Boxee aims to change how you consume all of your digital bits
This really needs saying right off the bat — Boxee is an iTunes killer. Granted, it hasn’t quite finished baking and the fillings still need a bit tweaking, as well. But, these guys have big ambitions and they’re within sniffing distance of achieving them.
Boxee, the XBMC media center spin-off that makes it mostly tolerable to watch TV on your Mac, has just released its first public beta. This latest release of the digital media aggregator software for Mac, Linux and whatever Redmond’s latest steaming pile is called — oh yeah, it’s called “Windows” — comes with an updated user interface, improved features and will be arriving in the Spring as a stand-alone set top box.
That is, Boxee includes picture, music, TV and video functionality — it’s designed to be the all-in-one playback app for all your digital stuff if you’re OS X 10.4 or better.
While I’m not ready to tell the cable guy to stuff it (as much as I’d love to), my evenings have been filled with hours of streaming video pulled down from literally scores of online sources. The quality ranges from watchable to spectacular. — Michael Calore, Wired
You know, that almost sums up my experience with the “new” beta, which has been out since early December and in my sweaty hands since around Christmas. However, we turned cable TV off about a year-and-a-half ago and we’re by-and-large happy with the 15 broadcast channels we get.
Whereas Boxee is a great way to tune into a huge array of TV, radio and podcast content, the application itself isn’t quite smooth enough to make watching TV enjoyable and, of course, TV still sucks all by itself. I have Boxee and I will use it, but it’s not life changing.
If they really wanted to change the world, they should make some of the online porn channels available by default. Porn (almost) always leads the way…
What’s your take?
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