Question: Private Sources?

[mswbull]

Hi all,

What exactly does the "Private" option do under sources?

As far as I can tell it stops any media from the source beginning added to boxee? Why would we need this feature, if you didn’t want the media to be added why would you create the source in the first place.

Would it not be better to have "Private" still scan and index your media, but not share any of the information via the social aspect of boxee. Therefore making the media still useable just private to your machine/boxee account.

Cheers.

[marcel]

the "private" source allows you add to the folder mode(videos>sources) to view but not library mode(indexed and scan) and will not be added to any feed...sometimes users do not want their private stuff indexed into the library mode(movies or tvshows etc)

[mswbull]

the "private" source allows you add to the folder mode(videos>sources) to view but not library mode(indexed and scan) and will not be added to any feed...sometimes users do not want their private stuff indexed into the library mode(movies or tvshows etc)

Hi,

Thanks for the information.

I had a seperate questions regarding privacy of media. Do the boxee servers (in the cloud) hold information showing what each user has in their libary? If so is this information confidential?

Cheers.

[agentlame]

Do the boxee servers (in the cloud) hold information showing what each user has in their libary?

no... none.

the only info boxee knows is exposed in your feed.... nothing more, nothing less. :)

[mswbull]

no... none.

the only info boxee knows is exposed in your feed.... nothing more, nothing less. :)

Cool, thanks for the information.

So if a user were to select in their Account Settings "Privacy = Share With Nobody" then no feed information would be kept at all or feed information would still be kept just not shown to other users?

[agentlame]

my best understanding of the client (boxee) server (boxee.tv) relationship is as follows:

boxee does not report media to boxee.tv under the following conditions:
- any content you play from the Internet is not shared with your friends, unless you explicitly choose to Rate or Recommend it
- any content that resides in a folder that you mark as Private
- any content that is X-rated
- any video for which there is no meta data (synopsis, cast, trailer, etc.)

so, only items that that boxee can cleanly identify are sent to boxee.tv, and only when said items are played, not indexed.

even then, the only thing boxee.tv knows is the reference that boxee found, not the file name. (ie: "neil watched: awesome the movie http://imdb.com/awesome-the-movie/")

so something like: best.dirty.movie.ever.avi is never sent to boxee.tv*
nor is: awesome.the.movie.xvid.tc.cam.scrnr.dvd.rip.people .that.rip.movies.mp4 sent to boxee.tv*

now, in a more direct answer: even if you set your profile to 'Share With Nobody'... you can still see your own feed.
(short: the reference to the media you have watched is saved.)

all said... if you are still concerned about your privacy, i would recommend setting all your media locations to: 'private'...
as this will eliminate all potential privacy-related concerns. :)


*no part of this post is meant to imply that you:
a) pirate media.
b) watch anything other than pg-13 media.

[xain09]

... and if you want to speed up recognition of your "real" movies/series enable private for all things downloaded from the web like trailers, videogame footage, downloaded youtube stuff, self made movies etc...

[mswbull]

my best understanding of the client (boxee) server (boxee.tv) relationship is as follows:

boxee does not report media to boxee.tv under the following conditions:
- any content you play from the Internet is not shared with your friends, unless you explicitly choose to Rate or Recommend it
- any content that resides in a folder that you mark as Private
- any content that is X-rated
- any video for which there is no meta data (synopsis, cast, trailer, etc.)

so, only items that that boxee can cleanly identify are sent to boxee.tv, and only when said items are played, not indexed.

even then, the only thing boxee.tv knows is the reference that boxee found, not the file name. (ie: "neil watched: awesome the movie http://imdb.com/awesome-the-movie/")

so something like: best.dirty.movie.ever.avi is never sent to boxee.tv*
nor is: awesome.the.movie.xvid.tc.cam.scrnr.dvd.rip.people .that.rip.movies.mp4 sent to boxee.tv*

now, in a more direct answer: even if you set your profile to 'Share With Nobody'... you can still see your own feed.
(short: the reference to the media you have watched is saved.)

all said... if you are still concerned about your privacy, i would recommend setting all your media locations to: 'private'...
as this will eliminate all potential privacy-related concerns. :)


*no part of this post is meant to imply that you:
a) pirate media.
b) watch anything other than pg-13 media.

Hi,

Thanks again for the detailed information. However by setting your media locations to "Private" it means that they will not be indexed in the library so you can't have poster art/info etc. This is slightly disappointing.

Cheers.

[jamesfoster]

boxee does not report media to boxee.tv under the following conditions:
- any content you play from the Internet is not shared with your friends, unless you explicitly choose to Rate or Recommend it

Thats interesting because I was watching some myspacetv which appeared in my boxee.tv feed without rating or recommending it.

???????????

[PeteStorm]

Thats interesting because I was watching some myspacetv which appeared in my boxee.tv feed without rating or recommending it.

???????????

Just a guess but maybe b/c that's one of the default sources that comes with boxee and it's NOT marked as private in the sources.xml file?

[agentlame]

Thats interesting because I was watching some myspacetv which appeared in my boxee.tv feed without rating or recommending it.

???????????

yeah... stuff you watch on hulu, cbs, comedy central and myspace; are shared by default.

the first three make sense... maybe myspace should be shared by default.

[jamesfoster]

where do you turn it off?

[jamesfoster]

I'm just looking at sources.xml, I guess I just set private to true.

I also want to customize the Video Podcasts source. can I copy http://rss.boxee.tv/video.xml to a local file that I can edit, and point to that from sources.xml??

If I do that I'd like some way of knowing when there are new podcasts available so I can add them to my list.

[agentlame]

I'm just looking at sources.xml, I guess I just set private to true.
not sure that will work... you could just set your profile to private:
http://app.boxee.tv


I also want to customize the Video Podcasts source. can I copy http://rss.boxee.tv/video.xml to a local file that I can edit, and point to that from sources.xml??
you can't host it locally... but i use dropbox to 'locally' host mine:
www.getdropbox.com (just put it in the 'public' folder.)


If I do that I'd like some way of knowing when there are new podcasts available so I can add them to my list.
not currently.... but it's been requested quit a bit:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1438

[jamesfoster]

I looked in that post and this feature is not there.

I'm asking for notification of new podcasts when they are added to vidoes.xml, not when new shows are added to a podcast.

At the moment this is not a problem for most because videos.xml is hosted at boxee.tv and so new podcasts appear automatically. I want to either host it locally, or be able to customize it. I tried setting the source to H:\videos.xml\ but that didn't work. It probably should?

[agentlame]

I looked in that post and this feature is not there.

I'm asking for notification of new podcasts when they are added to vidoes.xml, not when new shows are added to a podcast.

i see... i'm sorry, i misunderstood. :)


At the moment this is not a problem for most because videos.xml is hosted at boxee.tv and so new podcasts appear automatically. I want to either host it locally, or be able to customize it. I tried setting the source to H:\videos.xml\ but that didn't work. It probably should?
no, this shouldn't work, because then the source does not start with 'rss://'... but like i said you could use dropbox. that way the file is locally editable... and online so boxee can use it.

it works really great! i just edit ~/Dropbox/Public/video.xml and the changes show up in boxee.

[eyals]

Ome big issue with private stuff - why is it shown on the front screen (recently viewed)?
and is there a way to clear this history list?

[jdarnold]

You can also host it locally. Remember, Boxee has a builtin web server so you can use that. It's a bit circular, having boxee request to boxee to get the file, but it works. Just copy the .xml file to the "web" folder where Boxee is installed and you can get at it with "localhost:8800". Under Linux, just make sure the /opt/boxee/web folder exists. I created a subfolder called "Sources" where I put various .xml files. So my <path> is :


<path>rss://localhost:8800/Sources/cbc.xml</path>

[jamesfoster]

> Remember, Boxee has a builtin web server so you can use that.

nice