Project: Boxee

Those of you on my Facebook or Twitter may have recently noticed updates on Movies and TV Shows coming from Boxee. I know you’ve all been staying up at night wondering what on Earth Boxee is and how does it work, sleep easy my friends as I’m about to tell you about my latest project.

If you’re a dedicated follower then you’ll remember my last project, XBMC, well Boxee is a fork project off the back off XBMC and is my new HTPC replacement (or should I say addition as the XBMC XBOX is now running in the bedroom). Boxee Beta (I was using the Alpha but it wasn’t nearly as good) is running on my Samsung laptop which I have connected to my new LG HDTV via a HDMI cable. The draw card for Boxee is its online content partners and social media integration but for me it’s biggest feature is the media lookup service. This indexes your TV shows and movies and downloads cover art, titles and descriptions from IMDB and TVRage.

Another feature I’m slowly getting into is the online content I previously mentioned. With Boxee you can browse through their App collection and add online content providers such as Joost, Justin.tv, YouTube and even BBC iPlayer. These come from the default Boxee repository but you can easily add more app repositories from users with custom built apps and feeds.

My next project is to build a NAS (Network Attached Storage) for my media and backups. My current 1Tb drive and laptop HDD are about 95% full so I need to look into something a little better. With media centres in multiple rooms, the laptop and 2 iPhones in the house means media on the network has become a must.

Download Boxee Beta here: http://www.boxee.tv/

Check out the new Boxee Box by D-Link: here & here