The VideoBox Blog

Many of us here at VB admire the guitar stylings of the recently-deceased Jeff Hanneman, so much so that our content guru made a fantastic compilation he calls “Sexy Slayer.” We offer it to you all now, just to put a smile back on everyone’s faces after a sad day. We can’t help but think Jeff would have approved.

R.I. P. Jeff Hanneman of Slayer.

More Info:
Jeff Hanneman’s death yesterday morning was confirmed in a statement on the band’s Facebook page: “Slayer is devastated to inform that their bandmate and brother, Jeff Hanneman, passed away at about 11am this morning near his Southern California home.”

“Hanneman was in an area hospital when he suffered liver failure.”

He is survived by his wife Kathy, his sister Kathy and his brothers Michael and Larry.

Hanneman founded Slayer with fellow guitarist Kerry King in the early 1980s. The group was among the “big four” thrash metal groups of the era alongside Megadeth, Metallica and Anthrax.

UPDATE: The giveaway drawing is now closed, and we are no longer accepting new entries. We have emailed all the winners, and we’ll announce them in a separate post as soon as we have heard back from all of them. Thanks to every one of you who entered!

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Hello VideoBoxers! ‘Tis the holiday season, and to ring in this special time of year, we have decided to give away 5 top of the line Roku boxes to you, our valued members! What better way to escape and relax from the holiday craziness than watching your favorite VideoBox scenes and movies on your big-screen TV?!

We’re giving away Roku XS boxes to 5 lucky winners that will be drawn at random. These Rokus are top of the line and retail at $99.99.

To be eligible to win a Roku, all we ask of you is to answer the following questions in the comments section of this post:

• What is your VideoBox account username?
• What is your favorite feature or aspect of VideoBox.com or the Roku channel?
• What is your #1 suggestion that would make VideoBox or the Roku channel even better?
• What specific studio or content genre would you like to see more of?

That’s it! Just answer the above questions in the comments section of this post and you’re entered! Don’t forget to include your username so we can contact you if you’re chosen.

The drawing will be on Thursday, December 20.

This giveaway is only available to residents of the United States and territories, and you must have a current active account at the time of the drawing.

We will be doing many more giveaways in the new year, so keep your eyes peeled!

Happy Holidays from the VideoBox Team!

For official rules please see: Holiday Roku Giveaway

You’ve got more than one room in your house, right? Well, why not put a Roku in each of them, then you can enjoy hot VideoBox action wherever you are in your house! VideoBox now gives you the ability to link an unlimited number of Rokus in your house to your VideoBox account.

Here’s how it works:

The first Roku you link to your VideoBox account is considered your “primary” Roku. This step is no different if you’re linking 1 Roku or 10 Rokus. Once you’ve linked a Roku to your account, setting up any number of additional Rokus is easy. When you start the VideoBoxTV Roku Channel, you’ll see this screen:

Simply click “Link this Roku to my existing account” and you’re all set! Your additional Roku will work precisely like your primary Roku, with the same feeds, Stash and Parental Control. If you unlink your primary Roku from your VideoBox account, it will unlink all your Rokus.


Enjoy!

Hi all, just a quick note for all our loyal foreign users: The VideoBoxTV Roku channel, previously only available in the United States, is now available Worldwide! Traveling abroad and don’t want to be without your beloved VideoBoxTV account? Don’t want to pay those ridiculous hotel movie rates? Take your Roku with you! With the VideoBoxTV Roku channel, you’ll never fly solo again.

Hey everyone, it’s been a whirlwind of activity in Roku land ever since we launched the latest iteration of our Roku channel; we’ve received an avalanche of support for the new channel, which I couldn’t be happier about. It’s just more motivation for us to keep at it and make sure we consistently provide the best IPTV porn experience for the lowest price, hands down.

The most-mentioned feature request we’ve received (by a wide margin) is parental controls. No kidding, right? You’ve got an intense amount of pornographic material at your fingertips, piped into your TV for all to get their hands on. Well fear not, VideoBox has your back. Here’s how to protect yourself from prying eyes:

Enable an access control pin. From your “My Account” page, once you’ve synced your Roku to your VB account, under the “Roku Settings” heading, you’ll see a entry field called “Access control pin (4-digit)”. Simply enter a 4-digit (numeric) pin there, and you’ll be required to enter that pin each time you enter the channel. Here’s a screenshot of what the access control screen looks like:

Using an access control pin will prevent unwanted visitors in your channel, but it won’t prevent people from seeing the channel on your Roku home screen. For that, you can install this alternative channel: https://owner.roku.com/add/vbdiscreet. The channel itself is identical to our flagship videobox channel, but the logo and messaging that appear on the roku home screen are different, such that anyone seeing them won’t think they’re associated with an adult-oriented channel. You’ll never get busted again!

Enjoy!

Hi Everyone! I’m really excited to announce the imminent release of the new roku app! It’s been a little over a year since we released the first roku app, and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback, as well as a myriad of bug reports and feature requests.  I’ve done what I can to make this the best app possible. A few new features include:

• Parental Controls
• Search Capabilities
• Access to your DVD and scene stash
• Image galleries
• Plus more!

The new improvements are too numerous to list here, but pictures say a thousand words, so check out the screenshots I’ve attached below.

 

I will begin rolling it out to existing users over the next several days. So stay tuned, and check your roku for the update!

 

In the meantime, we’ve decided to give away some free rokus! I’ll be giving out ROKU2 XS streaming players to 5 lucky members. This is the top-of-the-line roku with gaming functionality, 1080p video and advanced wifi and ethernet (check out the specs here).

 

To enter, from VB click on MY ACCOUNT, then in the “Win a roku” section, click “send confirmation”. This will send a confirmation email to your account email address. When you receive it, just click the link in the email and you’re all set! I will announce the winners on May 27.

 

Below are some “sneak preview” screen grabs from the new roku app:

Hey guys,

We’ve just launched a new site called VB PlayDates, and we’d love to get your feedback.

What is VB PlayDates?

VB PlayDates is a cams site where you can play games with girls.

You can play casual games, like checkers or pool. You can also share in adult activities, like watching porn together.

VB PlayDates is powered by a partner company called StripVille. We’ve worked to integrate our billing systems (just like with the existing VBCams site), so you don’t have to enter your credit card again.

Why did you create this site?

Adult social interaction is a growing space. You get a powerful thrill chatting with a real girl that non-interactive videos just can’t deliver.

But we didn’t want to just create another cam site. We wanted to create something new.

On most cam sites, you’re talking to girls in Eastern Europe or the Philippines, so language differences limit your interaction. Also, it’s unnatural to jump into a conversation with someone you’ve never met.

With VB PlayDates, most of the girls are American, and you can just play games with them, and allow a rapport to build organically.

That’s the idea, but it’s totally new and we’d love feedback.

What kind of feedback do you want?

At a basic level, what do you think of the site? Are you running into bugs? Usability issues? Did you like watching porn with the girls? How about the games?

At a deeper level, what do you think of the concept? What kind of adult social interaction would interest you?

Try VB PlayDates

Thanks,

- Josh

There’s been a lot of talk about VB2 features missing in VB3 (and we’re bringing many of those back), so I wanted to share one of my new favorite ways of watching porn that’s only available on VB3.

If you add a bunch of stars to your favorites, you can watch all their scenes (sliced up into random moments) in flow mode. Here’s how you do it:

1) Go to the star page of your favorite stars, and add to stash:

2) Repeat step 1 for all your stars. I’ve got 58 stars in my list.

3) Go to your star stash folder, and click “watch in flow mode”:

Sit back and enjoy

Those 58 stars are in almost 4000 scenes, so this technique gives you lots of porn tailored to your taste.

Today we added a new way of logging into VB3. Just log into Videobox and click on the link in the header that says “Go To VB3″ and you’ll automatically be logged in. This feature is called “Single Sign On” and it works in both directions. So, log into VB3 and click on the link that says “Back To Old Site” and you will be logged into Videobox.


Note: This won’t work if you click on the “Check it out here” graphic on the Videobox homepage. You need to use the text link in the header only.

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.

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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!