![]() Last year, the company partnered with Barnes & Noble on the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, an Android-powered device with a focus on ebook consumption. It wouldn't be the first time Samsung has tried to craft a more purposeful device out of one of its tablets. Former Boxee CEO Avner Ronen is also said to have left his role as VP of product at Samsung. Samsung isn't commenting specifically, but "dozens" of employees have reportedly been made redundant as a result of the project's shuttering. Internal politics – as Samsung execs in South Korea supposedly began to doubt so important a project being run at a distance – and troubles negotiating with content owners for the sort of tight integration PX would require to be successful seemingly sealed its fate. Lagging development, though, scuppered the CES 2015 reveal Samsung hoped to make, and then a new mid-2015 launch window was replaced by a 2016 target. In purchasing Boxee, CE giant Samsung gains the firm’s “key talent and assets” - including its user interface.Indeed, it's said, even parts of Samsung's own smart TV division were unaware that Perfect Experience was being worked on, as the PX team grew to roughly a reported 100 people. TWC, for example, will offer about 5,000 video-on-demand titles on Samsung TVs (2012 models and newer) later this summer, with plans to offer live-TV streaming by the end of 2013. What is Boxee Boxee can be seen as the media player and is a fork of XBMC, and was originally intended to run a HTPC. The CE maker also has deals in place to support authenticated TV Everywhere apps from Comcast and TWC on its new line of smart TVs. cable set-top box market, counting Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Cablevision Systems as key customers. Samsung has also become a force in the U.S. Samsung plans to release the device to retail partners by the end of the summer, according to a May FCC filing. However, the Boxee UI could be a good fit for Samsung’s Smart Media Player, a CableCard-based retail device in development that will match subscription cable TV with over-the-top fare from the likes of Netflix and Vudu and make them accessible via a unified interface. Samsung’s comments about Boxee’s role after the acquisition casts some doubt on whether Samsung intends to maintain Boxee’s focus on hardware. Although neither Boxee product uses a CableCard, its $99 Boxee Cloud DVR is now capable of receiving an encrypted version of Comcast’s basic digital video tier via a new type of Ethernet-connected Digital Transport Adapter.Ī new set of basic-TV encryption rules handed down by the Federal Communications Commission last year has also paved the way for IP-based retail devices (like Boxee’s) to receive basic TV tiers without a CableCard from several other major MSOs, including Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems, and Bright House Networks. Samsung’s acquisition came as the relationship between Boxee and the cable industry was beginning to warm. The original Boxee Box and the new Boxee Cloud DVR are made by D-Link, which makes Samsung somewhat of a surprise suitor. Last April, Boxee revealed that there were 200,000 users of the original Boxee Box. Boxee has not released any product shipment figures lately, but the company has struggled to achieve the kind of sales volumes seen by Roku, which has shipped more than 4 million devices in the U.S. Boxee, which is headquartered in New York and operates R&D from Tel Aviv, Israel, declined to comment.Ĭonfirmation of the deal came about two weeks after Boxee was rumored to be seeking a fresh $30 million round of funding or was close to securing a buyer. Another report said Samsung will take on Boxee’s workforce of roughly 40 employees. Samsung declined to provide financial terms of the deal, but published reports on July 3 put it at “tens of millions of dollars,” but less than the $28.5 million Boxee has raised since it was founded in 2007. In addition to connected TVs, possible ports of entry for Boxee’s user interface on the Samsung product lineup include Blu-ray Disc players and a new retail CableCard device in the works that will combine cable subscription-TV services with over-the-top video. “This will help us continue to improve the overall user experience across our connected devices.” “Samsung has acquired key talent and assets from Boxee,” a Samsung spokesperson said in a statement to Multichannel News.
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