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Boxee TV's Unlimited Cloud-based DVR Holds Users Hostage To Monthly Fees
An anonymous reader writes "Boxee has announced the game-changing Boxee TV, offering live streaming TV via two on-board tuners and an industry-first 'No Limit' DVR service that allows users to record as much TV content as they want, and access it from virtually anywhere. The problem is that the unit, which records directly to the cloud, does not allow recording to a local drive, meaning users are stuck with Boxee for as long as they want to access their stored content — potentially hundreds or thousands of hours – to the tune of $14.99 per month until Boxee ups the ante. CEPro.com suggests, 'I suspect Boxee is offering unlimited storage to make users especially beholden to them. The more content you have, the less likely you are to drop the service.'"
With the exception of Tivo, I've yet to see any of these new DVR's I keep hearing about lately even mention if they work with cablecards or switched digital video. If not, what the hell would I buy one for?!? My cableco and all of the satellite networks encrypt pretty much ALL their channels now (and my cableco uses SDV extensively too). WTF good does a DVR do me if all I can get on it are a handful of over-the-air channels?
And as far as connecting to online services, big fucking deal. My Xbox, TV, and even blu-ray player already do that. And even if this wasn't a standard feature on pretty much everything sold today (pretty sure it will be built into my next refrigerator too), I could buy a Roku box for $60 that will do that.
Can someone please tell me what market these things are aimed at (or if any of them beside Tivo *do* actually support cablecards and SDV)?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Most people have dreadful upload rates anyway ; the asymmetric connections we receive are very much tailored for us to be consumers, not servers.
I'll lay dollars to donuts that it doesn't upload what you record - they just have a master server which records *everything* and your Boxee just sets a row in a database that tells it what you asked it to record. This way they can offer "unlimited" storage - they just retain a single copy of each program that users record, and look to see whether they should offer it to you based on what you "recorded".
No doubt they hope this gets around the legal limitations that have been cropping up recently with other parties offering store-and-forward services.
How is this different than any other cloud storage provider, with the exception that the DVR content remains "at Boxee" and can't be copied?
This is just like any other subscription service, IMO. Why does everything have to be some damned sinister all the time?
It forgets to mention why I'm supposed to be outraged, or upset, or concerned, or... feel anything at all about this.
Ok, so Boxee deletes your recording if you stop paying. So what? Who cares? Don't sign up if that bothers you.
Comment of the year
If the device has to go through your own network, can't you just redirect the upload address to one of your own choosing?
Holding users hostage? Jesus, things are getting desperate in these tough economic times.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
OK,
About a year and a half ago, I received an offer to store unlimited numbers of MP3s on Amazon Cloud services. I was under the understanding that this would be good for the duration of my account, a perk of being an early adopter of Amazon Cloud Player.
Then last month, I got a nasty email saying that my "trial" was over, that I was 20 GB over the new limit (200 "songs") and that I would have to pay every month for the service to keep the songs.
That's why no one should sign up w/ Boxee assuming their unlimited offer will always be there. One day they're going to wake up and either suffer more money or lose content.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Why you gotta be so mean to Boxxy?
It's all about framing. You say that, and I say "WTF good does cable/satellite TV do me, if I can't watch it on a DVR?"
I record OTA shows; that's about half my TV. The advertisers who pay to run ads during those shows, have some (though not all, I'll admit) of their ads seen. The advertisers who pay to run ads during shows that are only transmitted encrypted, are never seen because I watch all that stuff through ad-free torrents. (So if you have an ad to run, make sure you place your order with someone who can actually show your ad to people -- i.e. not cable or satellite channels.)
Cablecard is irrelevant, because no half-decent DVR will ever have the capacity to work with Cablecard. It's illegal and a contract violation to work with Cablecard while not sucking. Ergo, it's a negative bullet point on a DVR feature list, which tells everyone the DVR is crippled. Why would anyone say their product sucks?
If you are frustrated by the lack of tools that work with your cableco, there is an answer: cancel your subscription. Stop paying them. If they ever decide they want your money, they will step forward and promise a plaintext service. Then everyone (viewers, cablecos, advertisers) will win. For now, the time is not right, because you're still paying them. You lose, advertisers lose, and cableco wins.
unless the box from your cable company has multiple outputs for each tuner, you'll be limited to recording a single program at a time.
I think cable companies just want customers to pay to rent more boxes in order to record more simultaneous channels.
It's like a bad hack to adapt 20th century TV schedules into 21st century content distribution. Why not just get rid of the stupid schedules completely?
Three reasons:
Normal use of service base commerce.
You have unlimited storage. Storage isn't free, unlimited means you may be storing a lot of stuff. So after you stop paying what options do you have.
1. Download you stuff... If that is an option you are going to be paying a lot of money for what? Old TV Shows?
2. They will offer all there stuff for free. Sure as a customer is is a good deal, however that means there is an infrastructure for you to access your old stuff. Now to offset they will need to either advertise.
3. One time lump storage sum. Still it goes down to it is a freakin TV show.
You are paying for a service. Once you are no longer paying for the service, you loose it. There are far greater problems with the economy then a company not offering services to non-paying members. Especially for just recorded TV shows.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I was an enthusiastic user of Boxee in their early days and ran it on top of Ubuntu. But the basically gave the finger to the entire community. I also bought a Boxee Box as I thought it could be a cheap way to easily stream movies off my main XBMC box. It's not good for that, either. File scraping is a nightmare. They add nothing to XBMC and, as a matter of fact, take a lot of stuff out that makes XBMC terrific. For instance Boxee's file scraping isn't good for anything other than straight mainstream viewers. If you like anime then you're SOL. You can only use their scraper.
There is *nothing* out there even remotely close to the quality of regular XBMC. When they get their Android version perfected there is going to be a flood of cheap XBMC boxes base don Android that really will be high quality. Boxee is not the way to go.