Boxee wants to hear from the Afterdawn community

Rich Fiscus
1 Mar 2009 17:08

Boxee is a relatively new, free media center application for Linux, Intel Macs, and Apple TV boxes, and a new Windows version is in closed alpha testing. Last week I talked to Andrew Kippen of Boxee about their software, and the first thing he told me was how much they're looking forward to hearing from the Afterdawn community.
If you'd like to check out Boxee for yourself you can get the Linux, OS X, and Apple TV versions from their website. Stay tuned to Afterdawn for an announcement when the Windows alpha opens to the public. According to Andrew they're hoping to reach that point in another 2-3 months.

Make sure to check out Afterdawn's preview of the Boxee for Windows alpha

The technology

Boxee is built on XBMC, an open source program initially written for the original Xbox but eventually ported to a number of different environments including Linux, OSX, and Windows. With a hack it can even be installed on an Apple TV box.
One benefit to this is the ability to use XBMC plugins, like one released recently to add Hulu support. I asked Andrew if they were planning to keep Boxee updated with the latest XBMC developments. He couldn't promise anything, but did tell me this about their developers' relationship with the XBMC project.
"We work hand in hand with XBMC. We're exchanging code all the time. We make our code that's available under GPL available to them. The idea, I'm sure, is to make those cross compatible as much as possible."
He also pointed out that CEO Avner Ronen was a XBMC developer before working on Boxee.

Boxee's social network

Rather than limiting you to sources the developers think you'll be interested in, or even requiring you to find what you're looking for and adding it manually, Boxee integrates a network of "friends" who can recommend videos, music, and even images to each other.
Boxee is primarily intended for bridging the gap between the internet and your home theater setup. As Andrew pointed out to me that's what makes the social aspect so important. There is so much content on the internet one person could never find everything they're interested in on their own.

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Whether you're watching a video online or listening to music from your hard drive, you can rate it so your friends will know what you think about it. If it's particularly good you can even recommend it to one or more friends.

Attracting content

It's easy to understand media center PC owners would like Boxee, but what about the content owners? After all, without their cooperation there's no revenue sharing, and without revenue sharing it would be hard, perhaps impossible, to make Boxee profitable while still giving it away to users.
In fact it's simpler than you might think. "Boxee's goal is to drive users to sources of legal content," says Kippen. He goes on to explain that the social aspect of Boxee is a big key to this.
Even though a member may recommend something they've obtained from an unauthorized source, like a TV show downloaded via P2P, Boxee will try to find a legal version to watch for anyone following up on that recommendation.

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Let's say you were subscribed to a BitTorrent RSS feed to download episodes of CSI automatically. If you recommend them to your friends, Boxee will actually take them to the official CBS video stream, complete with the standard commercials.
According to Andrew, content owners have responded positively to the idea. That seems like an obvious reaction, but it's important to remember that such rational responses can't be taken for granted.
You don't have to look any further than Hulu's recent decision to remove their content from Boxee for proof.
Fortunately, most content owners are apparently open to the idea of Boxee, but there are still hurdles to be cleared. "Over the last several years they've been working to license content to the web," Andrew said. "I think the idea of bringing content back to the TV screen - they don't have a model for that yet."

Commercial services

But what if you're more interested in pay services like the streaming video offering from Netflix or downloads from Amazon VOD? The OS X version already features a Netflix client, and once the Windows version reaches a stable release it should also. Amazon support isn't in the works yet, but could be added in the future.
Andrew explained that the Boxee team's priorities depend greatly on user feedback, which they occasionally solicit in the form of polls on their company blog. Netflix support, for example, was implemented within 3 weeks after one of these polls closed.
Another feature that may be in a future release is TV tuner support. At first it seems a little strange that a program marketed to people with computers connected to their TVs doesn't include this already. On the other hand it's not really part of their core functionality.
Andrew told me "I think we wanted to take advantage of all the content that's available online first. We're thinking of including some kind of DVR functionality down the road."

If you have a comment or question about Boxee's software, feel free to post it either here or on our Media Center PC forum. It's your chance to make sure the developers know what you want Boxee to be.