Pawnee's finest, live. (Photo: Boxee)

Suddenly the days are growing shorter and there's a snap in the air, and you know what that means: Everyone's getting ready to duke it out for the top spot on holiday shopping lists. (Only 69 days left, folks.) Stepping into the ring today: Boxee, with the announcement of the Boxee TV--and the specs sound pretty promising for any aspiring cord-cutters out there.

The new device--which The Verge first leaked pics of last week--combines apps like Netflix, live broadcast TV, and an unlimited DVR offering all in one device. A dual tuner will allow you to watch live television from either a basic cable connection or antenna, as well as recording up to two channels at once. The price: $99. The device hits shelves November 1.

"There'll be one place where you can watch live television, you can watch your recordings and you can watch video from the key over-the-top services," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen told Betabeat. "We've streamlined the experience so it's familiar grounds for anybody that has used the TV before."

He called Boxee TV's new streamlined interface "very different than existing connected TV experiences," though the device will come with Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Pandora and the like pre-installed.

Boxee's company blog trumpeting the announcement helps explain Mr. Ronen's excitement yesterday over the FCC's new rulemaking on cable encryption, which prompted him to take to the Boxee blog and write: "we are happy to see that the FCC’s rulemaking does indeed provide a path forward that’s good for consumers, the cable industry, and startups." Says the blog:

With Boxee TV you’ll be able watch live TV broadcasts in beautiful HD from channels like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, Univision and many others.  It works with antennas and unencrypted basic Cable that deliver the channels listed above, and has 2 tuners so you can watch one thing... and record another. 

Mr. Ronen emphasized the similarity to the TV-watching experience, which even your luddite great-aunt will recognize: "You turn it on, and there's live TV playing and you can go up and down and switch channels, and you can see what's coming up, what's being played right now, and you're always a click away from watching something."

The device comes with "a very small, basic antenna." However, your results with that may depend on your television's proximity to the window. If you're still not getting the reception you want, "what we recommend is that they call their cable company and get the broadcast basic tier, which can cost you, if you live in New York it's probably $15 a month," said Mr. Ronen. So it's not a total ax to the cord, but it's certainly getting closer.

The company is particularly keen to emphasize the DVR offering, which is unlimited. "We actually are going to be the first to introduce the cloud-based DVR," said Mr. Ronen. "The Boxee TV device is going to upload your recordings to the cloud, and it's stored in there for you." That means users can record as much as they want and watch it through either their TV or their PC or tablet.

The company is comparing its offering to the advent of digital cameras. "Today, when you hit record, you have to take into consideration that whatever you're recording is, the DVR is going to run out of space and that's going to get deleted. By removing that restriction, it just makes it so it's a no-brainer to click record." Mr. Ronen added that he's now recording every episode of Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

We're sure that true television junkies will appreciate no longer having to agonize over whether to record the umpteenth Law and Order episode or the new Dancing with the Stars.

Boxee is confident in its offering: "The product is going to be very unique in the marketplace--nobody else has built the cloud DVR, and we believe that this is going to be extremely differentiated," Mr. Ronen said.

Of coures, there are some limits, or at least additional considerations, to the No Limits DVR. For one thing, it's an optional service and will set you back an additional $14.99. Nor will it be universally available on November 1 to all Boxee TV buyers. It's rolling out in the top eight TV markets--New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and D.C. That covers about 30 percent of the total TV households in the U.S., so "we feel we're in a good place for the start," said Mr. Ronen. Everyone else should keep an eye out for the service's appearance "later in 2013," though the timing is likely to depend on what Boxee learns in its first eight markets.

"That enables us to scale the launch of our cloud DVR,"  which isn't cheap from either an operational or financial perspective, Mr. Ronen explained.

Can you hear that? The sound of a thousand cords cut.

About a week ago, a GigaOm writer Janko Roettgers stumbled across something big: an integration that would allow anyone who owns a Boxee Box to watch live broadcast TV over the device without having to switch back-and-forth between inputs.

Now, Boxee is finally prepared to speak about the feature. In January, the company will start selling a USB dongle that transforms the antenna on the Boxee Box into a tuner to capture free over-the-air HD TV signals from channels like ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. The dongle is a one-time cost of $49 and the company is currently taking pre-orders.

So that's a little more expensive than your typical digital converter box, which also lets you get free live broadcast TV. But you get some special social juice with Boxee, plus everything in one unit with one remote control.

Betabeat spoke to Boxee founder and CEO Avner Ronen yesterday about why he thinks this could be a tipping point in getting consumers to cut--or at least shave--the cord.

We were talking to David Tisch, one of your angel investors about it, and he thinks it will increase the value to the user exponentially. In an email he called it a “true cable alternative,” when combined with the content that’s already available on Boxee.

The way we see it, for many people, over-the-top video services like Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, VUDU and YouTube are filling a bigger role in the way people consume video. But there’s still a big piece missing. You want to watch local news or a football game or the Oscars or the Olympics or the Presidential address—whatever it is that’s delivered in live broadcast. But if you want to do that today over the Internet, over-the-top is sometimes impossible and other times very hard. So if somebody considers cutting the cord, it will be a big missing piece for him.

Are there people who won’t be appeased with this add-on?

If you live by ESPN and you have to watch every game of the Knicks and the Yankees then, you know, Boxee Live TV would not be sufficient. But if you’re a casual sports fan—you watch the Superbowl and you watch the World Series and you watch the Olympics and you watch the U.S. Open—all of those things are on broadcast. 89 of the top 100 shows—all in broadcast. So there’s a critical mass of content that we believe will provide an alternative to—not 100 percent of households—but we hope we can make something that is attractive to maybe half of the U.S. households.

You consider this a turning point for Boxee?

For us it’s the first time I think that we can talk with users about Boxee as an alternative to cable and being able to answer their most basic questions, which are: Can I watch this game? How do I watch the news? That’s where most people are saying, I don’t think I’m ready yet. If we can get people to make a list of the stuff they watch and then see what’s available for free over the air, and then what’s available for them over-the-top, and then see what’s left on that list and then ask themselves if what’s left is worth $85 a month? I think many people that go through that exercise of making that list come to the conclusion that they are ready to cut the cord.

With a live TV component, do you see yourself going up against Google TV?

No, Google TV has said many times that they don’t see themselves as an alternative to cable, but rather something that compliments cable. If you look at the [Google TV] box and what it does if you want to access live TV, you actually have to connect the cable box. They’re taking a different approach. We think that users just live a different life right now when it comes to the way they watch TV and that cable has lost touch with the way they consume TV. When they sit down to watch something, they don’t just open the TV and start to channel surf. I think that behavior is gone.

So it seems out-of-touch to tether your product to cable?

Like users revolted when they had to pay for 15 songs if they wanted to get two songs—the way music was delivered—I think that the same sentiment is now happening with cable TV. You don’t want to pay $80 a month for hundreds of channels that you don’t really watch. It’s not that you’re not willing to pay for the stuff you want to watch. That’s exactly it. You want to have more control over what you’re paying for.

Do you expect pushback from networks? Have you been in discussions with them?

We’re talking with media companies all the time. I think by now most of them know we’re coming up with Boxee Live TV. On its own, it’s not something new. Broadcast TV has been around before cable TV was there. It’s kind of a forgotten history. People don’t know that they can get this stuff on the air and they can get it on HD and for free. We’d like to remind people that it exists. The media companies, definitely those that own those broadcast channels and cable channels, they’ve been working really hard to generate dual revenue streams. Both advertising and subscription.

So it won’t be the Hulu scenario, where it shut itself off from Boxee. They can’t make it so that the dongle won’t work?

No, they’re required by law to make it available.

Where do see the networks finding additional revenue?

There’s an opportunity media companies have beyond the advertising revenue to start generating new types of subscription services, which I think that the initial phase of it you can see with Glenn Beck doing his own subscription show and Louis C.K. doing a pay-per-view event. Those are shows and content that’s more on the margins. When you talk about 89 of the top 100 shows that are broadcast, you have to imagine that if media companies would start offering premium services around that content that there’s gonna be some traction for it with consumers. If you look at over-the-top, that’s not an environment where people are not paying. Between iTunes and Xbox Live and PS3 and services such as Boxee all of whom have credit cards on file and can make a very quick decision to purchase one time payment or a subscription. The users dissatisfaction is not with content, it’s with the cable companies.

That’s why it makes sense for Boxee to separate working with the broadcast networks versus the cable companies, who are going to fight this until they die. But how do you know the tuner will work?

We tested it in different places. During December we’re going to get it into the hands of early users as well. So we’ll get feedback from consumers. We’re very optimistic. If you don’t have a great reception where you live, you can actually call your cable company and ask for what’s called basic cable. It’s the unencrypted channels—CBS, Fox, NBC, the same channels—you can get them over the coaxial cable and connect that to the Boxee Live TV tuner, so we support that as well. It may be a bit difficult for the consumer, because you’ll get pushed to buy a higher tier package or get some sort of bundle. They don’t really advertise that you can get those channels for a low fee.  You can shave the cord rather than cut the cord.

Have you envisioned something like this for awhile?

Yeah, it’s been in the works since the beginning of the year. I cut the cord—stopped paying for cable—about five years ago. That’s what actually prompted me to start Boxee, was when I decided I’m not watching cable enough to justify paying for it. Three years ago, I started playing with different antennae and that has been my set up at home for awhile. I’m using Boxee for over-the-top. I have a 7-year-old kid and we watch football together and we watch tennis together and we do it over the antenna. But we had to switch inputs every time we did it. That just didn’t make sense. That’s what pushed us to bring those two together. Even for myself, the first time I didn’t have to switch inputs, it immediately made a big difference.

What about social features with the Live TV add-on?

We’re adding a little Boxee-ness to it. You’ll be able to see how many people are watching a channel right now. And you’ll be able to see if your friends are watching a show right now. We’ll do more of that. We’ll integrate social and we’ll integrate additional data to enhance the viewing experience.

Can you use it like TV and store something from network TV?

Not in the initial release. The driver for us was live broadcast. We were watching stuff on Netflix and VUDU and Hulu. But if we hear the feedback from users that they really want us to do DVR, we have another USB port, people are using it to connect storage space already, I guess we can do a software upgrade and enable them to record.

What did you make of Logitech talking about the money they had lost with Google TV? Do you think set back web TV?

At this time, it’s not gonna be a big revelation that the initial version of Google TV did not live up to either their expectation, or more importantly user expectations. It’s a tough problem to solve for the consumer. Logitech made a bet on Google and took a big financial risk in terms of manufacturing, inventory, and then a big advertising campaign around it. A very big presence in retail stores trying to explain Google TV to consumers that are walking into the stores. But all that effort eventually didn’t pan out, obviously. There was no viral effect. Same goes for Apple TV, by the way, the initial version didn’t do extremely well, even though it’s Apple. Second generation Boxee is doing, I think, much better and is more attractively priced.

I think we’re all still working at it and solving the problem for the user and trying to find the right mix in terms of features and simplicity and price point and content. I don’t think anybody has completely nailed it. Until now.

You think explaining this to people is the biggest barrier?

I think as an industry we need to a better job simplifying the product. The cable TV experience is not broken. They love the content. They may be upset with how much they pay compared with how much they watch. This is something we’re trying to address, but the experience for many people works. To be able to turn on the TV, to watch something, record something, that works. So for you to come and replace it, you have to come up with something that provides the users with the content and then the experience is still, I think, a challenge for us all.

Steve Jobs at MacWorld, New York City, July 17, 2001

After the news about Apple founder Steve Jobs death broke last night, Betabeat reached out to a few members of the New York tech community and asked them to share their thoughts and impressions of the ultimate CEO. Here's what they had to say:

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures:

Steve Jobs is the iconic entrepreneur of the information age. He impacted everyone and everything. It is a great loss.

Marc Cendella, The Ladders:

We’ve lost our Jobs. Life

swipes by, fingerprints reveal:

He adopted us.

David Tisch, Techstars:

When I sat down with the 60 entrepreneurs in the TechStars program last night, we had a moment of silence… No one even blinked. As I addressed the group, the message was simple: Steve Jobs created things people dream of, he changed the world in ways people can only dream of, he impacted each one of our own dreams. As you embark on your journey to create something, I can only hope each of you strive to impact the world in a profound way.

To know that for the next 100 years, companies will be inspired by what Steve Jobs has created, will care about design and user experience, will focus on the customer… that is an impact. It is an impact that every child growing up will inherently and unknowingly feel, as they use his computers, phones, and what's yet to come. My first computer was an Apple IIGS. My computers today are all built by Apple. Hopefully my last computer will be an Apple, too. Only visionaries can impact the future and leave it a better place; he did. I hope we can also make a "dent in the universe", or at least dream to.

Dina Kaplan, blip.tv:

When I think about Steve Job's legacy for entrepreneurs, I think about two things. First, your product has to be good. So good people are excited to use it and feel happy interacting with it. When you're managing a start-up you're juggling a number of glass and rubber balls--some of which can drop and survive, but others which have to always be in the air.  Thinking about what Steve Jobs accomplished at Apple focuses your mind on the importance of a strong base for your company, which is always product.

Second, I remember hearing him say that the Apple Store was the best marketing the company ever did. I love that. Build a great product and showcase it in a wonderful way, and your hard work is done. It's simple, clean, inspirational and motivating.

Scott Heiferman, Meetup:

A friend I haven't heard from since 1990 just tweeted: "@heif Heard the news. Became teenager again. Heard you preaching the gospel of Jobs."

Obviously, he was a lifelong hero.

Chris Dixon, Hunch:

My entire life has been shaped by computers and from the Apple II to the iPhone it was always computers invented by Steve Jobs.  Every technology entrepreneur looked up to him as the greatest innovator and entrepreneur we'd ever seen - and will likely ever see again.  His passing is just an incredibly sad day for the tech world but most importantly his family and friends.

Bre Pettis, Makerbot:

My family had a software company called "Software Productions" that made children's software for the Apple II+. The programmers that worked on the software were 17 and 18 year old hackers and as a 10 year old, these guys programming software for the Apple II+ were magicians that could make the computer sing. Those programmers were my childhood heroes. I daydreamed that I would be as cool as them when I grew up. I remember being in school and there was an Apple II+ in the classroom and I was so proud that I knew how to make it work and could edit the hex code and hack it to make my characters in the game wizardry have 10 million gold pieces. That computer opened up the world for geeks like me in the 80's and inspired a generation of young people to understand technology and use it creatively.

Those early computer experiences have led me to start a 3D printer company called MakerBot to bring 3D printing to average person and to the classrooms of the world so that young people can have that same rush that I felt with the Apple II+. Every creative project I've ever done was done on hardware that Steve Jobs had a hand in. The beautiful style and the focus on user friendly interfaces changed the face of computing and made it easy to use for people to be creative. His work is an inspiration and he was taken too early and will be missed by everyone who has ever appreciated an Apple product..

Charlie O'Donnell, First Round Capital:

I teach a course called Intro to Tech Ventures at Fordham.  I don't really care too much if they write a winning business plan or build an app that gets a million downloads.  I want them to walk out of the class thinking that they can change the world driven by passion for quality, caring about customers, and being resilient--and that's what Steve Jobs did.  He went from being some kid in a garage to changing the way we live and how we interact with each other.  It's probably the second greatest story ever told.

Avner Ronen, Boxee:

Like many other entrepreneurs I am an Apple fanboy. Standing in lines to get the latest device. Hitting 'refresh' on my browser reading a "live" blog covering their latest product announcement. Jobs have changed the world for the better in numerous ways. He challenged and inspired everyone else to build better products. He made users expect more. He is responsible for spreading joy among millions of people.

His commencement speech from 2005 has been an inspiration on a personal level as well. Like many others I will share it with my kids when they grow up. It is sad he died at such a young age, but it seems he lived a full and great life, true to his principals and leaving behind a legacy that will live on for generations.

Mike Brown, Aol Ventures:

I remember buying my first iPhone and thinking to myself, 'wow, this is a truly unique user experience and what an amazing device.' It was a surprise and delight moment that I'd only experienced once before in my life when interacting with a consumer product [the other being flying on a Virgin Atlantic plane]. He really entrenched my belief that the true winners are those that make beautiful and highly functional experiences for consumers. Overall, his legacy will likely be unmatched and he already serves as an awesome inspiration to me and others who aspire to be the next generation of Jobs, Branson, etc.

Ricky Van Veen, College Humor:

Like many now, the way I tend to hear about notable deaths is via text message. And my reaction is usually "Oh, that's too bad." With Steve Jobs, it was different. I didn't even know how to respond. And that's how I felt when I read it--a full-body visceral reaction to the news. I then realized what a subtle and odd tribute it is to a technology innovator to have the news of his death carried by a product that was his brainchild.

Few things upset me more than unrealized potential. Steve saw industry after industry for what they *could* be, and not for what they are, and then made them better for everyone. He unlocked their potential. And I think about that in terms of Steve's life. Even with all he accomplished in his unfairly short time here, I'll still always wonder what else was bound to come out of that curious and brilliant mind. For people in the technology industry, yesterday we lost more than an innovator. We lost a role model, and a paragon of excellence. An example to the rest of us of how good we could be -- if we could just be Steve Jobs.

Apple Store on 5th Avenue, with a tribute to Steve Jobs spray-painted on a temporary construction barrier. October 5, 2011

Anil Dash, Activate:

The lesson I take from Steve Jobs' life isn't about any products or software, but much more about the channeling of ambition. Many, many people are driven and have lofty goals, but he made clear that you can only really capitalize on grandiose ambitions by channeling the energy of lots of other people towards that vision, and that's an amazingly powerful skill.

It's akin to James Brown; He's enormously influential on even the music we hear on the radio today, but he didn't play the drums or the horns on any of his big hits. He wasn't even that great of a singer. He just knew how to articulate a vision for how things should be in a way that would bring the best out of others.

And Jobs was similar to that, especially in that he recognized he wasn't just making technology, he was shaping _culture_. He acted like that from nearly the beginning of his career, at a time when such a idea seemed ludicrously grandiose. Just as Gates seemed wildly ambitious for imagining everyone would use a computer and use software, Jobs seemed crazy for imagining everyone would use a computer (in perhaps an unrecognizable form) to shape the way that culture is created. But as ever, what seems crazy is often just early.

Lauren Leto, Bnter:

Steve Jobs was a role model for us all in the most true sense of the word, not just a name to repeat as someone you'd like to resemble but an imposing persona to have in mind while we pitch, while we plan, while we provide. The generations before Jobs believed invention came from making objects fancier, adding bells and whistles, Jobs decided innovation was making objects simpler, making them intuitive. It's because of Jobs that our generation is no longer inventing, we're breaking things down.

Cody Brown, Commons Labs:

The first computer I ever owned was an iBook. I was 13, the processor was a blazing 600 Mhz, and my friends and family wanted me to buy a Dell. I could see their points about Apple being too 'niche' but I caved and I bought the iBook and I became a Mac person in the generic way a lot of people become Mac people. I'd spend hours on the MacRumors forums, I'd try to convince everyone I met to switch to Mac, and I repeatedly tried to get my parents to buy Apple stock. They didn't, but my grandma eventually caught wind of this and gave me 50 shares of stock for my birthday. Half those shares were sold this year to keep my company running when it was on the verge of falling apart. I made a long bet on Jobs and he returned the favor.

When I read that he passed last night I got quiet and I wanted to be alone. I never met steve jobs, I never even emailed him but I feel like he's been with with me and he's been a friend since I bought my first mac 10 years ago. There is nothing more anxiety inducing than the constant creation of new technology and Jobs, for so long, has countered this emotion with awe. When Jobs is on stage, Moore's Law and our own potential have always been positively correlated but he's never taken for granted that this happens naturally. I wanted nothing more than to meet him because I, like so many, craved to see what he was like off stage when things are hard and the answers aren't clear. But we don't have that option anymore, we only have recording of his life and his art which we often clutch in the palm of our hands. We've lost our leader in technology and I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't also accept that we lost a moral and religious leader. Jobs spoke with a lucid philosophical clarity that was unmatched by anyone in tech and his endorsement meant everything. Those who had it, no longer can take it for granted and those who tried to get it, now need to think about why. I think we're going to do a lot of wandering now and I think we have a lot of hard questions to ask ourselves that we may have previously ignored. I think he'd say that this is good.

All pictures via Getty Images

Now with extra New York

Tom Daly was born in Brooklyn, but has been living and working in Rockland County as an interaction designer. Now he'll be making the commute each day to work at Boxee on the future of web TV.

"I've been a Boxee user for a long time now, used their patch to hack my Apple TV back in the day," says Daly. "I used to contribute to the forums and run into the Boxee guys at conference, so it's a dream to get to work for them."

The way Daly sees it the big battle right now is to perfect the social component of web TV. "I got my alpha invite this week for three new services that are all about making sure the content your friends are sharing gets equal weight with what's on demand."

Local start-ups like Shelby.tv and VHX are working on exactly this problem, and have been getting a lot of interest from investors.

"For a while the focus was all about bringing more content to Boxee," says CEO Avner Ronen. "Now we are putting more emphasis on discovery and product as we move to new platforms like the iPad. Tom is a great product guy and we need more firepower."

As an interaction designer, Daly's goal is to craft a product with equal appeal to early adopters and mainstream noobs."We need to get to the point where my parents can come over to watch my kids, pick up the remote and just get it. TV right now feels like its yelling at you the second you turn it on. It should be more like owning a cat than a dog. It's all about easing the transition for people who are used to their TV sets barking at them all the time."