Samsung buys Apple TV competitor Boxee for $30 million

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  • Reply 21 of 57
    blackbookblackbook Posts: 1,361member
    Well this will be a waste if 30mil when Appke moves on and transforms the TV market.
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  • Reply 22 of 57

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by rain View Post


    Well, it's more of a guess.


    Out of the 15+ people I know with Apple TV's - every single one of them jailbroken and running Boxee or XBMC.


    I have people asking me all the time if I know how to do that for them as well.


     


    Apple's love affair with restrictions, DRM, and tech nerfing - render the ATV almost useless out of the box.


    I understand why they do it... but man, imagine if you took it out of the box and it just worked... with everything.



    I used iTunes to rip/encode all my CDs to ALAC. I just run all my DVDs and BRs through Handbrake and drop them into iTunes. Once the initial rips are completed, you can just queue up the encodes in HB and let 'em go. Imho, much better to have the smaller encoded files than the full rips, especially as your library grows.

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  • Reply 23 of 57
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    ifij775 wrote: »
    They raised $28.5M and sold for $30? That doesn't sounds like a big win for anyone with equity.

    It gets worse. AI have reported the story wrong - $30mil was the asking price. Indications are that Samsung paid below this figure and that they owners made a loss.
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  • Reply 24 of 57
    isteelersisteelers Posts: 738member
    I didn't know anyone was still using Boxee. Most I have heard are using Plex or XMBC in their jail broken ATV2s.
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  • Reply 25 of 57
    libertyforalllibertyforall Posts: 1,418member
    Well, Boxee has a lot of content, especially the FREE kind, that Apple TV should have had YEARS AGO!

    Smart move Samsung, and Apple may get a run for its money. Too bad Boxee sold out though.

    On the flipside, Boxee is just a glorified XBMC and is based on it with some extras bolted-on, so it is NOT THAT SPECIAL...
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  • Reply 26 of 57
    irelandireland Posts: 17,802member
    Holy embarrassment Batman.
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  • Reply 27 of 57
    herbapouherbapou Posts: 2,228member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DaveMcM76 View Post


    I could never get on with boxee but I run xbmc on my jailbroken ATV2 all the time as I've got a couple of hundred ripped DVDs (with the physical DVDs in a box in my loft) sat on my ReadyNAS and served up via UPNP.... 


     


    still holding out hope for an ATV3 jailbreak at some point, but definitely not holding my breath this long after release.



     


    I rip all of my DvD and BR too, but I converted them to .m4v files with handbrakes. I used Identify to get the metadata then I dragged everything into itunes. So no need to used XBMC in my case.

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  • Reply 28 of 57
    chris_cachris_ca Posts: 2,543member
    davemcm76 wrote: »
    but I run xbmc on my jailbroken ATV2 all the time as I've got a couple of hundred ripped DVDs
    You mean you run xbmc because you like it, not because you need it for ripped DVDs.
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  • Reply 29 of 57

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jkichline View Post



    I thought Samsung had hobbies like stealing intellectual property.


    Don't worry... Boxee is good at stealing.  They stole the software for the Boxee Box and then illegally blocked users from using it the way the GPL requires.  They admitted it too... and then said, "we wanted money" as their excuse.


     


    The details are at http://www.infinityoverzero.com/bbox/


     


    There was no resolution to this issue and now everybody's BBox is (still) a useless hunk of garbage, solely at the will of the company to steal and keep what they stole.

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  • Reply 30 of 57
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ifij775 View Post



    They raised $28.5M and sold for $30? That doesn't sounds like a big win for anyone with equity.


     


    Sounds like they burnt through their investment rounds and were nowhere near an inevitable IPO, sold they paid of their investors and washed their hands of the project.

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  • Reply 31 of 57
    suddenly newtonsuddenly newton Posts: 13,819member
    Apple's history of starting as a small business and growing into a big corporation seems quaint in today's tech world. Now it's create a little product and sell the company to the highest bidder ASAP.

    There's still Facebook.
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  • Reply 32 of 57
    curtis hannahcurtis hannah Posts: 1,834member
    This sounds like they did not want more competition and wanted a easy way for set top box designs.
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  • Reply 33 of 57
    davemcm76davemcm76 Posts: 268member
    chris_ca wrote: »
    You mean you run xbmc because you like it, not because you need it for ripped DVDs.

    I could in theory have put the ripped DVDs into my iTunes library on my Mac mini so I could watch them onto the Apple TV using home sharing but my readynas has a lot more space on it (4x 2Tb vs 500Gb) so to watch them from the readynas I need a upnp capable client on the atv and xbmc is my client of choice...

    Also my readynas is always switched on and available on the network where my Mac mini isn't so the convenience of having them instantly available all the time without having to go upstairs, turn on the mac and wait for it to boot and iTunes to load bore being able to watch was another reason for putting them on the nas rather than the mac.
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  • Reply 34 of 57
    chris_cachris_ca Posts: 2,543member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DaveMcM76 View Post





    I could in theory have put the ripped DVDs into my iTunes library on my Mac mini so I could watch them onto the Apple TV


    It works in reality, not only theory.


     


    Quote:


    Also my readynas is always switched on and available on the network where my Mac mini isn't



    and this is because you choose to do it this way, not because you cannot. My Mac mini is on all the time and ready to watch my RIP'd DVDs thru the AppleTV.


     


    Quote:


    being able to watch was another reason for putting them on the nas rather than the mac.



    Set the iTunes library on the NAS, leave the Mac mini on and that's all you need to do.


    Again, you use xbmc because you want to, not because you can't do it the "regular" iTunes way

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  • Reply 35 of 57
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    The million part got cut off when I was reading....i thought Samsung picked up a Boxee for $30. And was going to steal everything and make their own copy.
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  • Reply 36 of 57
    v5vv5v Posts: 1,357member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DaveMcM76 View Post



    [...] to watch them from the readynas I need a upnp capable client


     


    Why? All my rips are on a separate drive and iTunes plays them just fine. Just drag 'em in to iTunes from whatever device they're on.

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  • Reply 37 of 57
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Watch, Samsung will make their own tiny, rounded square box and sue Apple for patent infringement. :mad::no:

    1000
    1000
    1000
    1000
    This idiocy makes me furious.
    rain wrote: »
    How many AppleTV's are running Boxee?
    Answer: most

    How many lies has rain told? Answer: All of them :rolleyes:
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  • Reply 38 of 57
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member


    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, not Boxee. I love my Boxee, why couldn't someone else buy them. I'm so sad right now.

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  • Reply 39 of 57
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Watch, Samsung will make their own tiny, rounded square box and sue Apple for patent infringement. :mad::no:

    This idiocy makes me furious.

    Those are pictures of rokus and not boxee.

    This idiocy makes me amused. Same old, same old. For you to castigate rain for lying in the same post you mislead with these unrelated images is classic.
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  • Reply 40 of 57
    solomansoloman Posts: 228member
    nht wrote: »
    Those are pictures of rokus and not boxee.

    This idiocy makes me amused. Same old, same old. For you to castigate rain for lying in the same post you mislead with these unrelated images is classic.

    400

    Because this pic would've gone against the point he was trying to make.
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