Curious to see why the financial numbers don't look so great for Boxee, but if this is true, I think it's a super smart move for Samsung. They're trying to push smart TVs in the living room, but those haven't taken off yet. Grabbing a company that's making some of the best living room hardware makes a lot of sense.
Grabbing a company that's making some of the best living room hardware makes a lot of sense.
Have you used a V2 Boxee box? Its honestly almost unusable and underpowered from both a software and hardware perspective, even the remote feels cheap. Their D-Link V1 box was a significantly better but they didn't make it, it cost twice as much as a Roku and was only a hundred bucks less then an Xbox which they couldn't compete with. So they tried to take on Roku on the low end and flubbed it badly.
The one thing boxee has always done better then anyone else is their XBMC overlay for playing back local (or network attached) media. This is also where Samsung lacks, if anything this should be where Boxee's talent can play a part.
I love my little Boxee v1 box. I may be a developer and I may love technology, but I utterly despise anything remotely related to hi-fi, and I want my stuff as plug-and-play as possible. My supposed "SmartTV" from Samsung sucked (aside from the iPlayer integration, which worked really well) -- but the boxee v1 worked a treat. Plug. Scan. Play.
The QWERTY remote was icing on the cake, to be honest.
Glad to see Samsung taking over; maybe now Netflix will work in the UK on it.
I wish I could say I had the same experience with the box. The firmwares were consistently buggy and never quite worked well.
By far the two most frustrating aspects being the forced updates (which were often more buggy or broke features) and the lockups while in sleep. There was nothing more annoying than having to get up and hard reboot the thing every time I wanted to watch something.
Once the Pi and raspbmc became a viable alternative I quickly replaced my boxee boxes because, while not bug free by any means, they're much closer to "just working" than the boxee box ever was.
The one good thing I can say about the boxee box, though, is that its remote was a real treat. That thing worked like a charm.
Shame to hear that about V2, I didn't know it existed. My D-Link Boxee box is frustrating, but lovely. There's a huge list of things I'd change about it if I was creating it (from a software point of view that is), but overall I prefer it to any of the alternatives I've seen, the remote is great, and I'll keep using it for a while. But sad to think that it most likely won't be seeing new software updates (I presume).
I have a D-Link Boxee, and it just got less and less stable over time. I switched to XBMC (openelec) on a Raspberry Pi a while back and haven't looked back.
As a bonus, XBMC interfaces with your TV's remote over hdmi, so you won't even need an extra remote, very wife / gf friendly.
Software in smart TVs need drastic changes. I won't go over the problems with the ui right now as I feel they are all pretty obvious, but what I think needs to get pushed is the connection between TVs and phones. Samsung is already starting to do this by having IR blasters on the galaxy phones and having ways to use to use the phone keyboards as a replacement for the on screen ones but it can go so much farther.
For example, parental controls should be available through your phone. You should be able to see what your kid is watching and also force them to watch something else "remotely", even if you're on vacation. or maybe they are staying up too late and you turn the TV off for them.
There are many other ideas but that sounds like one of the more useful ones as opposed to being more gimmicky (like gesture commands).
Totally agree. Samsung makes great hardware, but consistently fails at putting decent firmware/software on it. I've had numerous Samsung smartphones and all have performed so much better with pure Android vs. the Samsung "improved" Android.
Their TVs seem to be getting better at least. Some previous Samsung TV's I've owned have been atrocious in the UI department.
Comments
Curious to see why the financial numbers don't look so great for Boxee, but if this is true, I think it's a super smart move for Samsung. They're trying to push smart TVs in the living room, but those haven't taken off yet. Grabbing a company that's making some of the best living room hardware makes a lot of sense.
Grabbing a company that's making some of the best living room hardware makes a lot of sense.
Have you used a V2 Boxee box? Its honestly almost unusable and underpowered from both a software and hardware perspective, even the remote feels cheap. Their D-Link V1 box was a significantly better but they didn't make it, it cost twice as much as a Roku and was only a hundred bucks less then an Xbox which they couldn't compete with. So they tried to take on Roku on the low end and flubbed it badly.
The one thing boxee has always done better then anyone else is their XBMC overlay for playing back local (or network attached) media. This is also where Samsung lacks, if anything this should be where Boxee's talent can play a part.
I love my little Boxee v1 box. I may be a developer and I may love technology, but I utterly despise anything remotely related to hi-fi, and I want my stuff as plug-and-play as possible. My supposed "SmartTV" from Samsung sucked (aside from the iPlayer integration, which worked really well) -- but the boxee v1 worked a treat. Plug. Scan. Play.
The QWERTY remote was icing on the cake, to be honest.
Glad to see Samsung taking over; maybe now Netflix will work in the UK on it.
I wish I could say I had the same experience with the box. The firmwares were consistently buggy and never quite worked well.
By far the two most frustrating aspects being the forced updates (which were often more buggy or broke features) and the lockups while in sleep. There was nothing more annoying than having to get up and hard reboot the thing every time I wanted to watch something.
Once the Pi and raspbmc became a viable alternative I quickly replaced my boxee boxes because, while not bug free by any means, they're much closer to "just working" than the boxee box ever was.
The one good thing I can say about the boxee box, though, is that its remote was a real treat. That thing worked like a charm.
Agreed, and for the price, really hoping that XBMC's stability issues on the Ouya get worked out.
Shame to hear that about V2, I didn't know it existed. My D-Link Boxee box is frustrating, but lovely. There's a huge list of things I'd change about it if I was creating it (from a software point of view that is), but overall I prefer it to any of the alternatives I've seen, the remote is great, and I'll keep using it for a while. But sad to think that it most likely won't be seeing new software updates (I presume).
I have a D-Link Boxee, and it just got less and less stable over time. I switched to XBMC (openelec) on a Raspberry Pi a while back and haven't looked back.
As a bonus, XBMC interfaces with your TV's remote over hdmi, so you won't even need an extra remote, very wife / gf friendly.
Samsung doesn't need help building hardware. They need help building software. I suspect that's why they bought Boxee.
Software in smart TVs need drastic changes. I won't go over the problems with the ui right now as I feel they are all pretty obvious, but what I think needs to get pushed is the connection between TVs and phones. Samsung is already starting to do this by having IR blasters on the galaxy phones and having ways to use to use the phone keyboards as a replacement for the on screen ones but it can go so much farther.
For example, parental controls should be available through your phone. You should be able to see what your kid is watching and also force them to watch something else "remotely", even if you're on vacation. or maybe they are staying up too late and you turn the TV off for them.
There are many other ideas but that sounds like one of the more useful ones as opposed to being more gimmicky (like gesture commands).
Totally agree. Samsung makes great hardware, but consistently fails at putting decent firmware/software on it. I've had numerous Samsung smartphones and all have performed so much better with pure Android vs. the Samsung "improved" Android.
Their TVs seem to be getting better at least. Some previous Samsung TV's I've owned have been atrocious in the UI department.