Turning the TV into a 'social-media center'
Using Boxee's service, users can access their songs, videos, and photos on a TV.
(Credit: Boxee)LOS ANGELES--Boxee wants to give Steve Ballmer what he wants.
The Microsoft CEO complained recently how unsocial the television set is compared to the Web.
"My son will stay up all night basically playing Xbox Live with friends that are in various parts of the world," Ballmer told The Washington Post. "And yet I can't sit there in front of the TV and have the same kind of a social interaction around my favorite basketball game or golf match."
Boxee, a start-up that will launch a test version of the service on Monday, has plans to enable users to transfer their digital content from computers to their TVs and eventually turn the TV set into a "social-media center," CEO Avner Ronen said.
Sure, lots of other companies, including Apple and Microsoft, are trying to tie the PC to the TV. The difference is that Boxee is relying on the creativity of developers to build the kind of applications that consumers want. The company emerged from the XBMC project, an open-source effort to turn Xboxes into media centers.
Boxee's open-source software already lets users to share reviews, songs, video, and photos with friends. Executives expect that one day, Boxee users will move their Facebook content to Boxee and turn their TV into a hub for communications, social-networking, and media.
Nonetheless, the service still doesn't have an elegant answer to hooking up the TV to the Web. A user must connect them through a cable. That means hauling the laptop and plugging it into the TV every time you want to use Boxee. This is "clunky," Ronen acknowledges, but the company intends to eventually sign deals that would place them on a set-top box.
The service works only with systems running Linux and Mac OS X, but it will soon be compatible with Windows. NewTeeVee was first to report on the Boxee launch.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg.
I appreciate your response and opinion. My statements are actually not opinions, but also based on fact. I am sorry that I cannot share the source due to NDA restrictions that I wilfully respect. If you disregard what I am saying as only my opinion, that is understandable because I cannot cite a source and I can only offer personal anonymous internet poster assurance that what I was saying is not simply based on opinion.
I actually said 'People in general', which should have said to you that I was not making a 100% sweeping generalization. Yes, some people do want this, but the market is very small. You find it very useful and that is great, but you are in the minority by a very vast margin.
You can already do everything that you mentioned without any new kind of system, and I was actually being supportive of the notion that there is room for more such devices. The 'foolish' comment is directed toward a business plan that hinges on the concept of a television being the centre of a social media experience, not toward an individual who enjoys the benefits of web access in their living room. This company feels that their product will be the "social-media center", and "a hub for communications, social-networking, and media". Of course they feel this, they are staking their company around the concept. What Boxee is trying to do is nothing new either, not even in the sense of open source. Check out MythTV. Not that it is bad, there is always room for more, and always room for improvements. It's just not new.
Thanks for the links. I have examined several of those surveys in the past. There's nothing there that nullifies anything I am saying.