Posted 11/12/09 at 07:09:13 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Social media center Boxee has announced plans to move forward with hardware makers. This means that a dedicated Boxee Box will be arriving before too long. More details and mockups of the device will be available at an event on December 11th.

Boxee showed off their new software for Mac and Linux back at CES. While at CES, they began having discussions with hardware makers about the possibility of embedding Boxee in a standalone unit. Now that that’s happening, Boxee is talking more about the product as a platform.

Boxee’s goal is to make it easy for users to find the content they want. To do this they plan to give content owners and aggregators tools to develop a variety of business models (i.e. make cash money). Ultimately, Boxee would like to be on all your connected devices. Maybe someday Boxee, maybe someday…

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Posted 08/13/09 at 09:20:14 AM by Paul Lilly

The money keeps rolling in for Boxee, a browser-based streaming media service who managed to attract $4 million last November. In its second round of funding, Boxee has secured another $6 million in financing from Boston-based General Catalyst.

"General Catalyst brings more than just money to the table," Boxee wrote on its blog. "We wanted a partner to help us as we strengthen our relationship with big media and cable companies. As we learned (the hard way), it is a complicated world."

One of those complications came earlier in the year when Boxee was forced to drop support for Hulu streaming after content providers cried foul and demanded that the service be turned off. Boxee hopes its latest funding and resulting contacts will help the service avoid these types of conflicts moving forward.

Boxee also listed out a handful of goals, which include bringing the service out of Beta, adding more content, attracting more developers, and bringing Boxee into devices.

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Posted 05/29/09 at 11:30:00 AM by Will Smith

Stop surfing the internet for a minute (we know, a tall order) and go get your last cable or satellite TV bill. Back? Good. Now skim to the bottom and look at the total amount of money you paid for TV last month. Do you feel like you got a reasonable amount of entertainment for that $60, $80, or even $100-plus? Are you happy about the money you spend for the privilege of watching TV? We’re not. The vast majority of TV we watch is available for free, over the air. Sure, we’ll occasionally watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords on HBO or a documentary on Discovery, but most of the TV we watch is on one of the big over-the-air networks—ABC, CBS, Fox, the CW, and NBC. So we started looking for alternatives.

It turns out that the vast majority of new TV shows are available online, either as part of an ad-driven website like Hulu or TV.com, or available for sale on iTunes or Amazon’s Unbox service. However, having a PC in the living room has traditionally sucked. After all, you don’t want to hear a big, noisy PC when you’re enjoying a movie or a TV show, and using a mouse and keyboard as the primary interface just doesn’t cut it when you’re kicking back on the couch. But times have changed. These days, it’s easy to build a PC that’s quiet enough to be virtually unheard, yet powerful enough to play all the high-definition video that’s currently available.

And making the proposition even more appealing, there are software frontends like Boxee and the new Hulu Desktop that let you harness all that hardware power in an easy-to-use, remote-friendly interface that combines the massive library of streaming video on the web with the DRM-free content you rip from discs or purchase legally on the web. We’ll introduce you to a couple of the options, then help you configure our favorite. By combining a few hundred bucks’ worth of hardware with a free software app and your broadband connection, you can reduce the money you spend on entertainment from $100 a month to $100 a year.

Read on to get started!

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Posted 03/27/09 at 05:34:39 PM by Andy Salisbury

Earlier this month Boxee, the ambitious new program that’s looking to bring a full Web content experience to your living room (that’s currently only available for Mac and Linux), announced that it would introduce a brand new, overhauled application program interface (API) and a workaround that will allow Hulu’s content to work… for now.

The new API will introduce a few applications right off the bat, including built-in support for Pandora and RadioTime. But, the new API will also allow developers to build more complex applications for the platform.

The workaround that will allow users to view content on Hulu will work by detecting video in a regular web page and then attempting to put it into full-screen view. In the past, Hulu was available as a channel right though the API, but it was blocked at the request of content partners. Not long after Boxee just grabbed the data they wanted from Hulu’s RSS feed, but they blocked that too. With any luck, this new change will allow users to view all the video content they wish.

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Posted 02/20/09 at 04:14:02 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

As we inch ever close to episode 100, the team still has yet to decide on an appropriate way to celebrate. Live broadcast? video podcast? Only time will tell. But this week, the more pressing issue is the complete absence of the senior members of the staff. With Will and Gordon MIA (possibly off to renewal), the podcast is helmed by a crew of fresh face editors -- the 25 and under club. The gang discusses Intel's new dispute with Nvidia, Boxee's divorce with Hulu, and the ongoing Pirate Bay trial. Everybody shares their personal list of essential Windows apps, and we try to answer a few listener questions (mostly unsuccessfully). But even without Gordon's wisdom and rage, a rant finds its way into episode 97.

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

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Posted 02/18/09 at 05:43:12 PM by Norman Chan

Of the new internet startups that have emerged in the past few months, one of our favorites has to be Boxee, the streaming social media center from the team that created the acclaimed XBMC frontend. Boxee (currently still in Beta) combines popular video and podcast streams from CBS, ABC, and PBS into one slick and functional media center that turns any connected computer into an internet TV receiver. One of the best features was that it supported streaming from Hulu, which meant users could navigate through thousands of hours of content (e.g. all of Arrested Development) without opening a web browser.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

Just today, Boxee announced that they would be discontinuing support for Hulu streaming after content providers complained and demanded that the Boxee service be shut off. In a sobering blog post, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen informed users that as of this Friday, Hulu streaming would be unavailable via their service. “We have many content partners who are generating revenue from boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,” said Ronen. In the Boxee beta, content from Hulu retrained all of the advertising that users would see when watching a video on Hulu.com, so the issue doesn’t appear to be related to missed ad revenue opportunities. Ronen also stated that Boxee beta testers streamed 100,000 videos from Hulu just last week alone.

And what did Hulu have to say for itself? Read on. 

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