Boxee Alpha Release For Windows; Still Fighting Hulu
13 Mar
Most have heard about Boxee with it’s recent spat with Hulu. Boxee holds vast potential to be the ‘next bigthing’ in media consumption online. Boxee is a piece of open source freeware that has socialized the popular XBMC (Xbox Media Connect) platform. It allows users to rate, share and recommend content with their friends through various social media tools.
With much anticipation, Boxee has released an Alpha version of their popular platform, but there’s a hitch. The release is only available by private invitation at the current time. I myself have been one of the lucky alpha testers. This is my first experience with Boxee and I must say that I’m quite impressed. Television and video is a deeply rooted piece of our culture. We find ourselves huddled around the water color talking about last night’s episode of ‘The Office’ or ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. Boxee now allows for easy sharing and ability to say, “Hey man! You’ve got to check out last nights episode!”
While the Alpha has a long way to come, there are quite a few glitches, this should make Windows geek’s happy as Boxee is showing their commitment to both Mac and PC’s.
Boxee said in 2009 it is planning to release its own dedicated hardware for Boxee, and also plans to license its Boxee media center and social networking service as a third-party software component to other companies for them to use the Boxee software in their hardware, such as set-top boxes from cable providers. Boxee has also stated that their goal is to have Boxee run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible. - Wikipedia
Why Hulu Is Choking Itself
Hulu has harshly stopped every attempt by Boxee to pull Hulu content onto its platform. Why you ask? Hulu is owned by NBC, a television network. They want Hulu content to be viewed strictly on computer screens and not on televisions that are wired to a PC. Why? If you can start watching your Saturday night COPS episodes with only two or three commercials, what incentive is there for you to keep your cable? Hulu doesn’t want to foster a delivery method like Boxee (caters to users who display video on their television via their PC) which could ultimately kill its parent company. Hulu is hurting itself by boxing out Boxee, pun certainly intended! They don’t hold the market and if they won’t deliver the goods, someone else will.
Ignoring the fact of who owns Hulu, the company shouldn’t care whether their advertising is seen on a television or a computer screen. They both display a picture and are one in the same.
Will this bickering ever end?
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I watch hulu on my TV all the time… My laptop has a VGA out (and an HDMI out), and it’s super easy to hook it up. That pretty much negates your argument about why hulu wants to kill boxee…
I don’t think it negates it at all. It is no secret that Boxee is made to display video on a television screen, including making set-top box hardware. Hulu is not formatted nor made to be displayed on a television, though it is easily doable and users have been hooking up their laptops to televisions for years through VGA. Boxee is a much more scalable and is being developed to compete with cable television while Hulu is DEVELOPED for viewing video online. NBC wants Hulu to being another distribution channel for its content via the interwebs, not direct competition with itself fighting for ad views between television and the Internet. I believe me argument stands valid regardless of how you consume Hulu.
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