Boxee Gives My DVR Abandonment Issues

Boxee has generated a great deal of interest lately, as its public battle with online TV provider Hulu has provided more than one "three snaps in zig-zag formation" type reaction over the past month. Hulu, a joint online venture between Fox and NBC provides free streaming access to shows on those networks as well as their affiliates and associated partners. The content comes with short commercial breaks, hence the free nature. The service has become extraordinarily popular as it provides a fairly high quality viewing experience, on demand, FOR FREE.

Enter Boxee. Boxee for those unfamiliar, is a free media center software package that currently runs on Mac and Linux builds and is essentially an aggregator of all the free video and audio content available on the web. Its slick interface, social networking tilt, and ease of use has made it popular with many streaming media lovers. What's more, Boxee created a straightforward process to load its software onto Apple TV devices, providing a great source of media to those users as well. With Hulu being an Internet media streamer and Boxee being a streaming media aggregator...it seemed like a tiny thing for Hulu content to reside in the Boxee interface for all to enjoy. After all...you still watch the show with all the provider's intended commercials, what could go wrong? Well, in a word...everything. Hulu (read: Fox and NBC) have waged a technical war of hack and defend upon Boxee to block their software from providing content to their users. Boxee has retorted by working around the hindrance only to be blocked again. Only time will tell if NBC will come to its senses and realize that Boxee is driving more users to its content (and ads) than before.

Regardless..with or without Hulu, Boxee is an amazing piece of software. The ability to utilize the Apple remote to control, pause, and rewind content is a welcome addition. The ability to link Boxee to Twitter and FriendFeed while keeping your Boxee friends abreast of your recommended shows is a nice feature as well. For me, this is the future of media distribution. I'm willing to watch a commercial here and there (breaks are usually a single commercial) for the flexibility both Hulu and Boxee provide. The ability to provide on-demand content from major media sources at any time, on any network enabled device is extraordinarily powerful. In fact, as a self described TV junky...I'm feeling more attached to Boxee and my laptop than I am to my DVR.