Boxee

I wrote a post about our most recent investment, Boxee, today on the Union Square Ventures blog. Boxee founder and CEO Avner Ronen wrote a post on the Boxee blog about the investment. I encourage you to click on those links and read all about Boxee. You can also click here and see what people are saying about boxee on twitter right now.

But for those who aren’t going to do that and still want to know what Boxee is, I call it the "firefox of the media center software sector". That’s my view anyway. Here’s a ~ 2 min video that shows Boxee in action.


quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Robert Dewey

    I love it.

  2. J

    Just installed boxee on my appletv on Friday. Pretty cool. The quality of the video from Hulu isn’t great, but good enough to be watchable. Hard to complain when it is free though!

  3. Jeffrey McManus

    I signed up for the alpha last week and I’m looking forward to trying this out, it looks awesome.Fred, I was curious, since this installs on Apple TV, isn’t this sort of like a jailbroken application? What happens if Apple decides they don’t like what these guys are doing?

    1. fredwilson

      Jeffrey, do you need an invite?Apple can probably make it harder to run boxee on appletvI hope they don’t do that

  4. Trader Mike

    Congrats on the investment Fred. I just became a Boxee beta, er, alpha tester last week. It definitely has a lot of promise.

  5. Nick

    How does this compete/compare with Tversity?

  6. RacerRick

    Very cool.I wish there was a similar program for the xbox. Already hooked up to my tv and my internet. I wouldn’t have to buy a mac mini!

    1. fredwilson

      XMBC works for the original xbox but Microsoft made it impossible to run onthe XBOX360 because they want this oppty for themselves

  7. Kyle S

    Fred – after seeing you mention this last week, I signed up but haven’t seen anything come through about it in the mail. Any idea how long i’ll have to wait?Thanks.

  8. Kenosha_Kid

    Fred, very interesting. You mention the Firefox model, and I can see where you’re going. I think Mozilla is a non-profit organization though (I could be wrong). What is the revenue model for Boxee?

    1. fredwilson

      XMBC is an non-profit effort tooBut firefox makes around $100mm per year in revenues from Google alone

  9. Neil

    I’ve been using this for a few months now, much more frequently with the last version (which brought hulu). This overcame the main weakness of Apple TV for me, which was the lack of a browser – while this isn’t a browser, it gets you access to most of the online content, but in a much more convenient fashion. It may be because I’m using the Apple TV remote, but I do find the largely tree-based menu structure a bit of a pain, combined with some latency issues. I’ve also added some stuff via RSS, which is amazing (although it highlights the lack of content out there). Overall though, this is really worth watching.

    1. J

      Neil I have the same troubles with the menus and latency. Some times I can’t figure out how to just get back to watching the show and out of the menus. Also the time to get into and out of boxee is a little frustrating when you are use to the quick navigation within the menus of the appletv.

  10. David Sonenberg

    I installed Boxee on my Apple TV a few weeks ago. I really like it so far, but since none of my friends are using it yet I haven’t used it to it’s full potential. Considering it’s only in Beta, I think it has a LOT of potential. Good call Fred!

  11. John Sheehan

    Please advise them to never use the ‘word’ ‘automagically’ again.

  12. Chris Dodge

    Congrats on the Boxee investment. I met with Avner last year and I got a preview of what they were up to. It seemed like a very nice UI.

  13. Michael

    Wow thats cool stuff.

  14. Michael

    Cool stuff I can see this has a lot of potential.

  15. Doug Bass

    I’m not sure about the sustainability of this solution. It’s pretty clear that Apple will be embedding OSX with an HDTV manufacturer partner next year which will provide users with access to a native OS and browser directly from their tv sets. It’s also certain that they will enable remote access to the browser and other apps via the iTouch/iPhone remote app. At that point in time, you have a seamless, fully integrated Web TV experience. Where does Boxee fit in or add value in this extremely certain situation.

    1. fredwilson

      DougThat’s trueBut that’s also boxee’s opptyNot every HDTV manufacturer is going to want to go with Apple’s OSSome will want an open source solution like Boxee instead

  16. Philip Baddeley

    From Boxee: “….you may have to wait a few weeks before you receive your invite”. Any chance that readers of your blog (read Fan Club) can be put up the waiting list on the alpha trials or given a separate trial? Of course Hulu is not UK OK! so we cannot join in all the way.

    1. fredwilson

      I will send an invite

    2. fredwilson

      I hate the phrase fan club.I am as much a fan of you phillip as you are of meAnd I just sent you an invitePls let me know what you think

      1. Philip Baddeley

        Invite received. Thanks.

  17. simondodson

    oh i hope this works … i have been waiting for something like this

  18. officiallyrad

    Still waiting on my invite, any chance I could get one too? I just got my mac mini up and running…

    1. fredwilson

      Invite sent

  19. michael

    this is my new favorite tech quote: “you don’t have to mess with the web to watch tv anymore.”that says pretty much everything about the state of our media, including those not mentioned in the quote.

  20. Sam

    I’m probably writing in late…Can I still get an invite?Thanks!

  21. Scott Rubin

    Hey Fred! Can you send an invite? Thanks!

    1. fredwilson

      Invite sent

      1. Scott Rubin

        thanks for the invite but i am on windows. boxee is only available for mac/linux. thats wack.

        1. fredwilson

          That will change very soon

  22. Carter Rabasa

    I left a comment on FF, but should have commented here (as I pray for integration). I would love to give Boxee a spin.

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t visit FF very oftenComments left for me there and one Facebook often never get to meI just sent an invite

      1. Carter Rabasa

        Thanks, Fred!Unlike people who are trying these tools out for fun, I am a graduate student who has chosen (for cost and time-killing reasons) not to own a TV or subscribe to cable. I just have an Internet connection and a handful of home computers, so I’m really excited about Boxee.

  23. MK

    Please send me an invite

    1. fredwilson

      Invite sent

  24. BK

    Thank you for the Invite.

  25. Ed

    If you use boxee, waiting a day to upgrade your Apple TV firmware is a good ideaaccording to boxee http://forum.boxee.tv/showt…

    1. fredwilson

      YupThanks for pointing that out

  26. Wesley Barrow

    Fred, this sounds amazing. Could I get an invite?Thanks,Wesley Barrow

    1. fredwilson

      YupInvite sent

  27. Michael

    I discovered boxee a few days ago myself, looking for an alternative to XBMC. It looks like it has real potential, but I am still waiting for an alpha invitation. Can you help me? Thanks, — ML

    1. fredwilson

      Done!

  28. MensRea

    Fred,Could you possibly send me an invite as well? We are looking to move beyond our tivos at this point.

    1. fredwilson

      Just sent you one

      1. MensRea

        Thank you kindly!Ted

  29. Matthew Warneford

    I’m so excited about this product! Do you have any invites left?Matt

  30. AJ

    Are invites still available? I’m moving into a new house and want to try to just sign up for cable Internet (no TV cable) and get all our TV/movies from services like Boxee.Should be interesting to see if my family accepts it as a replacement…