A VC - Latest Comments in Boxee's Four Things

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:11:12 -0000

I'll look for that email. Thanks

Re: Boxee's Four Things

Glenn Gutierrez — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:40:02 -0000

Awesome news about boxee! That gives us as developers even more incentive to quickly find ways to build on to the Boxee platform. Also, I've sent you a private invite code to PopScreen in response to the "Watch Later" Project to your email address. I hope you like what you see.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:30:31 -0000

I agree about transparency Ken. I think its the way most companies should play the game these days

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:48:22 -0000

The stability that is 'getting lynched' is on appletv, a platform Boxee has struggled with. They have worked hard to make the software work well on appletv but its underpowered for what boxee is unfortunately

You are right that many missed my point but I'm happy that we got that feedback. its always good to hear the truth, even when it hurts

Re: Boxee's Four Things

Chris Phenner — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:07:59 -0000

While the reader comments to this post just lynched Boxee's stability (wow), I think the point of Fred's post was missed entirely -- like just about every post. An early stage company knows and is willing to say publicly exactly what it wants to do. I'm not sure proper (if any) credit was given to how rare that is -- I take my hat off to that.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

bombtune — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:56:27 -0000

I think Boxee is a short-term solution to the gap between Internet and TV and that the big cable companies will soon grasp this Internet connected TV-market. The consoles (Xbox and Boxee) will just be another way to access, but may be more savvy with apps.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

kenberger — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:19:08 -0000

Boxee is the central driver of my home PC Media Center project, where I've said goodbye to cable forever.

I am dumbfounded by how useful and disruptive this product is, even in its alpha form. Folks who are having performance problems should ensure they have the latest version-- major fixes came a month or 2 ago.

It's also notable indeed how open the company is being about future plans. Ballsy but I think worth the risk (many would criticize that this behavior signals the 800 lb gorillas pre-maturely, I think that risk is outweighed by allowing the crowds to help shape the product, and other factors).

Re: Boxee's Four Things

Riaz Kanani — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:22:35 -0000

Yes I have to reiterate Angus here - I tried using Boxee (a good 4-5 months ago) and love the UI but found the lack of local UK content meant I never continued to use it.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

nuxnix — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:04:15 -0000

Boxee is woefully unwatchable on my AppleTV for BBC iPlayer which is just about all thats useful without an anonymising proxy to allow you to pick up US content. I know you dont think ATV is much of a platform but it works well for Apple and your setup video, talks endlessly about reusing old clunker hardware.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:24:35 -0000

Not really. Boxee is used a lot outside the US

Re: Boxee's Four Things

Riaz Kanani — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:34:30 -0000

I am guessing all that is still focused within the North America market only?

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:23:24 -0000

I love it. Particularly from a girl. That's outstanding

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ShanaC — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:07:53 -0000

Are their communities out there interested in porting to devices for the sake of just moving the first three along. Computers are great and all, but you talk to the 83 year old crowd and they can barely use email. This will probably be the first social networking client they interact with out of the box. As odd as it sounds would getting a community to work on goal four make it easier to work towards goals 1-3?

So difficult without knowing the internals, and without even knowing who their first real target demographic is (I know that this community may or may not be...)

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ShanaC — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:59:22 -0000

You know why I ask Fred ;-)
...I'm getting some interesting facebook posts from one friend, but you don't FB and tell.
So, Umm, when do you want to see that post, you know?

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ShanaC — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:53:03 -0000

Of course. That's why people love/hate it. Certain things are sped up/made better by not being open source. Other chocies, not so much. You tend to get better coding/more features from open sources. But that is not the end all be all.

EG: One of the interesting Choices of the Unbuntu Community was that they ahve a totally separate team of designers for the front level. They knew if they didn't have one design team making one design decision, the project would be a usability mess. So the actual look/feel is a total top down from the company releasing it, because otherwise it would be unusable from the "Just too much" school and the "why is that button here" school.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ShanaC — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:40:14 -0000

What textbook are they using. Or is she not? I want appropriate one for seven year olds. They are more entertaining than the ones for adults, I find them really boring... (that's the problem they give the worst problems to learn something basic...We learned about division through pizza, why can't they do the same for comp sci???)

Re: Boxee's Four Things

Vladimir Vukicevic — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:59:43 -0000

Those are the types of insights that are hard to see from the outside - I can understand how critics who don't have that internal perspective can't objectively criticize the new investment in Boxee.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ErikSchwartz — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:46:38 -0000

Ellie wanted to know what every icon on her XO did. So we wandered into python. She's writing basic input/concatenation scripts.

What pleases me about it is she fundamentally understands that computers are not magic, they do what they're told. Most adults don't get that.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:15:37 -0000

Well they don't burn very much and they've got a lot in the bank now. One of the many reasons I like this company is they are scrappy and do a lot with a little. Which is key if you are operating on the bleeding edge. Its about bleeding lightly until you are no longer on the bleeding edge

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:15:35 -0000

Your 7 old writes python scripts? Sheese. And I thought my kids were ahead of the curve!

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:15:34 -0000

In my girl's social circles, BBM is the communication system and as a result they all use blackberries

Re: Boxee's Four Things

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:15:33 -0000

Open source takes time.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

Vladimir Vukicevic — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:32:10 -0000

I prefer omelets.

...and I do think that Boxee can be successful even if they have to do a deal with the devil (i.e. cable providers) for a while. From what I've seen the product seems compelling - their biggest problem is that they might be offering a solution not based on a need yet, i.e. they're too early and could run out of money.

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ShanaC — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:19:44 -0000

I know, it is called picking brains while you have them there. :-D

Re: Boxee's Four Things

ErikSchwartz — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:06:57 -0000

We're totally off topic but the answer is Android Scripting Environment.

http://code.google.com/p/an...

H.S. kids can write Python scripts. Heck, my 7 year old writes python scripts on her XO.

That combined with more carrier choices, prepaid plans, and cheaper handsets