Amidst flat and declining cable TV subscription numbers, Cable companies are lobbying the FCC to force every cable subscriber to rent cable boxes or cable cards even if they don’t want or need them now.

Currently cable companies must deliver broadcast channels in a way that enables tuners like Boxee Live TV (and the ones in your TV) to display those channels without any extra hardware.

Now the cable companies are asking the FCC to change the rules and turn access off. Their main excuse being that it will reduce the need for the cable guy to drive to your house to disconnect your cable and thus be better for the environment. Considering this ruling would also mean millions more set top boxes and cable cards are manufactured, distributed, and attached to electric outlets (see below for consumption), their argument doesn’t hold water. It’s akin to a cable executive taking a private jet to an FCC meeting, but insisting on having recycled toilet paper on-board to help save the environment.

Their real motivation is to prevent you from being able to connect the cable from the wall directly to your TV or Boxee Box. You will need to rent a set-top box from your cable provider, pay an extra $5-$15 per month and it will no longer work with your Boxee Box or similar devices.

The cable companies are losing subscribers every quarter. If they want to reverse that trend they should look into building better products, reducing prices and improving customer service, not going to the government asking for rule changes to force consumers into spending more money and blocking start-ups from competing.

Company	3Q’11 Video Net Adds/Losses
Comcast	-165,000 (a)
Time Warner Cable	-128,000 (b)
Charter	-64,800 (c)
Cablevision	-19,000 (d)
Total	-376,800

 

There is another interesting thing about the proposed rule-making. There are no benefits for consumers. None. Millions of users who currently connect cable directly to their TV or tuner (without a set top box) will see their screens go dark. To bring back the signal they will need to go pick up a box or schedule a visit from the cable guy… with the extra “benefit” of having to pay a monthly fee for that new box…

As Public Knowledge noted in their blog post on Monday, this is an issue the government should take its time to understand and get right.

At Boxee, we’ve created an affordable alternative to cable that’s more in-tune with the way people watch TV today. The cable companies don’t like the idea of increased competition and in this case they are trying to get the government to help them block alternative devices such as the Boxee Box.

The Cable companies spent more than $50 million last year on lobbying, so we decided to spend a few hundred dollars on a train to D.C to meet with the FCC.

The FCC is in charge of regulating the monopolistic cable industry, ensuring consumers’ interests are being protected and fostering innovation and competition in the market. Avoiding the visibility of proposed legislation that dogged SOPA and PIPA, the cable companies are trying to sneak in an anti-consumer, anti-competitive policy change, telling the FCC that it is only a minor technical thingy and that only few consumers and companies would be affected.

In contrast, we demoed Boxee Live TV and presented a few slides to the Commission explaining how this could affect many consumers and have an impact on innovation and the environment.  We were excited that the Chairman of the FCC and his staff took the time to listen to our arguments.

The FCC is also paying attention to what consumers are saying. It would be great if you could write a short note to the FCC expressing your concern about having to give even more money each month to your cable company. Please take a couple of minutes to make your voice heard!

 

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!!

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

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

 

Version 1.5 of Boxee is currently being tested by Boxee Box Early Access users and will soon be available in Beta. We plan to release 1.5 together with Live TV later in January. Here’s some of the new features you can look forward to on the Boxee Box…

Home Screen
We’ve added links to the standard menu to launch the Browser and Live TV (once you’ve attached the dongle). We also gave the featured section a small facelift.

Menu
The Menu is now more accessible, popping up as an overlay that lets you quickly navigate between different sections or search. we also optimized search to minimize the number of clicks.

Movies & TV Shows
We updated the layout of Movies and TV Shows for easier navigation by Genre and Source as well as providing quick access to trailers.

There is also a new Movie details screen with extended synopsis and cast & crew information. For TV Shows it is now much easier to jump between seasons and see which episodes you already watched.

Watch Later & Friends
We expanded the thumbnails in Watch Later & Friends sections and now let you filter between clips, TV Shows and Movies.

PC Update
As many of you know we have been working on new versions for PC, Mac and Ubuntu. Today we are releasing a version of 1.5 for these platforms.

You can find this new version of Boxee for Mac, Windows, and Linux below:

• Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
• Mac OS X 10.6+ (Intel only)
• Ubuntu 11.10 (32 bit)

As a platform, we have been able to bring Boxee for Computers to about 85% of the Boxee Box in terms of features and functionality. Due to extensive DRM and certification requirements premium apps will not be available on the downloadable version of Boxee, most notably Netflix, VUDU, and Pandora (click here for a full list).

However, if you are using Boxee for file playback you should be pleasantly surprised with better file support, a new on screen display, better networking support, and a host of other features you can read about here.

Growing Past the PC

This 1.5 release will be the last version of Boxee for PC/Mac/Ubuntu. It will be available on Boxee.tv through the end of January.

We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs / Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones. While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives. People will continue to watch a lot of video on their computer, but it is more likely to be a laptop than a home-theater PC and probably through a browser rather than downloaded software.

To our computer users… to those who have come out to our NYC and SF meetups, talked with us at Engadget, GDGT, and Giz Gallery events, or enjoyed Austin BBQ with us during SxSW, or simply messaged with us on Facebook, Twitter, and our forums… thank you for all your support – we would not be where we are today without you. But we can’t stay here.

We are excited about the upcoming release of Boxee Live TV and our new product roadmap for 2012. If you are a current Boxee user on a computer we hope that you will enjoy 1.5 and maybe when you are ready to retire that good ol’ HTPC/Mac Mini you will decide to get a Boxee Box.

Sincerely,
Team Boxee

The Boxee crew has been hard at work polishing up Boxee Live TV for the release next month.  But for now, we’re taking a bit of time to see our families and celebrate whichever holidays we choose.  So from our Boxee family to yours, we wish you all a great and happy holiday, and happy New Year.

After 3 vigorous rounds of voting, and lobbying that carried on late into Friday night.  We have our clear winners of the Boxee Sticker Design contest. In first place is Josh McGee who made the beast of a Cut the Cord propaganda poster posted above.

Coming in a close second was Danica’s Boxee Pop.  With the amount of soda this office churns through it was inevitable that this awesome image would find a place near and dear to our hearts.

Third Place goes to the Boxee pancake stack made by Kyle Kendrick, which will go well with the Boxee sandwich that’s already on the back of most of our laptops.

Two honorable mentions that we have to shout out here is the ridiculously awesome Boxee cat, drawn by an 11 year old user who’s going to make a killer graphic designer some day:

And this one submitted by a user outside the US that was a personal favorite of a few members of the team.

Thanks so much to everyone who submitted designs.  We had a ton of fun seeing what all of our users came up with.  Hopefully we’ll be doing a few more contests like this in the not too distant future.  Check out our Facebook page to see more of the entries, let us know which one’s your favorite!