nerdhook

If you are interested in the ability to stream all kinds of content to your computer and/or AppleTV, you need to take a look at Boxee:

on a laptop or connected to an HDTV, boxee gives you a true entertainment experience to enjoy your movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Hulu, Netflix, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, and flickr.

I’ve been in their alpha testing group for the last few weeks and have been thoroughly enjoying the software. I have mainly been using it for streaming content, not as much for playing the content (music or video) I already own. As to be expected with any piece of alpha software, there are hiccups and hangups on occassion, but thus far Boxee has been very impressive.

Yesterday a fairly significant upgrade was released which allows for streaming Netflix content to your Mac. The rather lame processor in the AppleTV is proving to not be quite up to the task of dealing with the Netflix video, so as of now, this feature will not work on the AppleTV.

Another great feature they’ve added is the ability to directly stream the photo content from The Big Picture. These always amazing photographs look terrific in full-screen resolution.

The software is cross platform: it currently runs on any Intel Mac, the AppleTV, or the latest builds of Ubuntu.

The progress of true video on demand streaming over the internet always feels agonizingly slow to me. Seeing a slick aggregator such as Boxee provides hope that perhaps sometime before I’m too old to know any better, the conveniences of internet video will actually arrive. While I’ve been enjoying the software in its current state, what’s most exciting to me about Boxee is its potential.