPR Morning Edition, CNN, NBC’s Today Show, CBS Radio while we were at the show, which helped drive awareness, buzz and visitors to our booth.

there were many highlights:

• building the booth on our own and vying to never do it again. you don’t send software people to do a hardware job..
• giving demos to cable executives, seeing their response, answering their questions, telling them how we should all be friends
• gidon telling the CEA we are going to spend the $50,000 we won at the i-stage competition doing some “heavy drinking”…
• learning from a user on Twitter that we won G4’s CES Best of the Best
• having a couple of people from Apple who work on Mac Mini and Apple TV stop by our booth.. and tell us how much they like boxee, inviting us to come visit them at the Apple Campus
• having someone from the Windows Media Center group stop by our booth and ask for an invite to become a Windows alpha tester.. telling us he keeps hearing about boxee from people coming to the Microsoft booth
• seeing the reaction of people when at the end of the demo they ask “so how much does boxee cost?” and we tell them that “boxee (like the best things in life) is free”
• going to the Apple Store wearing boxee shirts and meeting two Apple Store employees who are using boxee on their Apple TVs (we’ll try to do the same in NYC and see if they are users, too)
• meeting users face-2-face and talking with them about boxee. probably the best part of the show.

we are having a great time at CES. busy, losing our voice, exhausted, but loving it!

there is lots of traffic at our two booths. Jeremy, Nate, Melody and Patrick are doing an amazing job helping us tell the boxee story. don’t know what we would have done without them coming out here.

probably one of the most amazing things is how many of the people stopping by our booth have already heard of boxee or are already alpha testers. it’s also fun (in a weird way) to have the people from the cable companies pay a visit (we had lots of them coming)..

oh, and last night we were a winner at G4’s CES Best of the Best! good times!

boxee’s private alpha went well beyond our expectations. over 200,000 people signed up.. today we’re opening our alpha to all Mac, Ubuntu and Apple TV users. Windows is also moving into private-alpha (which means you still need to get invited, but we’re going to release thousands of invites every week). bear with us as we scale…)

new applications in this release:

• BBC iPlayer (UK users only) – we could not ignore the calls from our London-based users for proper iPlayer support. it is a huge success in the UK (bigger than Hulu in the US), and it provides access to a huge selection of tv shows and radio in great quality. too bad it is only accessible from the UK.. BBC-if you want worldwide viewers, we’re here with open arms!
• Joost – in the survey of video applications you wanted to see on boxee, Joost was #1 (iPlayer was #2..). Joost has a great content library with TV shows, web videos, music videos and movies. you can browse the different channels and search through the entire Joost library.
• MTV Music – when MTV Music launched a couple months ago it got great reviews from users. it is a perfect service for the TV. we started by letting users play music videos from artists they come across on boxee. now you can go into the MTV app and conduct searches by Artist/Song or just browse.

for keyboard users we included support for some basic stuff:

•  + TAB – lets you switch to other Mac apps (even when boxee is in full screen)
•  + F – toggles between Window mode and Full screen.
• shift + letter – jump to the place in the list that starts with that letter (e.g. shift+h will save you a bunch of clicks to get to Heroes on Hulu)

bug fixes & enhancements:

• dual screen support
• Netflix streaming improvements
• Search in Hulu
• ffwd, rewind, pause in Comedy Central
• improved mouse support
• 3 digits episode numbers recognized
• giving folder.jpg its proper priority
• updates to SMB library
• updates to video and audio playback libraries
• updates to Flash player

we also created developer.boxee.tv, which provides basic guidelines for developers who want to build apps to run on boxee. this will continue to grow over the next few months based on your requests. an early example of using the boxee API is work done by Orange Labs (from the France Telecom group) who created a boxee application for their photo sharing service Pikeo.

last, but not least, a big thanks to the early access testers. your responsiveness and thoroughness were a huge help! you guys were so active reporting bugs and giving feedback that marcel who handles our support had to answer more than 1,500 emails over the weekend.. (he is recovering now)

* the blog title plagiarized from William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”

i wish we had come up with the idea of bringing users to CES a few weeks ago, but i don’t think we could have wished for better results. the video pitches were excellent.

we truly appreciate the effort that was made into putting these videos together at such a short notice. rather than making it a one-off thing we hope to work together with the people who participated and create an on-going and lasting relationship with each of them.

we are excited to invite Jeremy, Nate, Patrick and Melody to join us at CES.

Jeremy Tanner, aka penguin, is well known in the Colorado tech scene for being a professional party crasher (much needed at CES) and a start-up junkie. he is charismatic, articulate and funny. quoting from one of the comments left on the page “[the penguin] makes any event explode with fruit flavor”..

Nate Westheimer, aka innonate, is the new head of NY Tech Meetup, an entrepreneur in residence in a Rose Tech Ventures, uber-networker, a passionate organizer and connector. he showed he can bring out the vote for Obama in Ohio, so we hope he can bring some traffic to the boxee booth, too

Patrick Lawson, aka pox, from Wyoming where according to pox “we don’t have any real video game shops or electronic stores, just a Wal-Mart” part of the toosmartguys podcast duo (check out their latest episode where they make a nice tribute for AT&T in the snow)

Melody Akhtari, from LA, adds some feminity to our team (and before you start in on the “you picked her because she’s a girl”), Melody’s pitch showed us she was comfortable talking about boxee off the cuff and very approachable… both of which are key things we’re looking for at the show

UPDATE:

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we have 20 video pitches. http://blog.boxee.tv/ces-video-pitches/ you can vote for your favorite!
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i realize this is an *extremely* short notice, but figured it’s a good idea and would be worth trying to make it happen.

we have two locations at CES this year, and 4 of us are going to the show. but we could use some help and thought it may be best to have two users come with us to the show and help us tell people about boxee.

we will:

• take care of your flight + hotel (Jan 7th – 10th) + food/drinks during the show
• equip you with boxee shirts + schwag

you will:

• spend half the day with us giving boxee demos, telling people how boxee rocks, etc.
• spend the other half walking the show and checking out all the cool gadgets

during the evening/nights you’ll be able to gamble, dance, or enjoy whatever else Vegas has to offer. or you’re welcomed to join us as we try to crash the best parties..

if you’re interested:

• make a video of yourself pitching boxee as you will be at the show (that means your face and boxee in the frame! the video should be 60seconds or less)
• post a comment on this post with a quick pitch to why you’d be perfect for the job and link to the video
• deadline: applicants can post till Sunday at 4pm EST

on Monday the 5th we will announce who was selected.

(due to budget constraints this opportunity applies only to people living in the US)