Introducing the second screen companion for Boxee

[marcel]

Introducing the second screen companion for Boxee. Now you don’t have to wait to get home to watch clips you’ve added to your ‘Watch Later’ queue, or to catch up on what your friends have shared, or check out featured content. And when you are home, you can now browse your local files right from your iPad. Best of all, whatever you’re watching in the app, you can seamlessly flip it over to the big screen. And if you’ve got more than one Boxee Box, you can choose which one to play it on.

Now more social.
If you’re new to Boxee, you can create an account using your Facebook account. Existing users can pair their social accounts (Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr). Once you’ve paired your social accounts, Boxee will pull in all the clips shared by your friends, people and blogs you follow. Sharing content you find on Boxee to Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr is easier than ever.

A better way to view stuff shared by your friends
The new Boxee app brings all of the content your friends are sharing, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter or Boxee. [expand upon this]

Your ‘Watch Later’ queue, with you wherever you go
Now there’s a new way to catch up on all those great clips you added to your queue while you were too busy at work.

Featured Content
Hand-picked goodness delivered straight to your iPad. Watch clips recommended by Boxee’s team of curators who scour the web for high quality content.

Throw content from your iPad to the TV
Yes, you read that correctly. As long as you have a Boxee box, anything you watch on your iPad in the Boxee app can easily be thrown onto the big screen. And while the content plays on the big screen, you can still use the iPad app to view the clip, or browse for new ones. You must first setup your box to receive the stream.

Browse and watch your local files
If you have movies and shows on your home network, you can watch them on your iPad from the “My Media” section.

PC to iPad, Easily
No need to waste hours converting and syncing videos to your iPad. Boxee streams videos from your PC/Mac to your iPad over WiFi. You pick the video (in almost any format) and we make it play on your iPad. It’s all possible through our new Media Manager, a lightweight app for your PC/Mac that works magic on video files.

Check out http://www.boxee.tv/ipad for more information ...

[neveroffline]

Marcel,

Looks good.

Are any of the push to Boxee Box features in the RPC API or are you using a custom library, or are you just pushing via Play(file)?

I was in the source last night (libjsonRPC-jsonrpc.cpp) and saw all the remmed out functions, IE: VideoLibrary.GetMovies(), Files.Download(), etc. It appears the libraries for Video, Audio etc are there, just disabled. GetDirectory works but there is no way to list by recently added and if you call it enough times it resets the OSD under Files order to A-Z vs Recently Added (been meaning to open a jira). Also the "video, music, files" params make no difference.

Any chance us devs will get any of this functionality soon?

Thanks!

[nooryani84]

This is extremely misleading. You need software to stream media (they say media yet its only video) to your iPad which defeats the ENTIRE purpose of a media streamer. I want to be freed from my PC and just use my NAS.

The sales pitch for this app makes it sound straight forward yet you have to download and flash an update manually. I'm a bit dismayed With the current situation, i havent seen any improvements in the user interface since v 1

I can't really see any improvements to the user experience other than a very fancy app that basically just sends a link to your boxee for web content OR you have to transcode video from a PC to an iPad before you can play it on your boxee box.

I fail to see how this can possibly be a step forward. Any decent online content besides hulu/netflix requires flash which cant even be played back natively on an iPad. So that means europeans really have no use for this app.

European users are paying the same price for a boxee with limited functionality. Might as well call it boxee box lite and shave 30-40% of the price off. I really want to love my boxee but it seems like we're getting the short end of the stick in europe.

[darcilicious]

The sales pitch for this app makes it sound straight forward yet you have to download and flash an update manually.

v1.2 will show up eventually as an automatic update OR you can do a manual one.

I can't really see any improvements to the user experience other than a very fancy app that basically just sends a link to your boxee for web content OR you have to transcode video from a PC to an iPad before you can play it on your boxee box.

This is what the app does:

Plays online video locally on the iPad from your Friends, Watch Later, and Featured queues.

Sends video/audio from the iPad to the Boxee Box (AirPlay which has been a very popular request).

You can play your local videos (from your NAS, media server, etc) from the Boxee Media Manager to the iPad via transcoding (most high quality video, e.g. 720p mkv files won't play natively so transcoding is pretty much required).

I fail to see how this can possibly be a step forward. Any decent online content besides hulu/netflix requires flash which cant even be played back natively on an iPad.

That's not at all what this app is about...

European users are paying the same price for a boxee with limited functionality. Might as well call it boxee box lite and shace 30-40% of the price off. I really want to love my boxee vut it seems like we're getting the short end of the stick in europe.

The iPad works identically for everyone regardless of what country you're in...

[nooryani84]

The iPad works identically for everyone regardless of what country you're in...

Yes, however it's the content available to the user that decides the value of an app like this. It's no secret that hulu, netflix, vudu etc aren't available for europeans. So without a decent library of non-flash content i dont really see the point.

[darcilicious]

Well, that's too bad. Sorry that you don't find this free app fun to play with.

I really like the app -- and having netflix and hulu on the iPad has nothing to do with that.

(There's no Hulu on the Boxee Box directly for anybody, no Hulu or Netflix via AirPlay, and there's no Vudu playback on the iPad so I'm still not clear what you as an European find so lacking in the iPad app but whatever).

[wgoosey]

For some reason, the emails supposedly sending me a download link for BMM from my Ipad never get to me. Is there just a link I can use posted here? I scouted around a bit but don't find one......

goose

[wgoosey]

God, I've really become an idiot in my old age. Never mind. Found the link on the blog/support site. Just didn't look hard enough the first time. These things never seem as intuitive as they should be these days....

goose

[nooryani84]

Well, that's too bad. Sorry that you don't find this free app fun to play with.

I really like the app -- and having netflix and hulu on the iPad has nothing to do with that.

(There's no Hulu on the Boxee Box directly for anybody, no Hulu or Netflix via AirPlay, and there's no Vudu playback on the iPad so I'm still not clear what you as an European find so lacking in the iPad app but whatever).

Thanks for your answers. I'll give use it some more and give it a fair chance then. I've been reading that they plan to expand on the functionality so here's hoping that happens soon.

[udouble]

I live in Europe and i do see the fun of the app:-).
Quick question, though. I add the volume where my movies are stored. Some are played well, others aren't: VOB isn't, iso not even found, mkv plays well, without subtitles though, etc. Any improvements on that?
Superb video quality though....