Cloudee beta gets Boxee into the video sharing and cloud storage game

[drunkwithpower]

By Terrence O'Brien posted Jun 4th 2012 10:00AM

Cloudee beta gets Boxee into the video sharing and cloud storage game

Media center software, a streaming set top box and a TV-tuning USB dongle -- Boxee already has a pretty decent amount on its plate. But don't think the company is done just yet. This isn't about products, this about an ecosystem, and the next step in building that out is Cloudee. At its heart Cloudee is a cloud-based video hosting and sharing service, not terribly dissimilar from YouTube at first glance. But, the vision here is more focused and more narrow than simply having a public space to post your viral clips and home movies. There is the ability to comment on and like videos, but sharing is focused on limited groups of contacts, borrowing some inspiration from Google+. After recording a clip it can be uploaded directly to Cloudee where you can organize your creations into collections, which can not only by shared but have multiple contributors. Boxee's Avner Ronen gave us an example of a recent company outing, where the whole staff contributed videos to a collection shared only internally. He explained that, "video is very specific, a special use case and it deserves its own treatment," something he thinks other services have fallen flat on. When asked about the future of the service he only said only that it will be a "big part of the boxee experience going forward, tightly integrated with Boxee Box." We can't help but hope this is the first step towards a cloud-based DVR service, which we felt was sorely missing from the launch of the Live TV dongle.

For now the service is in closed beta, with only an iPhone app available. During the testing period users will be provided with unlimited storage for free, but Ronen hopes to move Cloudee out of beta quickly and begin offering it on a freemium model. All users will get a limited amount of storage for free while more demanding uploaders can purchase unlimited hosting. Just how much free storage will be provided or how much the premium level will cost is still up in the air. Boxee plans to closely watch how testers use the app and decide how the best price and storage points before officially launching and expanding and opening up to other platforms like Android. Once our beta invite arrives we'll be back with a hands-on and you can sign up yourself by heading over to Cloudee.com.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/04/c...cloud-storage/

[AminB]

boxee users comments :

- "I don't want to sound rude or event belittle what was definatlt a lot of work for cloudee but I must follow at list a little of what LaWeapon says... and echo that I hope this doesn't mean my beloved boxee box is going to see less time devoted to it by you folks!?"

- "It would be nice if you finished what you started with Boxee Box (long list of items that could be fixed) before starting on something else."

- "Boxee Box is buggy as ever before with HDMI issue, boxee crashing and restarting constantly, no wonder why Boxee team was busy developing something that all ready exist (Facebook, Twitter...) are made for sharing video and photos to friends ! You guy's are all over the place instated of being focus of making 1 product work !
Very sad, hopefully Plex will come in the Box market."

- "I can handle the growing pains with the software because we are first adopters. The one thing I am still upset about though is that Hulu Plus is still not available when it was promised at the very beginning. So more content partnerships (Amazon as well maybe?) would be more important to me than updates or cloud services. I have been tweeting and emailing about this for a while and still no response."

[delavoie]

Now we know what they have been working & focusing on since the last update in March.

[drunkwithpower]

Sometimes I wish they would just focus on being the best streamer out there, because I think if they did, all the rest would follow. If you're the best, the video companies will come to you to get their content available. We have only to look at Roku to see the reality of it.

[specific]

So...they've invented YouTube?

If you're too interested looking for new profit centers to actually work on the Box, please just let us know!

[bkurek]

what an insanely colossal waste of time. wow. just wow.

[dsouza]

I have all my 1080p MOV and MTS files on my NAS.

And Boxee is simply UNABLE to play these files sequentially!

BTW, ADSL connections are terrible for upload (my link is 15Mbps down, but only 1Mbps up). I cannot see myself uploading GBs of MOV files from my iPhone to Cloudee using a 1Mbps connection.

I want my Boxee to play HIGH QUALITY videos from my NAS (without having to recompress to lower bitrates to upload to cloud). I would really appreciate if Boxee could consider these use cases.

BTW, with iCloud, Google Drive, Drop Box, SkyDrive, YouTube, Vimeo and so on, I don`t really need another cloud solution. I need a good player!!!

[bkurek]

quick show of hands...will *anyone* use cloudee? does *anyone* think it has any purpose at all? more so will *anyone* pay for it?

[cecemf]

I have all my 1080p MOV and MTS files on my NAS.

And Boxee is simply UNABLE to play these files sequentially!

BTW, ADSL connections are terrible for upload (my link is 15Mbps down, but only 1Mbps up). I cannot see myself uploading GBs of MOV files from my iPhone to Cloudee using a 1Mbps connection.

I want my Boxee to play HIGH QUALITY videos from my NAS (without having to recompress to lower bitrates to upload to cloud). I would really appreciate if Boxee could consider these use cases.

BTW, with iCloud, Google Drive, Drop Box, SkyDrive, YouTube, Vimeo and so on, I don`t really need another cloud solution. I need a good player!!!

I second that and after using a WD TV Live with no bug no crash it was a breeze, not the best with interface but you can apply themes now which is great ! might be leaving the Boxee camp very soon

[voip-ninja]

Wow, just wow.

Boxee really is a ship without a rudder.