What the Boxee Group forgot...

[gregwa]

Ladies and Gentlemen...

It's obvious from the NUMEROUS threads here that the Boxee Group has totally lost sight of what made them.

Those of us who have been with Boxee since the invite only alpha used LOCAL MEDIA. Yes, we enjoyed streaming the internet feeds, but that wasn't what we did most of our work with. It was LOCAL media. MP3's, AVI's, MKV's, etc.

Now, I know that the Boxee group is trying to hit the major market here. Those people who live on Twitter and Facebook. THAT is their market. Not those who use their computers as DVR's, or storage of media that is important to them and where the internet streams are secondary.

My boxee box is in transit as I type (or at least that's what Amazon tells me) but it's (again) obvious that the major thrust of this version of the Boxee Box is ONLY internet content. That's a shame. I've been a major proponent for Boxee for over two years and now I have to re-think my mind set. It's a shame that the Boxee group has forgotten and ignored all those people who got them to the point they can sell something that is 180 degrees away from what we all worked on SO hard for so many years.

[StevenF]

Couldn't agree more

And the silence from the Boxee group is deafening.

My two options at the moment look like
a) Hack the Box and try to make it run older version od Boxee or XBMC
b) Take it back and run up a media PC (what I have been trying to avoid), the reason I got the box was so that my GF ,friends and family could run it with no issues or input from myself.

[darcilicious]

obvious that the major thrust of this version of the Boxee Box is ONLY internet content. That's a shame.

That's a bit strong coming from someone who hasn't even had a chance to use it.

While I agree that the UI for local content needs some work (mainly providing more filtering and sorting options), there's nothing here that can't be fixed.

And given the statement from the launch event that "Boxee eats codecs" it's clear that Boxee is still very interested in supporting local content by providing playback for, well, everything.

[Microsaft]

Signed.
I was about to order a Boxee Box just for streaming media from my NAS.
I do not need that "internet features" (as they are not available in Germany).

[marcel]

guys we are listening to you all and will be making updates asap please have a little patience i know you paid a lot of money but we are working to make this worthwhile ..

[judgeschambers]

Well, I don't know about all that being true, as it plays all my Network MKV, AVI, dvd, mp3 just dandy. :D

[lukad]

guys we are listening to you all and will be making updates asap please have a little patience i know you paid a lot of money but we are working to make this worthwhile ..

Here's what I find strange. You've gotten a major backlash on 1.0, with many people debating whether they should return the box, and yet so far there has been no official statement from Boxee to address the issue at hand. Perhaps Avner should spend a few minutes briefing himself with the list of issues (if he's unfamiliar) and publish a blog post recognizing the situation at hand; at least to try and bring some calm to the current frenzy.

[gregwa]

@Darcilicious,
It may be strong, but this is what I've been able to gleen from the threads here.

@Marcel,
You've always listened to me and to every single one of us on the forums and I have (and I'm certain most all of us) ALWAYS been thankful for that. However, I'm not sure that "they" are listening to you...or us.

@Judgeschambers,
I'm sure that they do work. I didn't suggest, nor have I seen much in the way of anyone suggesting that they don't. However, playing those things are what got Boxee to where it is (on pc,mac,linux). The ABILITY to get to those things is what seems to be the major malfunction with the majority of the people who have a problem with the interface. I and WE have all bragged about the fact that you can look in "TV" section and show not only the synopsis of the show, but when you go into the show "folder" you get the show information. From everything I've seen on this part of the forums, that is no longer true. It's simply a list of the files. THAT is what I was talking about.

I am STILL hoping that this will be worked out soon. I'm just afraid that the boxee group and Avner are loosing sight of, is that those of us (and there are a lot of us out there) who DO have local media are being lost in the internet push. And the fact that Music (I know that Darcilicious posted a VERY nice and well thought out request to the devs) falls under the bottom of the bucket, shows that the major vision of the entire new product is strictly internet based.