Boxee in Beta and a Box; New Content Includes Adult

CYBERSPACE—A crowd of Boxee fans gathered at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn on Monday to celebrate the unveiling of Boxee Box, a new set-top box that will be available for consumers to play with at next month’s CES show in Las Vegas. Boxee Box is supported of course by Boxee, D-Link’s open-source media-integrating software that launched in 2008. At the gathering Monday, Boxee, which has been in private alpha testing for over a year, launched a private beta called Boxee Beta.

“Boxee, the free, open-source software that turns a computer or an AppleTV into an internet-connected movie and TV machine, has finally gotten its own hardware home,” writes Wired, about the set-top box. “With the new Boxee Box, the project is ready to stop being just a home-borrowing hermit crab and to move into its own new shell.” Boxee Box, which will reportedly become available in the second quarter of next year, will retail for $200.

“Ever wish you could get all the great free entertainment from the Internet onto your TV?” asks Boxee on its website. “Or playback your personal collection of movies, TV shows, music, and photos in your living room without having to sacrifice your laptop? Ever wish you could enjoy and share that movie, TV show, or YouTube clip with your friends on Facebook and Twitter with the push of a button on your remote, from the couch? All of this power and more is coming in a killer new box from D-Link & Boxee.”

According to PC World, developers have been working on Boxee applications. “New content providers on the software include Clicker, The Escapist, and Suicide Girls. And students from New York University demonstrated a program called Trend Lines, which filters content based upon what topics are trending online,” the site reports. “Boxee has updated its software to work with Microsoft's DirectX multimedia APIs, and is creating a 64-bit installation for Ubuntu Linux. Other changes include a streamlined user interface, as well as extended social networking capabilities.”