The VideoBox Blog

Hi I’m Josh, one of the founders on VideoBox.

Last month, we released the beta version of VB3, and we received some feedback saying it was “cumbersome to navigate”, “complicated, all over the place”, and “requires too many clicks to do anything”.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this problem of complexity, about how every feature we add makes the entire site a little more cluttered.  And so I’ve taken a stab at creating an interface that’s as simple as possible and optimizes for one thing: a fun, immersive porn experience.

I’d love for you guys to check it out and let me know what you think.  Keep in mind:

• It’s a streaming only experience – no downloading.
• It requires a high-bandwidth connection, preferably a cable modem.

Try VideoBox Flow Mode

As next steps, I intend to allow content filtering by category and star names, as well as display information about the videos you click.

Do you guys have any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Josh

I am happy to announce that we just added the ability for you to embed any VideoBox scene to your website or blog.

To give you a taste, I have embedded above the most popular scene for this week.

Why would I use this?

Let’s say that you really like a scene. Well, if you have your blog or a website, you can now stream scenes from the VideoBox library right on your site/blog.

There are almost 40,000 scenes available to be embedded. You can embed the scene, write about it and show it to your friends.

The benefit for VideoBox is that we get potential users to click through the embedded videos and check out VideoBox.

How does it work?

To embed a scene on your website:

• Find the scene and go to the video streaming page. Scroll down and you find the link to embed.
• Copy the link and paste it into your web page. Or paste it in your blog. Then, save and test the page to make sure it works.

 
Your scene will now stream. You can even watch it full screen!

When you click on the player, you navigate to VideoBox and can see all the details about the scene, including title, performers, studio and comments.

That’s it! Let us know what you think.

One caveat: because of licensing agreements, the embed link is not available on scenes from premium channels.

Coming Soon

Anticipated additions include:

1. Ability to embed specific parts of scenes.

2. Embedded video to include more features, such as search, related scenes, and information about the video.

3. More options to customize embedded player size and styles.

Please let us know what you think of this new addition.

Thanks!

Because the post about porn libraries yielded so many interesting responses, a new question has emerged from the VideoBox team: How do you use the Flash player?

Do you watch the Flash player instead of downloading scenes? Do you use it to preview scenes before you download them? If you don’t use it at all, why not?

I’m sure many of you have already noticed that the new Flash player went live this week. I just wanted to open the comments for any feedback you guys have on it. It’s really important to us that 1) you like it and 2) it works correctly. So post your thoughts, positive, negative or mixed in the comments.

We’ll be debuting our redesigned Flash player within the next week or so on VideoBox and I’ve got a preview of the design and functionality exclusively for blog readers.

The Design
A little sleeker and easier on the eyes, the new design tightens up the player a bit while delivering all of the features you’ve come to expect from it.

Click for larger image


What’s New
The new player also comes with a few changes:

• The playhead is now separate from the filmstrip, so you can look ahead in the movie without being flung back to where you were.
• The controls no longer show up over top of the video.
• The volume control is more intuitive and easy to use.

I’m interested to hear what you guys think about the new design. Now and after it launches.

You’ve probably noticed that clicking the screen pictures on the DVD page no longer takes you to another page. Instead, an overlay comes up with a couple of new options. When you click “Preview,” a 10 second Flash clip starts playing that will give you an idea of what’s going on at that point in the scene.

We try to pick screen pictures that show all of the actions/positions in the scene. You can pretty much expect:

• The first one is usually people with their clothes on (or naked if the director didn’t bother with a setup). You can usually get a decent look at the girl in that one, which is helpful for figuring out whether she’s actually hot.
• The second tends to be a blowjob (porn’s kinda predictable in that way).
• The third through fifth are usually a couple of the positions from the scene. It’s amazing how much you can tell about a scene in 10 seconds.
• The last one is always the pop shot unless it’s a lesbian movie. For some reason those seem to usually end with kissing. Go figure.

We hope you’re finding this new feature useful. Feel free to give your thoughts on it in the comments section.