Lost On Boxee
The team at Boxee has been scrambling all week to get ABC.com working in Boxee and today they finally were able to release a new version that does just that. The news is on the Boxee blog. CEO Avner Ronen announced:
Of course, the frantic effort by the team was all about getting ABC on Boxee in time for the new season of Lost. They missed that goal by a day, but since most people who watch on the web time shift, not all was lost (pun intended).
Once again, Boxee did all of this without any help from the networks. As Bob Lefsetz said on his blog yesterday about Boxee:
What's great about Boxee is that they maintain the network's player experience including all the monetization. So this is pure distribution goodness for the networks and while they may not be helping Boxee do all of this, they are certainly benefiting from it.
So if you are a Lost fan, you can now watch it on Boxee. You can download the Mac version here.
Comments (Archived):
Don’t forget about the Windows Boxee which I finally was able to sign up for today! Good stuff 🙂
At Streaming Media West, ABC’s digital leader Albert Cheng said there was going to be an “open ABC” initiative, somehow opening up at least parts of code or an APi to folks who wanted to create new ways of using the ABC player (3D search visual search was one suggestion he gave). Today, an ABC digital exec was flummoxed by the suggestion. Not sure if I misunderstood Albert, or the initiative hasn’t taken off. But thought of it cuz, in a way, Boxee folks did what they needed to without ABC making anything “open.”
the lesson here is if you put it on the web, you are making it open for people who are strong technologiststhe print media learned the same lesson with google
I agree completely here that strong technologist can open up anything that’s there on web – even if the data is not structured. Fred can you point out some successful startups who have done just this – “presenting other web services in a way that is easy to absorb for customers”?Can these startups be sustainable (there are just too many sources and each one of them upgrades continuously)?What are the business models which one should look for when they start such kind of ventures?
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been saying for awhile now that functionality will come to TV and other video that has been available for text. Universal searchability (of images and audio) with image recognition, ability to lift pieces and cut and paste into other applications, mashups and the like, ability to move among devices whether copyright owner has any say, and so on. I think all of this will come — we’re well into Beta phase on some of it — and it will be a real shock to the system for much of the TV/video industry.
Rock on, Boxee!
How does one get an invite to the Windows alpha? I’m not a Mac user, and Boxee failed miserably on my Ubuntu Virtual Machine (VirtualBox). I really want to try this software out and my main desktop is Windows Vista x64
Sign up for a mac download and get a userid and then email me and I’ll send you a url for the windows alpha
Fred..sell the Feb goog 300 puts ..you’ll be buying the stock at around 293 if the stock closes below 300…these expire on Feb 20..
What’s great about Boxee is that it is not clear if they are working with content owners… and now ABC streaming isn’t working… coincidence? 🙂
Nope. It¹s not a coincidence.
Appears to be a deliberate take down by ABC, so I would argue that my assertion they are ripping streams was, appropriate.
It’s a lot more complicated than that, and I think you’ll see somethinginteresting come of this partnership soon