Monday, March 15, 2010

"Have You Met BOXEE?" No Seriously, Have You? You Might Want To.


What the Heck is Boxee and why should you care? 
Well the what is BOXEE? To answer what is BOXEE is easy, I've listed the entire description, in their words below the BOXEE logo at the bottom. 

As for the why you should care... well that one is a little more complicated. The easiest answer is CONTENT. 
BOXEE is positioning themselves to become the content facilitator that you've dreamed of, unless of course you want anyone to see your local ads, or want to look at ratings. 
I myself (as a consumer) find BOXEE a breath of fresh air when it comes to video content and the abilities of this simple to use software.
As a broadcaster I find BOXEE terribly intimidating, and so do others.  - In reality BOXEE doesn't do anything to your content. It allows you to have all of the video you like to watch, neatly organized in one place making it more user friendly. (isn't that cable's job) oh and here's the best part, wanna watch a show you missed, *BLAM-O * If you can watch it online, it's probably on BOXEE. (there goes Tivo, and the DVR ) 
In reality I'm unsure how it will play out with BOXEE and their future.(Gonna Be HUGE!) But I can spot a trend, and this one looks like it could be a tsunami headed to shore. I only wonder how the broadcasting world is going to re-shuffle. accept the reality that consumers really wanting to have a choice in content, both what the watch and when they watch it. 
This time it's not the imaginative, "wow that will be cool when it happens." or maybe when people can just plug in and be as easy as cable.  Because as we know until they make it easy for "average Joe" no one will really want it, right..... right did i mention the BOXEE box, coming soon.
Well, I've said enough. BOXEE has the potential to give television and content creation a much needed face lift. As for the rest of us it's our job to keep up and give the people what they want.
Boxee is the first "social" media center, whose free, open source, downloadable software is changing the way consumers experience media.
On a computer or connected to an HDTV, Boxee gives people a truly connected digital entertainment experience to enjoy movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Netflix, MLB.TV, Comedy Central, Pandora, Last.fm, and flickr. Not only that, but you can share information about what you’re watching with friends so they can find it legally and enjoy it too. You can even post things you like to social networks like Twitter, Last.FM, or Tumblr. All this from within a visually driven interface that makes media come to life.

Supported Platforms

Boxee runs on the following computer platforms:
Apple Macintosh
Mac OS X (Tiger 10.4, Leopard 10.5, Snow Leopard 10.6)
Linux
Ubuntu (9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, 9.10 Karmic Koala)
Windows
Windows (XP, Vista, 7)
Apple TV
Additionally a 3rd party developer has made Boxee available for the Apple TV

History

The idea for Boxee was born when founding friends Avner, Gidon, Idan, Tom, and Roee, came up with the idea for boxee in 2004 when they began using Xbox Media Center, open source software for the original Xbox that allowed people to play digital media on their TVs. They became members of XBMC’s open source community and in 2007 imagined a way to take the platform even further. Since 2007, Mr. Ronen and a team of 11 others have worked to extend the base code for XBMC with online sources like hulu and Netflix as well as social networking in boxee.
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