The VideoBox Blog

Hey All,

It should come as no surprise that we’re fans of the Roku box; our updated Roku channel is my personal favorite recent VideoBox enhancement. If you haven’t tried Roku porno yet, we’ll have some fun news for you in the near future that we hope will make that much easier for you. But while you wait for more details on that, there’s a Roku announcement from CNET that the VB team thought was pretty cool:

Roku’s “streaming stick” is coming out in October for $99. It packs all the punch of a Roku box into a little USB stick that plugs into TVs and is instantly out of sight, out of mind. Rest assured we’ll be playing with one in the VB office as soon as we can get our hands on it!

Roku also has a mobile app that we enjoy. It allows you to use your device as a remote (oh-so-handy when typing searches or logging in for the first time). According to the same CNET article, an update to the Roku app enables AirPlay-like streaming of music and photos from your device to your TV. Whether you’re streaming porn or looking at vacation photos with your kids (because you’ve installed our discreet app and enabled the parental access controls, right?), this sounds like another great reason to have a Roku in your house.

Read the full details here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57516280-221/roku-streaming-stick-coming-in-october-for-$99-while-mobile-app-adds-airplay-esque-streaming/

And, let us know what you think of the VideoBox Roku porn app, or the announcements above, down in the comments.

Happy Friday,
Bob

Just a quick note to let you all know we have discovered the source of our problem with MP4 custom clips. Content released from here forward should not be affected, and will play on the major video playback programs for both Windows and Mac. Last night we began re-encoding affected files that are currently on the site, so those fixes will hit the site as they are completed.

If you see any issues with custom clips, please use the form on our contact page and give us as much info as possible on the affected scene.

Note: full-scene downloads were not affected, and will continue to be fine, and we have no plan to remove full-scene WMVs at this time.

Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Cheers,
The VB Team

Hey VideoBoxers,

As some of you have noticed, we have recently removed WMV custom-clip download options from the site. We made this decision because of the complexity involved with creating this particular file type, and the fact that WMVs are fast becoming an obsolete format that most modern devices don’t support. We view this decision as similar to the one we made to drop support for Internet Explorer 6 & 7 a while ago.

Custom clips can still be downloaded as MP4 files, and full scenes can still be downloaded as MP4 or WMV; it’s just the custom-clip WMVs that are no longer available.

Some users have reported difficulties with playback of the custom-clip MP4s in certain software programs, however. We are aware that this is an issue and are working as quickly as possible to resolve it. In the meantime, we recommend VLC player to all of you. VLC is a free software program that can play all media types and provides the user excellent control over playback. It plays our MP4 custom clips without issue.

VLC can be downloaded for free at: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, and will post here again when we have a solution for MP4 playback for a wider array of programs.

Sincerely,
The VideoBox Team

Hey VideoBoxers,

As some of you may have noticed, we launched a major update to VideoBox today. Most of the changes are on the back end, but here’s a list of new things you’ll see at www.videobox.com that we think you’ll love. It’s not a complete list, mind you — you may find some other gems as you click around. There will be more to come, and we know there may be some items in need of polish; more on that after the list.

• Category and Tag Filters: when you’re logged in, they’re on the left side of the results pages, and by popular demand, you can choose categories to exclude from your results set for DVDs and scenes!

• Profile Pages: if you click a fellow user’s name or avatar on a comment, or in the tooltip for a clip, you’ll be taken to their profile page where you’ll see their stats and a list of all the comments they’ve made. From there you can jump to a page of all the clips they’ve created, or all the content they’ve rated, grouped into DVDs, scenes and clips.

• Search: this now works the same as VB2, including a drop-down list to narrow your search, and it also has auto-complete for when you’re looking for something specific or which includes some portion of text that you already know.

• Avatar Picker: yes, you can now change your avatar from the auto-assigned one you have now to one of the 5,000 options we’ve pre-loaded! The “My Profile” link on the left nav of the “My VB3″ page takes you to your own comments and stats, and it has a link at the top to “Edit Your Profile” where you can choose a new avatar image and update your stats as well.

We know that some of this will change over time as we all use the site and as we incorporate your feedback and suggestions. We’re also aware that there may be items that didn’t translate exactly from our previous tech stack to this one: some pages might be slower than they were before, or display differently than they used to. I can assure you that we’re looking for those kinds of things, and if we know of an issue, we’re working on it. Please let us know in the comments below or on the Contact Us page if you find things that aren’t working right, or that you think could be improved. We are always grateful for your input, as it helps us serve you better.

Ultimately, we hope you enjoy this update and look forward to the changes to come. It’s a great feeling to know that we can now act more quickly and easily on bugs and new features.

Enjoy,
Bob

Hey VideoBoxers,

As you may have seen in John’s recent post, we have been playing with AirPlay a little bit. Well, with a couple of days somewhat open at the start of this week, I decided to see what it would take to get HTML5 playback happening on iPad, iPhone and Android. I’m pleased to tell you that this afternoon we put an alpha version of this functionality up on VB3!

See the instructions for using it below, but first let me offer a few caveats:

1) This is an alpha test, which means “not even a beta test yet.” I threw it up there for you guys to try out, and I will be busy on other stuff for the next few weeks. Therefore, expect bugs and odd behavior, and you won’t be disappointed.

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Quick update: Thanks to a change we released this evening, AirPlay now works on the mobile site via iPhone4 without the need for the JavaScript bookmark offered in the iPad instructions below. It has the same limitations we listed for the iPad (chiefly, that the videos’ resolution is optimized for mobile devices), but as of right now it’s the easiest way to use AirPlay with the VB mobile site. Post a comment below if you have any questions on how to use it, or spot any issues.

AirFlick or Roku are still your best options for high-quality streaming to your TV, but if this change carries even just one of you valued VB members over until you get one of those other options working, it was worth it.

*****************************

A few of our users have asked us to support AirPlay, which allows people to stream media from various devices onto their AppleTV.  While we don’t officially support AirPlay on VideoBox at the moment, we did investigate several methods for our users to watch videos from VideoBox via AirPlay, using either a Mac computer, or an iPad.  Here are the methods we like the best:


Mac Computer to AppleTV


1. Make sure that your Mac and your AppleTV are on the same network and that AirPlay is enabled on your AppleTV.  There are ample instructions on the web for how to do this.
2. Download and install AirFlick here.
3. Login to VideoBox (whichever one you want,this is not limited to the mobile site).
4. Download the scenes you’d like to view to your Mac.
5. Start AirFlick.  It should recognize your AppleTV and if all is going well, you will see your AppleTV listed in the drop-down on the upper left-hand side of the AirFlick app.
6. Drag the scene you’d like to start watching into AirFlick.
7. Enjoy


I have to say, I tested this on a brand new Sony 60” with one of the new HD titles from Burning Angel and it looked awesome!  Also, note that I installed this on my MacBookPro which is running Snow Leopard. I’d be interested in knowing if anyone is able to get this working on older versions of OSX.


iPad to AppleTV


The resolution is not the best when using an iPad with AirPlay because our beta mobile site is optimized for a phone. Also, the mobile site is unfortunately a bit buggy right now, but hey, it’s something. The next iteration of VB for mobile devices will support AirPlay from the get-go.


1. Make sure your iPad and your AppleTV are on the same network and that AirPlay is enabled on your AppleTV.  There are ample instructions on the web for how to do this.
2. Make sure your iPad is updated to iOS 4.3. This will not work on 4.2 or lower.
3. Go to Ben Dodson’s site and follow the instructions for adding the javascript bookmark to your browser.
4. Login to http://m.videobox.com.  This is our beta mobile site, and we should warn you again that it’s a little buggy.  Our suggestion is that before viewing, you mark any movies you want to watch as ‘Favorite.’ Then use your ‘Favorites’ list to watch videos via the mobile site on your iPad.  You must use the mobile site for AirPlay to work with an iPad.
5. Tap on the image of the movie you’d like to view. You will now be in play mode. At this point, if you click on the AirPlay icon, you will see that you can get sound via AirPlay but not video.
6. Select the bookmark you created in Step 3. It will execute javascript but will leave you in the same place, in play mode.
7. Now when you click the AirPlay icon, you should see AppleTV streaming the video.  Cool, eh?


The methods I listed seemed to be the least technical methods that didn’t require jailbreaks. Again, VideoBox doesn’t officially support AirPlay yet, so use these at your own risk!

When our first site launched back in 2002, WMV was state of the art. Now, however, it’s an old format that doesn’t play well on non-Windows devices and compresses poorly.

So I was wondering what issues you guys would have if we dropped WMV. And before you say “wait, the biggest files are WMV so they’re the highest quality”, be aware that file size and file quality are two different things.

Specifically, our 640×480 H.264 files are 3-4 times smaller than our DVD resolution WMV, but they’re comparable in quality (both formats exhibit their own compression artifacts).

Are there other reasons you like WMV? Does H.264 not play as well for you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

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

Hello Videoboxers,

As we continue to work aggressively on refining our website, improving its layout and providing functionality that gives you better-than-ever access to content that interests you, we want to proactively advise those of you still using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 that we are joining many high-profile technology companies in phasing out support for that browser.

We ask that you take a moment and update your browser to the current version of Internet Explorer, or — even better — download and install one of the other excellent, modern browsers currently available at no cost to you.

I’ve provided some links to downloads of these browsers at the bottom of this post.

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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!