Well, it would seem that Boxee has been killed off thanks to Samsung. If you can recall, Boxee was a start-up company that launched a media box that could act as a hub for some of the more popular streaming services. However, back in 2013, the company ran out of money but luckily Samsung was there to swoop the company up and give it a new home. Apparently the entire division was being shaped and assigned to develop a new product that would be releasing with Samsung’s latest smart TV’s this year. After two long years of work, Samsung has decided to take down the division completely resulting in employees being laid off.
When Samsung picked up the Boxee team, the staff count for the division went from just 40 staff members to nearly 100. Instead of focusing on the Boxee Box or other media streaming devices, Samsung has placed this division to develop and create the “Perfect Experience” or better known as PX. This was a device that in Samsung’s eyes, would completely innovate the remote control used to control our televisions. PX was reportedly set to be designed much like a tablet but instead of a device that would feature several applications to control consumers TV’s, it would be built from the ground up and feature all the content consumers would like to keep track of such as a guide.
Initially, PX was set to have a custom user interface that would showcase what is currently playing on live TV while also showcasing what is available through streaming services. In order to showcase this information, Samsung was apparently in talks with popular streaming services and pay TV operators. Originally PX was set to release in 2015 and would have been bundled into the more higher-end smart TV’s released from Samsung but was delayed and slated to release sometime in 2016.
There were a few concerns with the PX and its Boxee division. For starters, reports from Variety state that Samsung had a few issues trying to gather particular content partners for their PX device. Although one of the more prominent issues that came up during the development of the PX is where is was being made. The division for the PX was located within the United States which is a pretty big distance away from the grasps of the Samsung headquarters and Korean executives.
It’s tough to fully confirm the reasoning behind the PX being cancelled and the division being laid off as most of these details comes from sources through Variety. When Variety attempted to get a statement directly from Samsung, the representative declined to go into specifics so far now we’ll have to wait and see if Samsung makes mention of the recent layoffs.