Stealing Boxee's niche

[exte34]

I keep hearing a lot of talk about Boxee, but I'm not excited about the product so much as I am excited about the niche. I think BTV could move into that niche.

Beyond TV has a decent interface, and it works with a wide range of peripherals (remotes, capture cards). It also allows streaming via Beyond TV Link and burning to DVDs, and so on.

Those are its strengths, in my view.

So doesn't it make sense for it to work out agreements with online content providers that allow us (users) to use the BTV interface the same way we already do, but access other content that these providers have to offer, for free or at a cost negotiated between SnapStream and a given provider.

What I don't like right now is that I have to go to so many different places. There's Joost, Hulu, the various network.com sites (abc.com, etc.). There's Amazon's streaming service; there's iTunes (which lacks NBC because of last year's tiff); there's Netflix. It just goes on and on. With the cable companies, they want me to use their little decrypters or PVRs that won't do everything I need. Worse yet, they want me to put one of their boxes (and one of their remotes) on every set in the house - even my computers. It's getting insane.

The instanity, though, creates opportunity. People are frustrated and that's why Boxee is getting traction. It's a neat idea, but the interface isn't great, by all accounts, and the integration isn't there the way it is for BTV.

BTV could therefore slide into Boxee's niche pretty easily, I think. No, BTV isn't cross platform. But that could be an eventual goal. After using MythTV for a while, I've just learned that you can't use Linux for everything. I'm an inveterate Linux guy. But my HTPC runs Windows, and that's fine. So I don't know if cross-platform availability should really even be a goal (it costs a lot, and yields comparatively little return initially - you have to have a lot of users to make money that way).

Anyway, BTV has a chance to become the next Boxee if it simply starts to look on things like Netflix as partnership opportunities, and starts to treat these (and other online sources) as input sources, like a capture card.

I personally don't mind Hulu ads, so I can imagine how BTV might actually succeed in negotiating an agreement with Hulu and its providers (NBC and others) where Boxee failed. Boxee makes middle aged white guys in suits nervous, sadly.

But that means there is an opportunity.

Surely the content providers feeding Hulu realize that nobody wants to go to twenty different places in order to get content. They want a single interface.

BTV could be my one interface.

[Nick Burns]

IMO, BTV tries to do one thing and one thing only extremely well... recording TV.

[TomXP411]

I don't think the all in one Media Center Snapstream's vision. I think that their vision is now to serve the Enterprise market, where their primary focus is on TV support. Yes, they're missing out on a lot of potential sales, but I have seen something interesting in this regard...

A software developer who writes flight simulators recently sent a "state of the nation" address to his customers. He released a little $10 version of his program for the iPhone. Sales of his desktop app increased 10 fold after this!

If Snapstream really wanted to improve their market share, creating a mobile app that could stream live video to the handset might be the golden ticket. They key is to find a way to make it work alongside BTV without replacing it (much like X-Plane does with the mobile and desktop versions.)

[blaze818]

nick,

you are right, BTV does one thing...TV, and they do it well. but the problem is that there are many other things that users want on their HTPC and i cant believe that after all this time BTV isnt going that way. they are actually going away from that with discontinuing BM. that was their only foothold that they had going for them as far as opening their programs up to plugins, and now they dont want it anymore and the worst part is that they wont give it to the people (source code). so now people are going with other programs and trying to integrate them into BTV, while BTV could be making that money. i personally will pay for upgrades and other services integrated into BTV, instead of having to get another program and trying to figure out how to make it work with my firefly and BTV.

i feel "stuck" with BTV after as long as ive had it for, and i dont like to feel like that. i dont see a light at the end of the tunnel (5.0)

i also wish that the developers could open up what they are working on to us. no one knows whats coming in the future but so far they havent listened to many people on the forums as far as what we would "like" to see in future versions.

[Nick Burns]

That is the customer's choice, of course. I specifically built a PVR, not an HTPC, of which I personally don't need. I want it to do one thing and one thing only - record TV. In that regard, I'm quite happy with BTV. I hope they keep making it bigger and better: better commercial detection, PiP, CC, etc. If they're happy with making it purely a PVR, more power to them. About the only thing I wouldn't mind seeing built into BTV is DVD/Blu-ray playback, but if they remain focused on the PVR side, I'm fine with that.

[Terminal]

I'm with Nick on this one. All I want is something that records TV. Like Nick, I think DVD play back would be nice. I always throw this in, especially since you can record to DVD.

[untechnoman]

Originally Posted by TomXP411

If Snapstream really wanted to improve their market share, creating a mobile app that could stream live video to the handset might be the golden ticket. They key is to find a way to make it work alongside BTV without replacing it (much like X-Plane does with the mobile and desktop versions.)

Have you seen the Orb application? Very cool app...If you have the iPhone/touch. It works great