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Boxee is a nice app. As long as you don't mind giving them a list of everthing you watch and when you watch it: https://grepular.com/Boxee_TV_Helps_Its_Self_To

Boxee is a nice app. As long as you don't mind giving them a list of everthing you watch and when you watch it: https://grepular.com/Boxee_TV_Helps_Its_Self_To_Your_Viewing_Habits https://grepular.com/Boxee_TV_Helps_Its_Self_To_Your_Viewing... Use XBMC. It's just as good but doesn't have all the unnescessary social crap.

laumars 13y ago
This shouldn't be news to anyone because the whole point of Boxee -the very reason it existed to begin with- was to integrate social media concepts into a HTPC. The Boxee devs have been very clear about that - in fact it was central to their advertising back when they first launched. If Boxee had been secretive about this or even added such features post-launch, then I might understand the authors rant a little more. But complaining that a social-optimized HTPC leaks data is a bit like complaining that Facebook shouldn't be used to back up private photos when it's quite clear that people intentionally use Facebook to share their pictures. And for what it's worth, the social media stuff in Boxee was actually quite nice (I've not used it since the beta - so I can't comment on how it performs now). I could watch some stuff on YouTube and then recommend it to my friends and visa versa. It worked like a more convenient word of mouth (ie "Hey Bob, I saw this documentary about the territorial habits of cats and I know you like cats so you might want to check it out". I could just switch on my HTPC when I was in the mood for some TV and there would be my friends recommendations). It's just a pity the UI looked like a competition between drunk people to invent the most gaudy interface known to man.
- mike-cardwell 13y ago
  I am the author of that blog post. At the time that post was written, their privacy policy never stated that they collect this information. It seems to have been updated since to say that they do in fact collect this information, but they don't offer any insight into how long they store it for. Their privacy policy now states: "We collect and store information regarding your use of the Boxee Platform, including (i) the content viewed, (ii) the time and date of each viewing, (iii) the application used in viewing the content and (iv) IP addresses, including internal IP addresses, of devices accessing the Boxee Platform" Also, as I wrote in my blog post, they never responded to my questions that I sent to privacy@boxee.tv. I find this in their privacy policy quite interesting: While we collect and store IP address information, that information is not made public. We do at times, however, share this information with our partners, service providers and other persons with whom we conduct business. We may share hashes of your IP address with other third parties, but these hashes cannot feasibly be reversed into the IP addresses themselves or linked to you individually. I bet they've done this wrong. "Protecting" data by hashing it doesn't work when the number of possible hashed items is small. There are only 4 billion IPv4 addresses. I just don't trust them.
antidaily 13y ago
I use Plex. It's incredible.
- Kiro 13y ago
  Isn't that a completely different thing?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - untog 13y ago
    All three are forks of XBMC, to varying degrees.
- rdl 13y ago
  Yeah, if I were a VC, I'd be investing in Plex. It is amazing. All it needs is a torrent site and USENET plugin (i.e. I give it a list of shows I like, and it goes out and snatches/caches them on my server for me automagically) to be utterly magic.
- yeezus 13y ago
  Plex is absolutely great.
rdl 13y ago
I've become a real fan of Plex, recently -- run your own media server, which can include both local content and gateways to online services, which does media conversion (format, bandwidth) to clients -- which include iOS and various desktops and devices. Plus, you can locally cache shows on your iPad as well.

laumars 13y ago

This shouldn't be news to anyone because the whole point of Boxee -the very reason it existed to begin with- was to integrate social media concepts into a HTPC. The Boxee devs have been very clear about that - in fact it was central to their advertising back when they first launched. If Boxee had been secretive about this or even added such features post-launch, then I might understand the authors rant a little more. But complaining that a social-optimized HTPC leaks data is a bit like complaining that Facebook shouldn't be used to back up private photos when it's quite clear that people intentionally use Facebook to share their pictures. And for what it's worth, the social media stuff in Boxee was actually quite nice (I've not used it since the beta - so I can't comment on how it performs now). I could watch some stuff on YouTube and then recommend it to my friends and visa versa. It worked like a more convenient word of mouth (ie "Hey Bob, I saw this documentary about the territorial habits of cats and I know you like cats so you might want to check it out". I could just switch on my HTPC when I was in the mood for some TV and there would be my friends recommendations). It's just a pity the UI looked like a competition between drunk people to invent the most gaudy interface known to man.

mike-cardwell 13y ago
I am the author of that blog post. At the time that post was written, their privacy policy never stated that they collect this information. It seems to have been updated since to say that they do in fact collect this information, but they don't offer any insight into how long they store it for. Their privacy policy now states: "We collect and store information regarding your use of the Boxee Platform, including (i) the content viewed, (ii) the time and date of each viewing, (iii) the application used in viewing the content and (iv) IP addresses, including internal IP addresses, of devices accessing the Boxee Platform" Also, as I wrote in my blog post, they never responded to my questions that I sent to privacy@boxee.tv. I find this in their privacy policy quite interesting: While we collect and store IP address information, that information is not made public. We do at times, however, share this information with our partners, service providers and other persons with whom we conduct business. We may share hashes of your IP address with other third parties, but these hashes cannot feasibly be reversed into the IP addresses themselves or linked to you individually. I bet they've done this wrong. "Protecting" data by hashing it doesn't work when the number of possible hashed items is small. There are only 4 billion IPv4 addresses. I just don't trust them.

antidaily 13y ago

I use Plex. It's incredible.

Kiro 13y ago
Isn't that a completely different thing?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- untog 13y ago
  All three are forks of XBMC, to varying degrees.
rdl 13y ago
Yeah, if I were a VC, I'd be investing in Plex. It is amazing. All it needs is a torrent site and USENET plugin (i.e. I give it a list of shows I like, and it goes out and snatches/caches them on my server for me automagically) to be utterly magic.
yeezus 13y ago
Plex is absolutely great.

rdl 13y ago

I've become a real fan of Plex, recently -- run your own media server, which can include both local content and gateways to online services, which does media conversion (format, bandwidth) to clients -- which include iOS and various desktops and devices. Plus, you can locally cache shows on your iPad as well.