Boxee today unveiled an invite-only iPhone app that will let users share personal videos from the cloud.
The service, dubbed Cloudee, is "the first step towards a Boxee cloud offering," Boxee said in a blog post.
Getting personal videos on the TV screen is a "painful" process, Boxee said. "Some of these videos were on our phones, others on our laptop or network storage, and the ones we really wanted to see were always taken by our friends," the company wrote.
Copying videos to thumb drives, uploading to YouTube, or setting up private cloud storage accounts is "all too much work" for most people, "so videos just sat there… never being watched, never being shared," Boxee said.
Cloudee will let iPhone app users upload videos to Cloudee, organize them in groups, and share with friends. It will be free during the closed beta period, but Boxee will offer a premium version with unlimited storage once it goes live. Videos stored via Cloudee will be accessible from the Boxee Box or any Web browser.
"If you're like us, as you go through your videos to share them you'll experience a serendipitous feeling of re-discovery – bringing forgotten memories back to life," Boxee wrote. "We found concerts long passed, videos of our kids that they had filmed without us knowing, videos of loved ones no longer with us. It became a very powerful connection to our past, and to each other. We think it can do the same thing for millions of other people."
The cloud is a natural storage place for videos, Boxee continued. Saving them on devices that do not facilitate sharing or can crash and lose the content doesn't make sense.
Going forward, Boxee promised that Cloudee will become an integral pat of the Boxee offering. "We believe more of our video watching will shift towards on demand and secondary screens, which will mean more video coming from the cloud," the company said.
The Cloudee beta will require a Facebook account and an invite; sign up via cloudee.com.
Last year, Boxee unveiled the Boxee Live TV dongle, which connects to the Boxee Box and lets users watch channels like ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC for no extra fee. For more, see PCMag's full review of Boxee Live TV. Also check out PCMag's interview with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen.For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
