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2013-07-04, 16:10
(This post was last modified: 2013-07-04, 17:36 by Robotica.)
(2013-07-04, 16:00)twelvebore Wrote: The era of the set-top box is coming to an end.
Then who is going to unifying content consumption regardless distribution pipe? No, everything is indeed getting locked down and integrated in TV's but thanks to XBMC we still have choices in how/what/where we consume content. You don't want to depend on the content-deals your provider offers you.
In this regard, XBMC is what separates a thinkerer from a clueless consumer, who buys his self a "SmartTV" with integrated ecosystem and replenishment demand.
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2013-07-04, 18:05
(This post was last modified: 2013-07-04, 18:06 by Ned Scott.)
Samsung mentioned improving their GUI. To be fair, Boxee had some pretty slick UI ideas at one point. The merging of local and add-on content comes to mind, during their beta days. Still, 30 million, yikes. Is it really that hard for these companies to find good UI people?
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2013-07-05, 03:38
(This post was last modified: 2013-07-05, 03:47 by Robotica.)
(2013-07-04, 18:04)twelvebore Wrote: (2013-07-04, 17:45)davilla Wrote: Not quit correct, Samsung bought Boxee's assets, intellectual property and employees. What exactly that contains is not public yet or might not ever be public.
Well yes, sorry what I said was very terse and probably ambiguous.
What I said was in response to Roboticas phrase "So samsung just bought some content deals (including a payment model to share revenue with the content provider), some copyrights and the workforce (with the knowledge of bringing GPL derivate software to embedded devices)." Which to me sounds dismissive, like Samsung just bought a hill 'o' beans to paraphrase my US cousins.
There may or may not be patent applications in-flight, my point was that may not matter to Samsung because Boxee probably has other IP (know-how, trade secrets call it what you will) that they are willing to pay $30M for. Just because the patents aren't public yet, or even if there are no patents, it doesn't means that Samsung are idiots because IP is more than just patents.
You misread me: the disrespect is towards boxee and friends.
The value of boxee is pretty clear for me but the real value for Samsung is hard to tell.
Since boxee's business didn't work out and the cash is burned, Samsung gave the seeds a return for their money. Everybody happy..
If there was important IP, read patents since their products speaks for themselves, investors would have bargained themselves a better ROI.
So in this deal, boxer clearly wasn't selling a success but for Samsung it's a great addition. To quote myself:
(2013-07-04, 13:33)Robotica Wrote: I searched for boxee patens but there aren't any on that company. So samsung just bought some content deals (including a payment model to share revenue with the content provider), some copyrights and the workforce (with the knowledge of bringing GPL derivate software to embedded devices).
Shutting boxee down leaves integrating some of those functionalities in their own linux-based firmware. I think Samsung likes the way boxee did this.
Locking hardware and utilizing free software (while extending it with closed source software) is just to tempting...
@jezzx: i think he ment the attitude change of team xbmc towards boxer.
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Whoops. That page was originally taken from Wikipedia's copy of the XBMC article, so I guess I should make sure that's updated too.
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I remember all the hints that we'd be able to run xbmc on the boxee box when the hardware was first announced - par for the course I guess