Accepted to test Boxee for the AppleTV

Posted on October 21st, 2008. Written by trentiles.

There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to new software for the AppleTV.  Everyone knows about XBMC, but now there’s another option…Boxee.  I have been wanting to try this software for a couple weeks now and just received my email last night about being accepted into the alpha testing phase.

For those of you out there with AppleTV’s follow me after the jump as I give you a brief run down on Boxee and how it has the potential to blow XBMC and Apple’s own software out of the water.

So now your probably wondering what boxee can do…well this is from their wiki and explains the basic principles pretty well:

boxee is a social media center. with boxee you can play videos, music and pictures from your PC or from the Internet. you can also share with your friends what albums you’re listening to, what movies and TV shows you’re watching, send recommendations and more.

boxee is designed to work with a remote control (it looks great on a big screen TV), but you can also control it using your keyboard.

once installed boxee will start scanning your local Movies, Music and Pictures folders automatically. boxee will attempt to bring artwork, reviews, cast, etc. for your media, so browsing your library becomes more useful and fun than looking at a list of files.
boxee is based on the best media center on the planet, xbmc.

While Boxee can be used on a computer it is VERY attractive to AppleTV users. I’ve had my AppleTV for about half a year now and am very happy with it. Despite this I am extremely excited to try Boxee out and extend the feature list of what the little box sitting by my TV can do.

They also recently announced that the software can now streams videos from sites like Hulu, CBS, and Comedy Central. Could this become a replacement for cable tv? I hope so because that would mean lots of money saved per month.

Before Boxee hit I did not want to hack my AppleTV. I wasn’t sold on any of the methods that were necessary, plus in my opinion the hacks didn’t really offer me anything that I deemed necessary. What’s really cool about Boxee is that it does not replace the original Apple software, it runs alongside it. So you have the ability to use either the original AppleTV software or Boxee. This is really like and is a big part of wanting to try this software.

Tonight I will be installing Boxee on my AppleTV and I will document the process and maybe even come back with some screenshots. So look for a few followup posts and I put Boxee through the ringer.