Boxee For iPad

Our portfolio company Boxee released Boxee For iPad yesterday. I downloaded it on a couple of our iPads around the house today. It's a free app so you can put it on all of your iPads.

Here's Boxee running on our kitchen iPad

Boxee ipad

As you can see, the home screen has three rows. The first is for the videos that are in your Twitter and Facebook streams. The second is for the videos that are in your "watch later" queue (via the awesome Boxee bookmarklet). The third is for featured videos from the Boxee service.

Here's a short video demo of one of the videos on my home screen running on the kitchen iPad:

There are a number of nice apps for aggregating and streaming video on the iPad including Fanhattan and Shelby. But Boxee brings a few new innovations to the world of iPad video.

First, Boxee has a "my media" tab. If you look closely at the top picture on this post, you can see it just to the right of the Home tab on the upper left of the screen. This tab will provide iPad streaming of video files you have on your local network via the Boxee Media Manager, which you can download here and install on all the computers in your home that have video files on them. I know that I wrote yesterday that files are on their way out, and in fact I don't have any local video files of my own, but I am equally sure that there are many of you out there who have large libraries of video files on your network. If you are in that camp, this feature is killer.

The second feature is "experimental" and Boxee CEO Avner Ronen explains it in his post about Boxee For iPad on the Boxee blog:

We’ve also got something from the “wouldn’t it be cool if Boxee could..” department – one of our engineers has been playing around with AirPlay and we’ve included it as an experimental part of this release. When you click on the AirPlay button on your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch you will now see your Boxee Box as one of the target devices. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

With AirPlay you can take any video you have on your iPad and play it on your TV via the Boxee Box. That's super cool and I hope this feature makes it out of Boxee Labs into the core Boxee offering at some point.

That's it for now. Give Boxee For iPad a try and let me know what you think.

#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. RacerRick

    Will Apple try to block Boxee from Airplay?

    1. fredwilson

      I hope not. Its to their advantage that ipads and iPhones can control lots of devices

      1. Aaron Klein

        Sad and ridiculous that’s even a question…

      2. KenHoinsky

        Assuming it doesn’t cannibalize their itunes sales. (Net-net I don’t think it will, but it’s a factor to consider.)Not to mention issues with publishers’ rights and whether Apple stands to lose any goodwill with them by allowing these sorts of devices.Having worked on the side of a media streaming company before (Crunchyroll – An early boxee partner), these issues are never black & white.

  2. JimHirshfield

    Android?

    1. fredwilson

      Next I presume. Ipad is the dominant tablet platform right now

      1. kenberger

        I volunteer to test the Android tablet version. Must have!Although actually, all I want is the PC version to get some love again.

  3. Dave W Baldwin

    Congratulations!  Push that Airplay!

  4. Aaronclaytondunn

    Really? I can put it on ALL my iPads?  Thank God, I was worried I would have to choose between putting it on the iPad I keep in the kitchen and the one I keep in my Maserati. But since it’s a free app, I guess I can afford to put it on both. Hilarious first world problem.  See this link for more!–http://t.co/xy4N1MfJust kidding, I love your blog.

    1. fredwilson

      I predict we will all have ipads like we all have computers. There are five of us in our family. We are trending toward five ipads

      1. RichardF

        I predict there will be more Amazon tablets than iPads

        1. Matt A. Myers

          I like tinkering to see what my websites look like when I go into Apple stores – but for what I plan to use a tablet size thing in the future, I don’t need what the iPad offers.

      2. Fernando Gutierrez

        Not bad for an apple-hater-android-fanboy 🙂

      3. andyidsinga

        <bragware>Years ago when I worked on the Intel web tablet 🙂 </bragware> …we built 5 buttons across the top of the device that were for different users in the household to have their own personal configurations… basically multi-user login for the device.I really wish the ipad had this .. (ps: image of intel web tablet here so you can see the buttons : http://newsroom.intel.com/c… )

      4. ShanaC

        No android-pad?  And will they have an android app?

      5. Gamehenge

        i think this reply makes the original comment even funnier.

      6. JamesHRH

        My 9 YO made it 3 in our house and her 6 YO brother is on our tails to make it 4.Agree totally. My daughter got the 2 & we all envy her!

  5. Pablo Lema

    looks awesome and a good competitor to Plex and the other similar apps.  Been a Boxee fan forever since the early XBMC-port days.  Question, does the Media Manager work with Linux or is it just Windows and OS X?

    1. Pablo Lema

      ah just noticed that it the media manager doesn’t exist for Linux yet.  Sadness as my HTPC is a full Ubuntu server running Boxee on my projector.  Having Boxee stream from that server to my mobile devices would be icing on the cake.  For now I’ll have to stick with Airvideo Server.Everyone should have Boxee installed though.  Easier to setup than XBMC, Media Portal and the rest of the options.

  6. Joe Lallouz

    I’ve been giving it a go and it is super nice. You can’t stream video from your home network over the internet to your iPad (which you CAN do with AirVideo). But the interface is clean and intuitive. I’ve been waiting for this one since I saw Bijan post pics of a pre-release version a few months back.

  7. Raj

    I don’t get it.  I installed Boxee on my iPad yesterday.  It feels like a big departure from the original proposition of disrupting old broadcast media using the Internet.I don’t watch locally stored videos on my iPad at home.  I may stream from YouTube while at home, but being able to play videos stored on my local network on my iPad while at home isn’t very valuable to me.In most cases while playing locally stored videos at home on my TV I find myself using VLC because it’s lighter weight and good enough.So the iPad app is aggregating videos from my social streams?  That’s moderately more valuable, but not by much.Just my candid feedback.  

    1. fredwilson

      they will be porting the content on the boxee box to the ipad over time. the content owners are slow to move to anything new

  8. Matt A. Myers

    1/3rd of space used for integrated advertising – love it. 😉

  9. Matt A. Myers

    I think your thumbnail is awesome;TomNewTon

    1. fredwilson

      me too

  10. DerikJenskinson

    QUESTION:  What does being a “portfolio” company for a VC firm mean?

    1. amishshah

      A company that they have invested in (it’s part of their investment portfolio).

  11. amishshah

    Can this AirPlay feature push to an AppleTV?

  12. KenHoinsky

    No offense, but I don’t want to hear you doing tech reviews, Fred… I (and I think many other people) are here for your insights into VC-dom :)That being said, keep up the good work.

    1. RichardF

      This is about VC-dom.  Fred’s pimping a portfolio company.  The only criticism I have is that it should be posted on Feature Friday.

    2. fredwilson

      it’s not a review. it’s a “word from our sponsor”

      1. JLM

        You have to be a certain age to get this, sorry.  This was my late Mother’s favorite joke.Why are little dogs good at presenting the news?Because they have “wee paws” for station identification.Get it?  Funny, huh?

        1. markslater

          OT – JLM i had a sign made in the office with one of your quotes! I’ll snap a pick of it when it goes up and send it to you…….its the “in the world there are 3 types of people….those who start fires, those who tend to the fires and those who like to piss on them….avoid the last” !

          1. andyidsinga

            Mark – im writing that on my whiteboard tomorrow morning first thing 🙂 …will give props to JLM too.

        2. fredwilson

          you are great at reminding all of the stuff i forgot about my childhood! “this is a test of the emergency broadcasting system. it is just a test”

  13. andyidsinga

    downloaded boxee ..but will have to try it “later” when I have time to sign up for an account …and yada yada yada they need an non-signup anonymous mode :).

  14. Conrad Ross Schulman

    Boxee will only get bigger..1: Boxee’s app store will grow exponentially competing with gaming systems and media players. Tip to Boxee: Please provide an easier sdk/tutorial on how to create boxee applications. I woud like to develop yet the resources are not clear enough. 

  15. Conrad Ross Schulman

    Boxee will only get bigger..1: Boxee’s app store will grow exponentially competing with gaming systems and media players. Tip to Boxee: Please provide an easier sdk/tutorial on how to create boxee applications. I woud like to develop yet the resources are not clear enough. 

    1. AdamJonson

      I paid $23.88 for an i Pad 2 32-GB and my girlfriend loves her PanasonicLumiix GF 1 Camera that we got for $ 38.41 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. Iwill never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially whenI also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $ 635 which only cost me $ 61.74to buy. Here is the website we use to get it al from, http://EgoWin.com

  16. Ryan from GroupTweet

    The numerous DLNA apps on my EVO, stream video and audio to a number of different devices on my network at a much higher quality than my iPad.The most robust streaming app I’ve found on the iPad is ZappoTV.  It can actually stream content from YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, etc to my WDTV. However as mentioned, iMediaShare on my EVO kills it in terms of video quality, plus it has a ton more content than ZappoTV. Is Boxee’s content really limited to only whats “Featured” and content from your social feed?  What happened to all the content available from the desktop Boxee application? Also, having to download Boxee media manager to get content from a computer on my network is a pain when most other options work out of the box with Win7.  Bookmarklet actually looks promising, but I’ll have to do some more digging before I can comment.Are there any other paid iPad apps out there better than ZappoTV to get Youtube etc streaming from an iPad to a DLNA device?

    1. fredwilson

      look for all that stuff to show up in short order. they need permission from the content providers

  17. Francesca Krihely

    This is such a good fit for Boxee’s model, which hardware-gnostic. I’m saving $ to build my own Boxee AND get an iPad, so this is a good start, yea? So many hardware and service companies are taking their stuff to the these mobile devices, but, as you point out, Boxee is killing it with the user interface!

  18. Dan Buell

    Funny to see Fred touting an iPad application when he’s usually complaining about this “evil” company and their lack of that busted standard, Flash… App does look really cool!!!

    1. fredwilson

      i’m so confused

  19. Unsecured Business Loans

    I actually calculate most people is going to all of currently have ipads for instance everyone currently have pc’s. There are actually all five among us in the relatives. We’re also trending for all five ipads.

  20. Trademark Application

    Probably the biggest news for me isn’t the iPad app at all — it’s Airplay support for the Boxee Box. This is something I’ve been hoping for ever since our own Erica Sadun started to help reverse engineer the AirPlay protocol, eventually leading to her AirPlay receiver software for OS X BananaTV.

  21. Tracey Jackson

    Love your blogs Fred. I am learning so much. Just signed up for Boxee. Now trying to figure it out.

  22. Rick Wingender

    Fred – Any plans for Boxee on the Droid?

  23. theschnaz

    I’m surprised Boxee for iPad doesn’t have leanback mode.  (leanback = the next video starts after the one you’re watching stops.)I think it’s a killer feature.  I wonder when they’ll add it.