How long did the development take?

Boxee is based on the open source XBMC project which has been in development since 2002.  Boxee specifically has been in development for a little over a year and a half.

What is the number 1 priority for Boxee at the moment?

Our current focus is on our Windows release and enabling Netflix on the AppleTV.

How do you plan on monetizing this service?

While the software is free, Boxee’s revenue sources will be:

• Revenue sharing with premium content providers like Neflix, Hulu, Amazon and others.
• Premium features (applications and plug-ins) for the platform much like iPhone applications. These applications and plug-ins will be available in an Application Directory hosted by Boxee.
• Licensing fees from hardware manufacturers (set top box manufacturers) who would like to include boxee in their platform.

How did you come up with the idea for Boxee?

The idea fom Boxee came out of the original Xbox Media Player (later renamed to XBMC).   Avner bought a $,2000 Windows Media Center PC to run digital media in his living room.

After inviting a few friends to come over and check it out, a close friend, mentioned he could have done the same thing with his Xbox using XBMC.  The idea for Boxee was born and over the next few years as they became avid XBMC users and contributors to the XBMC community.

In 2007, they decided to take the XBMC code and build a platform that included content available on the Internet as well as social networking functionality on top of XBMC’s great feature-set.

How many people work on the development team?

There are 11  Boxee employees. Avner Ronen, the CEO, and Gidon Coussin, VP of Business Development, both work in NY.  The other 9 employees are based in Israel and are focused on development.

Editor’s note: Thanks to Andrew from StageTwoConsulting for getting us in touch with Boxee.  Photo courtesy of joepitkin.

People want to do much more with their iPhone then Steve Job allows.  So they jailbreak it. The same goes for the Apple TV. While it is a great and relatively cheap media center, it has restrictions, just like the iPhone.  Wouldn’t it be nice to play xvid videos, stream shows from Hulu, listen to LastFm, Twitter the name of the movie you are currently watching or see what music your friends are listening to on your big screen TV connected to an Apple TV? Well, you can do that with Boxee!

Boxee is an open source media center, with social networking features, currently in an invite-only alpha stage. It is a fork of XBMC, a media center initially designed for the Xbox, but then ported to run on all major platforms. Boxee runs on Linux, Mac, and soon Windows. You can put it on your AppleTV with a grandma-simple “hack“, with no adverse effects.

What does it do?

As other media center software, Boxee allows you to browse and play media files (movies, music, photos) from local hard-disks or DVD drive and can stream music and videos from the internet or other computers in the network (SMB/SAMBA shares). It supports 1080p HD and it reads virtually any type of media, except DRM-ed files.

Boxee scans your default media folders and downloads the related metadata and artwork for your music and video files. Unfortunately, it doesn’t import your iTunes or iPhoto libraries – a big loss for Mac users.

When playing a song you can choose to see the lyrics (especially useful for a karaoke night) or display information about the band or artist.

Boxee seamlessly integrates with online video, music and photo websites and can actually download public torrent movies. You can also configure media feeds for your favourite podcasts on the Boxee website or choose one from the built-in Podcasts directory.

• Video : CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, Hulu, Movie Trailers, MySpaceTV, Next New Networks, ON networks, Revision3, YouTube.
• Music: Jamendo, Last.fm, NPR, SHOUTcast, BBC.
• Photos: Flickr, Picasa.

Social Features

Boxee wants to turn the TV in to “a social media center”. To achieve that, it gives the users the ability to rate and recommend content to their friends. The dashboard displays friends’ recommendations and the media they’ve recently watched or listened to, facilitating the discovery of new quality content.

On Boxee’s website you can set up your Twitter, FriendFeed or Tumbler account to be updated with the current playing media or media you recommended.

Interface

Boxee is not the first nor the last to bring to the table all the features mentioned earlier. The utility of a media center software is given by how fast and how easy you can get to the media files you want.

Boxee has a very clean and slick interface, and after little time to get used to, the menu is a breeze to navigate, especially if you have an Apple remote. It has no manual so you must figure out how to use the keyboard or the remote, but it’s pretty intuitive.

One key feature of the interface is the sliding panels approach for showing the menu. It uses the screen real estate very efficiently and in terms of usability it may be one of the best solutions for media center software I’ve seen.

What’s the catch?

None! Boxee is and will remain free. The business model is not yet established, but it should be based on content referrals or advertising. Being in Alpha it is buggy and crashes from time to time.

Is this the end of cable/satellite TV? Well, not really. But more and more people watch videos online, in detriment of traditional TV. And now, with media boxes that can stream content from sites like Hulu, for many of us there aren’t many reasons left in favour of cable TV.