“The challenge for the cable industry is how they grapple with the fact that this is in some way a substitution for some of the things they do,” he said.Īt the very least, Boxee may spur consumer electronics companies to move faster to bring the Internet to their devices. Ronen also shared what he called his “politically incorrect” vision of how the Internet would upset the television business by giving people on-demand access to the array of Web content. There is a lot about Boxee that doesn’t work, like the business model, which is really nonexistent right now,” said the executive, who did not want to be named while criticizing another company.Īvner Ronen, Boxee’s 33-year-old founder and chief executive, said the company could make money after it built up its user base, perhaps by licensing its software to consumer electronics companies like TV manufacturers which are clearly not experts at creating elegant interfaces or simple remote controls. “The real money in this business is made by serving the masses. But he noted that the company’s business prospects appeared limited. One executive at a major cable provider said the Boxee service was intriguing and garnering an impressive amount of attention. Several cable companies declined to comment on their impressions of Boxee. Then they told their colleagues, who swarmed Boxee’s booth over the next three days of the show. On the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month in Las Vegas, two dozen chief technology officers from the country’s largest cable operators visited the company’s demonstration area. The buzz around Boxee is creating ripples of curiosity among the people who have built billion-dollar businesses delivering television and movies into the home the old-fashioned way. The most ardent Boxee fanatics almost all of its 200,000 early adopters seem to have turned into online evangelists for the company then connect their computers to their living room televisions. Unlike the increasingly long and convoluted channel directories on most cable and satellite systems, Boxee offers a well-organized directory, which can be navigated using the remote controls that now ship with most computers. A version of Boxee for Windows PCs is being tested among a limited group of users.īoxee gives users a single interface to access all the photos, video and music on their hard drives, along with a wide range of television shows, movies and songs from sites like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, CNN.com and CBS.com. The software, which is free and available for download at works on Mac and Linux computers, and on Apple’s set-top box, Apple TV. ![]() Services like Boxee, that allow users choice, are the future of television.” “Most people my age would like to just pay for the channels they want, but cable refuses to give us that option. “Boxee has allowed me to replace cable with no remorse,” said Jef Holbrook, a 27-year-old actor in Columbus, Ga., who recently downloaded the Boxee software to the $600 Mac Mini he has connected to his television.
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