Boxee Blog » 2012

Throw a Party, Watch the Superbowl on Boxee, and WIN!!

To celebrate the launch of Live TV; Boxee is throwing down the gauntlet, challenging YOU to have a better Superbowl party than us. All you have to do is watch the Big Game on your Boxee Box with Live TV, or stream it over the web (we love cordcutters) to a big screen television for your chance to win.

200″ SCREEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY BOXEE LIVE TV

Prizes will be awarded for:

1. Biggest Party – Custom designed Boxee Live TV shirts for you and everyone we can see in the party photograph.
2. Best Dressed Fan – Awesome Boxee Super Fan Hoodie and “Dippin Dots” T-Shirt
3. Most Original Superbowl Food – Boxee T-Shirt & Stickers (must submit the recipe along with photos so we can taste test)

ATOMIC WINGS…AWESOME STUFF

HILL COUNTRY BBQ

All three winners will also score seats of honor at our SXSW Kegger in Austin. You must be over 21 and find your own way there and back, we don’t want to be stuck with you after the party, unless you’re an android developer…

How To Enter:

Throw a party with at least 5 people watching the Superbowl this Sunday 5/2
Stream the game over the internet or with the Boxee Live TV Dongle
Take Photos/Videos relevant to the above prizes showing evidence of the game inthe background
Send all entries to feature@boxee.tv with the subject ‘Boxee Superbowl Party‘
We’ll pick winners on Wednesday of next week and announce them here on the blog.

Rock On!!!!

January 31, 2012 at 6:57 pm

Comments (13)

One ‘Giants’ Leap for Boxee Live TV

by Will Robinson

Last Sunday we got to do something we’ve never done before on Boxee – watch a championship football game live!

We hosted a group of 33 (30 Giants fans, 3 49er Fans) for a night of live sport, Fette Sau BBQ and a keg of Blue Point Toasted Lager that we threw in for good measure. The game was broadcast live and in glorious HD on a 200 inch screen using our little black Boxee Box and the new Live TV Dongle.

Glorious picture and sound, coupled with great company and a great game. We even saw a few alpha testers tuning into the game in Boxee Live TV’s social channel listings.

View from the Back

Half-Time entertainment came courtesy of Sumo Suit fights between oppositely sized, yet fiercely competitive adversaries. You can check out more photos and video here and share your predictions for the big game next month.

DEFENSE!!!!

In the meantime, you should also go order a Live TV tuner (boxee.tv/live ) so you can add broadcast TV to Boxee.

Oh and Go Giants at Superbowl XLVI!!

January 27, 2012 at 6:34 pm

Comments (19)

2nd Annual Road Trip to SxSW – Washington DC, Memphis, and Dallas Meetups In March

by andrew kippen

It’s about that time again… time to start getting ready for SxSW and our 2nd Annual Road Trip to Austin with stops/meetups at Washington DC, Memphis and Dallas.

Photo Licensed under Creative Commons from Slideshow Bruce

Besides doing a meetup in each one of these cities we’d like to meet and talk with users, students, and developers. Keeping with the tradition of a relaxed backyard party for a few hundred people… we’ll be throwing a kegger in Austin with great BBQ again – start getting your stupid human tricks ready : )

With this in mind, we need some help from Boxee fans out there. Please leave a comment if you can help with any of the items below:

Venue for meetup in each city – if you live in Washington DC, Memphis or Dallas and have an idea for a venue (bar, big office, club, university) that can host ~ 100 people
A fixer – in each of these cities would be great if we would have a local “fixer” that can help secure the venue, arrange for drinks, food, sound system and in general be able to hustle.
Great stops along the way – any good ideas for must-stop spots along on our way. this is our current drive plan: http://b0x.ee/zzh3FE.
Bail agent – as a cab driver in vegas once told me “when in a new town, it’s always good to have a phone number for a good bail agent”

On the morning of March 5th we will pick up a GMC Yukon (or something similar Hertz tells us) and get going. We will drive it like a rental, play loud music, moon fellow travelers, eat greasy food, stay in cheap motels. We’ll also be giving out T-shirts, Boxee Boxes by D-Link, Boxee Live TV along the way.

Currently our schedule looks like this (click on a Meetup to RSVP):

March 5th (Mon) – Washington, D.C. Meetup

March 7th (Wed) – Memphis Meetup

March 8th (Thu) – Dallas Meetup

March 9-12th (Fri-Sat) – Drink. Party. Meet with people. Dance.

March 11th (Sun) – The 2nd Annual Boxee SxSW Kegger (1p – 6pm)
If you were there last year you know it was a good time. We’re going to try and keep the same easy going atmosphere this year so you can just come out and meet good people, have some food, and have a few drinks. We’ll send out more updates as the date gets closer.

March 12th (Mon) – Fly back to NYC. Start cleansing process.

We look forward to seeing you there!

- Team Boxee

Tags: austin, BBQ, boxee, dallas, kegger, memphis, sxsw, washington D.C.

January 26, 2012 at 2:17 pm

Comments (8)

Boxee Live TV now available for $49 – let the cord cutting begin!

by andrew kippen

Boxee 1.5 rolls out to Boxee Boxes today and Boxee Live TV tuners have begun shipping! Order one now for your Boxee Box!

With the addition of Live TV, the Boxee Box holds the distinction of being the only mainstream set top box that blends both over the air (OTA) broadcast TV with Internet content (over the top or OTT). We believe the OTT+OTA combo is the best way to get the most entertainment while paying only for the stuff you want to watch.

If you missed our earlier posts on Live TV / Cutting the Cord, and our Facebook integration – the gist goes something like this: the way we want to watch video has drastically changed over the last 10 years. We want to devour seasons all at once. We want to watch the same video on our TV, tablet, phone, and treadmill. We want to be able to watch in our homes, on an airplane, in our offices, and wherever else we might end up. We want to bookmark things for later. We want mainstream shows along with stuff from the web like TED, WSJ, and FunnyOrDie.

The web has given us this freedom. Cable TV has not. The web has made it easy and affordable to find what you’re looking for and enjoy it wherever you’d like. Meanwhile cable’s pushing the same boring interface and charging you even more for it ($75 / month on average) while you’re really only watching 14% of the channels you’re paying for. There’s a percentage of the population that’s realized this and decided to cut the cord and get rid of cable.

Boxee Live TV is a perfect alternative to cable for them.

Live TV Features

Way better than just plugging the included antenna into the back of your TV, Boxee Live TV kicks it up a notch with:

Social Channel Listings – We’ll show you what’s on, what your friends are watching, and how many people total are watching a show as you flip through channels.
Sharing – Share the traditional Boxee way on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr AND you can now passively share to Facebook using our Live TV Timeline App – turn sharing on and whatever you’re tuned into will post to your Facebook ticker automatically. It’s easy to switch off too so your friends don’t need to know about your addiction to HSN.
Edit Channels - Quickly hide channels from your lineup that don’t speak your language or have pissed you off with bad programming decisions like taking Arrested Development off the air. Easily rename WNDHCTA 7.2 to NBC.
All-In-One Interface – done watching a show on broadcast, easily jump into more episodes from the web. It’s the best of both worlds all on the same remote.

While Live TV does not currently have DVR functionality, we’ve heard your feedback and are examining if we could provide it. We’ll make an announcement later this year about DVR support if we can make it happen.

Boxee v1.5 Features

Here’s what’s included in the latest version of Boxee (check out pictures here):

New UI look and feel
Improved search
New library screens with simpler filtering
Browser Pop-up management
Rotten Tomatoes integration
On-Device Social Account Pairing

We’ll stagger this release over the next 72 hours like we’ve done in the past so you might not get the update until later this week. Want it right away, check out these instructions in the forums on how to get it.
You can read the full release notes here.

Enjoy and let us know what you think of the new UI after you’ve played with it!

Cheers,

Team Boxee

January 24, 2012 at 9:16 am

Comments (166)

Facebook and Boxee Team Up Around the TV

by andrew kippen

Today at CES, we’re announcing a new Facebook app to extend Live TV beyond your living room and onto your Facebook Timeline.

Boxee was built from the ground up to allow you to share with friends and receive video recommendations from them. With a Boxee Box & Live TV there’s nearly an infinite amount of video to watch. To help you sift through it all, we’re taking social one step further.

Boxee is one of the first TV apps to let you share what you’re watching on your Timeline and to help you sort through what’s on. The new TV app for Facebook Timeline will make it easy to discover new video with friends and share the experience with them. Let me show you what we’re talking about.

I’ve got Boxee Live TV tuned into the Parks and Recreation. After 2 minutes of watching, Boxee can post this to Facebook if I’ve given permission to do so and it appears like this, first in ticker, then my timeline, and finally in aggregate.

If friends click on the link, they’re taken to a brand new landing page with more information about the show including the episode and season information. In this way, I can “check into” a show.

These features are opt-in of course, so people will never know what you’re watching, unless you really want them to.

You can always edit your settings from your Application Settings Page on Facebook, or can remove specific activity directly from timeline or from your personal Activity Log on Facebook. And this new Timeline app will allow us to display what friends are watching in Live TV channel listings like we’ve talked about in previous Live TV posts.For those who have pre-ordered we’re just a few weeks away from shipping yours out(targeting the 3rd week of January). If you want to pre-order to ensure that you’re one of the first to check out the new features, you can get it here.

Team Boxee.

January 11, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Comments (62)