We are happy to announce that Boxee closed a $6M round of financing led by Boston-based General Catalyst with participation by prior investors Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Neil Sequeira from General Catalyst will join our board.
We closed our Series A late last year, but given the momentum and opportunities we’ve seen over the past few months, we thought it made sense to bring in a new partner and additional funds.
General Catalyst brings more than just money to the table. We wanted a partner to help us as we strengthen our relationships with big media and cable companies. As we learned (the hard way), it is a complicated world.. Neil and General Catalyst as a firm have years of experience, deep understanding, and extensive network in these industries, and we are looking forward to working together with them.
Going forward we plan to focus on:
- Improving the product – We are working on the Beta release (due later this fall), but also looking beyond Beta and into the roadmap of 2010. The idea is to have a healthy mix of development driven by user feedback (which is the essence of the upcoming Beta) and innovation that comes from within Boxee.
- Adding more content – We believe Boxee can be a great partner for independent content producers as well as big media companies. We will try to bring more TV Shows, Web Shows and Movies from ad-based, subscription-based and a la carte type services.
- Attracting more developers – While we have an App Store on Boxee, we know it needs some love. For Developers, we know it needs to be easier to develop and monetize apps. For users, we’re going to make it easier to find apps on Boxee. Last but not least we’re going to extend the APIs so everyone can do more with Boxee.
- Bringing Boxee into devices – Boxee today is mostly serving a tech-savvy audience – those who feel comfortable connecting a computer to a TV. To make Boxee more accessible for a mainstream consumer it’s important for us to get Boxee embedded into connected TVs and Blu-Ray players, game consoles and set-top boxes. We’re already talking to device makers to ensure Boxee works on a variety of platforms for 2010.
We are really excited about the future and glad to have General Catalyst and Neil as part of the team.
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I don't know if that's enough money to make it even half as good looking as Plex, but I it's a start.
Sorry for the snarkiness. I couldn't resist. Functionally though, the content I most want is the content I own, so Plex (http://plexapp.com) still gets the majority of my attention since it lets me browse my own movies and TV shows and it makes them look stunning too.
I agree. I thought boxee was awesome looking until I discovered the Plex UI… I think the boxee UI could be rethought. Everything else is outstanding on the platform.
we realize local content is important for users, but clearly our focus has been the cloud. going forward we'll try to get better at both.
we're going to work on the sex appeal of the UI. need to find the balance between good looks, wow effect and usability.
Wow. I felt seriously guilty for starting the reactions off on a negative note, but it seems like the conversation has really taken things in a constructive direction.
I really am happy for Boxee getting funding; this is really unique and exciting for an app to be well funded and yet so community-driven. I don't use Boxee regularly for many reasons, some of which I mentioned before, but I will definitely continue to reevaluate it as the developers put all this funding to good use.
One killer feature that I think would really change things is DVR-type recording capabilities for live streams. Going from my cable company's set-top box to internet streaming feels like a step backward in that I cannot pause, rewind and schedule recordings. This is offset by the fact that many online streams are archived and made available for download/rewatching later, but that still doesn't cover the live pause/rewind/catch up features.
hey no problem. constructive criticism is always good.
for most Internet streams you can pause, ffwd, rewind, but not as smoothly as you can with a local copy (though the new Netflix player does a pretty good job at it).
recording content opens up a can of worms, which we'd rather avoid at this stage..
in many ways digital is a step back (e.g. VoIP, music stream quality, video stream quality), but it compensates by being free & open. over time the Internet playback will become better, the users will pay for lots of stuff, but the freedom will still rule
Love it, great news.
Now, for the love of god, make us a set top unit and do whatever you have to with Hulu to get a legit client! I would buy a BoxxeeBox in a heartbeat!
Bah, plex ui… plex doesn't have a ui, they just borrowed the skin mediastream.
Yeah, people need to recognize that mediastream was created for, and intended to be used for XBMC.
Plex is barely different than XBMC, at least boxee knows what direction they want to go in (and they tailor-made an original interface for boxee). After all this time what has Plex done that is original? Even their logo looks a LOT like the 'Flex Fuel' logo on the back of some cars.
F*cking rip-off ass hats!
Oh yeah, 6 million to boxee AND partners. NICE ONE DEVS!!!!!
What keeps me with Plex is the fact that there is legit Harmony support… I can program it so stop, ff, rewind, etc. works just like a real devise. Using the Apple Remote with Boxee feels like a step backward… plus as stated the Boxee UI could look better… I use the Aeon skin with Plex and it looks and functions PERFECTLY!
Once Boxee partners up with Harmony to create something similar, and they mess with the "sex appeal" of the UI, I may reconsider using Boxee again!
I think that's a fair point. Perhaps focussing on the content we have rather than the content we don't have (friends) or the content we can discover (apps) we get content that is local to us done right (fix the annoyingness of file naming quirks) and hooks into other local sources (eg live TV from Myth, etc)
I think it's just silly you have to go through two menu clicks to get to local movies or local tv. They should be the first two menu items.
But congrats and good luck making things better for us!
Plex leaves us AppleTV users in the dust. Boxee is where it's at!
Plex is mac only, so you've already limited your install base. This leaves plex to focus and speed development but I think long term that boxee is going to get the support it needs, along with an increasing app store. It's usually the additional functionality that sets these sort of things apart, it helped PCs beat macs before, and the iPhone against other platforms, people like choices and as long as you have the apps then people will come. To be fair, consider that boxee is still alpha and is releasing on basically 3 platforms and does so it a pretty decent manner (nothing clunky like java, ex.Vuze). I've used plex and boxee on my mac but the end goal is to throw boxee on a Linux on a spare computer, which could be a popular option for many. But if plex works for you, great.
Congrats to the boxee team on the funding, personally I prefer your UI to plex and like the iPhone remote solution. All my issues with boxee have been stated in the forums, so once these things get worked out, I'll be extremely happy. Keep up the great work.
Boxee will focus to the so called web 3.0 user content created revolution. & if for some reason the people @ Boxee sellout to the media giants something more pure will come along & replace them.
yup. we realize that if we'll cripple Boxee then users will go somewhere else. the idea is to bring more content rather than less.
Congrats, Avner. That's great news. Look forward to hearing about more innovation from Boxee and tearing down the controls that existing media companies place over us. Imagine if true innovation was allowed to happen on mobile devices and on TV's.
thanks! we strongly believe don't want to replace one gate-keeper with another. open is where it is.
Congratulations! I know this isn't the place to put feature requests, but since everyone else is doing it, I want to throw in my 2 cents.
I don't care as much about local content as I do about content in the cloud. At least, that would be true if Hulu and other premium content providers were actively working with Boxee. I suspect that local video content, with the exception of DVDs, will always be secondary to streaming for mainstream audiences.
Here's all I could ever ask for from Boxee:
* Full Hulu support.
* Access to premium content like HBO, Showtime, etc, on an a la carte or subscription basis.
* PBS.
I know others' needs are different from mine, but until these sorts of services get in there, most mainstream households will have trouble using Boxee as their primary media provider. As it is, we only use it to access Comedy Central, and the quality of those streams is pretty bad.
I hope for a bright future for you guys, though. Let's end the cable companies' monopoly once and for all!
We hope that eventually we'll be able to partner with Hulu and bring a great experience onto Boxee.
PBS is already available on Boxee (to some extent) you can find an app on the App Box.
We're going to try hard to bring more premium content into Boxee (e.g. HBO & Showtime). May take a while, but I think eventually all the content will be made available online (through subscription services, a-la-carte, ad-based models)
Congrats on the funding! I concur with Dalton that a subscription service would be a major breakthrough. As an iTunes (via AppleTV)and XBox 360 user, a-la-carte pricing is too expensive. Best of luck.
I use Boxee on Apple TV, so maybe I'm not understanding, but why is Boxee not good for local content? I use it all the time for local content. Yeah, 2 clicks would be better than 5 clicks (or whatever), but for a two hour movie, I can sacrifice the extra 3 seconds of clicking. While the ATV implementation is limited by the one-button remote, it's still easier for me to use than running the iPhone app. For an alpha-level product, the UI is plenty sexy. I look forward to the upcoming improvements the new round of funding will provide. Congratulations!
Congratulations Avner and team! Can't wait to see what the next iteration of Boxee will bring.
A note regarding UI- both Plex and Boxee are too difficult for the average user. I like the Roku interface for the most part- it does what I expect. I don't want more "wow factor", I want more "WAF" (wife acceptance factor).
congrats again!
ace
I agree that we need to get better on WAF. Roku has done a great job on making it super-easy to setup and use.
Congratulations!
Though Michael A. makes a good point about UI – while Boxee's is plenty attractive, it's a bit bare compared to Plex. One of the grat things about Plex is that, on the surface it's straightfoward and pretty, but deep options are only a click away – contextual menus, for example, are a genius idea. Wrong thumbnail for a movie? Contextual menu, change thumbnail. Done.
Another concern about the local content side, is Boxee's auto-cataloging. In my experience, since it's a bit shady how you actually go about forcing re-cataloging when adding new content, it can often take hours, even *days*, for added content to show up.
The fact that it is automatic, is fantastic. But it becomes a huge negative when it pulls the wrong data, wrong images, or just silently fails to recognize the content.
Plex handles things a bit differently:
1. Add your content.
2. Contextual menu on source, Scan For New Content option.
3. Once added, if anything about the data is wrong, you can quickly edit the pulled data – name, description, artwork, and so forth.
While I hope that down the line, they make this process automatic, saving a few clicks, need to hand it to Plex for giving the user so much freedom to manipulate the data. No mucking with the filesystem either – it all has in-app UI.
IMNSHO, it's be sweet if Boxee retained the automatic cataloging, but provided a status UI (so you'd know if it choked on retrieving data), as well as providing a straightforward way to edit catalog data. Basically combine the best aspects of both projects. =)
Best of luck! Looking forward to seeing where Boxee goes.
good point re the balance between automatically identifying media to letting users do it manually. those are features that originated in XBMC, and worked really well.
we need to see how we can incorporate these features without complicating the UI
Awsome, things seem to keep getting better and better for the best media center!
Sorry to say it, but Boxee's UI is clunky and needs some work. I am a HTPC enthusiast working for a company who rig up home theaters for people and have seen all the different offerings out there.
So, I love the aesthetics of the Plex design [1] and skins like Aeon [2] by Duncan Harris for XBMC and you should try and hire these guys as well as poach some good usability experts. There is also Moovida (strange name) but to me in terms of UI, that is an extremely usable media center I have came across recently with an ex Apple designer working there. [3] There is also Medios who have decent skins with aesthetical gloss such as the Evolution skin they released recently which is a redux of the Aeon skin with some quirky touches. [4]
Boxee as far as I can see dont have an active designer or UX designer (as the fashionistas call them now-a-days) there doing UI day in day out like those other projects? I enjoy seeing Mozilla and their designers post blog entries about UI development and ideas for public consumption but, that doesnt happen here which is a shame for an OpenSource project.
Adding content is great but I agree, I want my content and the ability to easily add more myself or buy it in app. Cloud stuff is just a side-show unless there is a cable subscription in the works or streaming content deals for TV and Movies (Major studio stuff)
[1] Plex: http://elan.plexapp.com/ [url http://www.aeonproject.com/ [url http://www.moovida.com/ [url http://www.meedios.com/ [url