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Boxee Sold To Samsung
New submitter TheRecklessWanderer writes "Boxee, manufacturer of The Boxee Box and Boxee DVR as well as developer of the Boxee software, has been sold to Samsung. Boxee has had a hard time adapting to the quickly changing environment where appliances have converged with televisions (morphing into Smart TVs), and I'm sure Samsung is looking to integrate the software in some form or another into their smart TVs."
Cloud, shmoud. I wonder how many times we see variations of this over the next few years?
I'm in the market for a new TV. Since I'm very, very old, I'm upgrading from a 25-year-old CRT TV, and I don't think I care much about 4K. I'm prone to VR sickness, so I don't want 3D, either.
I realize that I probably can't count on my next TV lasting 25 years. But why on Earth would I want my media box built into my television, so that following the curve of technological advancement means pitching the entire huge TV into the waste stream? A media box has a single, well-defined interface to the TV -- one cord, a few if you want to get fancy -- and occupies not very many cubic inches of space. What's the advantage of integrating it into the TV, other than increasing the TV manufacturer's profit margin?
Someone upthread issued flamebait about MS Media Center, and I'm surprised the flamebait for Apple TV didn't appear even sooner. To me, buying a "Smart TV" is buying into another ecosystem just like them, only with a much tinier R&D budget, probably a less-polished UI, and much dimmer prospects for long-term support.
I'm of the opinion that a smart TV is a really stupid idea.
Starting with the fact that I don't trust the vendors (not to spy on me, not to be incompetent at security, not to be douchebags), moving on to the fact that my expected lifespan for the display is longer than the software is going to be useful, and moving on to the fact that they'll eventually try to dictate how I can watch TV and feed that information back to someone else ... I just don't see this as being a good thing for me, the consumer.
My current TV (a nice 55" LCD) is used as a monitor only -- my amplifier feeds it a video signal, which it gets from one of several devices. It doesn't participate in channel selection, volume, or anything other than knowing which video signal it needs.
The way manufacturers are going, any device which isn't a full-on computer is never going to be connected to a network, and won't be bought if it requires that. Not my DVD player, not my video game, not my TV. At least not without a firewall rule which prevents it from getting to the internet.
Because they keep demonstrating they're not trustworthy.
I'm not prepared to have some asshole corporation sneak updates onto my TV, or randomly update the EULA saying they're allowed to do whatever bullshit they've come up with this week, or generally act like they own the device when I paid for it.
These smart devices mostly just seem to give the corporations more control over stuff we paid for. Which I'm sure they think is awesome, but I'll pass.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It seems to work well enough for the purposes, and avoids the XBMC issue of needing a general purpose computing device in the living room.
Unfortunately, it swaps it for having to run your desktop PC and your media player at the same time. That's fine for people whose storage is connected directly to their PC anyway, but for those with NAS it's wasteful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
FTA: "Boxee has had a hard time adapting to the quickly changing environment where appliances have converged with televisions (morphing into Smart TVs), and I'm sure Samsung is looking to integrate the software in some form or another into their smart TVs."
No. Boxee shunned the very people who championed their product, locking down their previously open software, based on already-open software, and mating it to poor hardware. Boxee abandoned all that made them Boxee to begin with. (I can't seem to find the multi-page comment thread from Boxee's blog when they announced EOL for the still-buggy Boxee-box - maybe someone can get it [FIXED].)
For those who aren't in the loop, a simple (and not yet fully exploited) "hack" was found: http://boxeeplus.com/