Boxee, the socially driven and feisty Internet TV browser, will soon land on a set-top box of its own. Currently the media center software is only available on Mac, Windows, Linux, along with a hacked together version for the AppleTV (the closest that Boxee has come so far to appearing on a set-top box). That’s about to change, says the company.
Founder and CEO Avner Ronen writes on the official Boxee blog: “I am very happy to announce we have signed our first partnership with a CE company. At this point we can not say more about the partner or the specs of the device, but we can tell you we are working closely with them to make sure we deliver a great Boxee experience on it.”
Subscribers to the MLB.TV Premium can now use Boxee to pipe content from the service, which includes “live and on-demand in HD (where available)”, to their TVs or simply enjoy Boxee’s ‘ten foot’ and remote control-friendly UI on their PC. On that note, MLB.TV Premium offers DVR functionality to pause and rewind a live game.
Going forward, Boxee hopes this is the first of such partnerships, as live sport is bound to be seen as a major driver of uptake for Internet TV solutions such as Boxee.
MLB.com represents a big step for boxee as we hope this is the first of many different live sports offerings we can bring to you. We hope other sports follow MLB.com’s lead of giving fans a choice of how they enjoy watching their favorite teams…. [Boxee blog]
The company also announced that a version of Boxee, albeit in Alpha, is now available for Windows along with existing versions for Mac OSX and Linux.
It seems like everybody and their dog wants to be a platform these days, and media center software Boxee is no exception. (That’s a good thing by the way.) However, providing the hooks needed to write third-party applications is probably the easy part (relatively speaking), while attracting developers to the platform can be a little harder. Build it and they will come hardly ever applies.
On that note, Boxee have announced the ‘Boxee app challenge‘ in an attempt to provide a little extra incentive for developers. Not only are a bunch of prizes up for grabs for the best apps created up, but the Internet TV startup also promises to shine a little light on entrants along the way.
March 16th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV | Comments Off
Another ‘remote control’ app has landed on iPhone, this time for media center software Boxee. The Boxee Remote app works over WiFi and operates in two modes: ‘Gesture’ and ‘Buttons’. In Gesture mode users drag the Boxee logo around the screen to trigger up, down, left and right and clicking on the logo activates play/pause. Alternatively, Button mode offers up a virtual version of Apple’s own hardware-based remote control, which although less imaginative is probably more practical. Either way, the free app is very bare bones, making it all the more baffling that, according to Boxee, Apple took such a long time to approve it.
The news that Hulu has asked Boxee to remove access to its content is ridiculous on many levels.
Not least is the fact that, in relation to Hulu, technically speaking Boxee is just a web browser that happens to be optimized for a ‘ten foot’ or TV-like viewing experience rather than for when you’re sat directly in front of the PC. And crucially, since Boxee has yet to license its software to set-top box makers or build a box of its own, the only way to get Boxee content onto a TV is via a PC (aside from running Boxee on a hacked AppleTV). Once the PC is using the TV as its monitor, any content can be displayed on the television, including using a standard web browser such as Firefox, IE or Safari to access Hulu or any online video site. All Boxee has done is design a better browsing experience for when you’re sat further away. In other words, Boxee alone doesn’t enable Hulu to be viewed on the TV, it just makes it more convenient.
Boxee, the socially driven and feisty Internet TV browser, will soon land on a set-top box of its own. Currently the media center software is only available on Mac, Windows, Linux, along with a hacked together version for the AppleTV (the closest that Boxee has come so far to appearing on a set-top box). That’s about to change, says the company.
It seems like 
