What is boxee?? Boxee is much like Hulu, but on SERIOUS CRACK. It plays a large amount of different types of videos and audio codecs. Basically think of a box that can play anything that you throw at it. For a small example: (Previously Hulu) Apple movie trailers, ABC, Blip.TV, CNET, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV Music in video and BBC iPlayer, Jamendo, Joost, Last.fm, NPR, SHOUTcast in audio. It even does CD/DVDs as well! It can do full 1080p via software acceleration and makes it fun to watch. You can basically turn your laptop or desktop in an awesome streaming media server with this thing!
So what’s the news? Today Boxee Beta was announced. Make sure to go over to Boxee.tv to go an try it out! The other thing that was announced was the Boxee Box! This thing looks like a sunken box, and is designed to be out of the ordinary. The photos show that there is only HDMI support and RCA stereo out. There is not any support for component. Two USB 2.0 ports and optical audio out as well. There was mentioned in the livestream that there will be wireless support if you don’t want to use the built in ethernet port already there.
D-Link is the hardware provider, but no clue yet as to what is all underneath the hood. This was all forseen back in early November and January of this year, but it is finally good to see some hard evidence. There is also talks of bringing the boxee experience to other popular devices that are already on the market; XBOX 360, do I hear a calling??? Microsoft missed out on the HD-DVD thing, so this could be a simple software update for them and this could keep them in the running for HD content on the box.
This is my first running into the boxee world, so I have d/l the beta and will be trying it out, I will wait with bated breath to see the box when it arrives on the shelf!