Boxee

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Boxee
BOXEE Logo.png
Developer(s) Boxee, Inc.
Written in C++ (and with Python Scripts as plugins)
Operating system Linux, Mac OS X , Windows
Platform Cross-platform
Available in International (multiple languages)
Type Media Player / Media center
License GNU GPL and Closed Source
Website boxee.tv

Boxee is a cross-platform freeware media center software with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV. Boxee is a fork of the free and open source XBMC media center software which Boxee uses as an application framework for its GUI and media player core platform, together with some custom and proprietary additions.[1][2][3][4] Marketed as the first ever "Social Media Center", Boxee enables its users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many interactive social networking features.

Boxee is still under development and is currently only available as alpha releases for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux,[5] as well as Apple TV,[6] for computers with x86 architecture processors. The first public alpha of Boxee was made available on the 16 June 2008 for Mac OS X.[7]

Boxee has expressed interest developing a dedicated set-top box (hardware) for Boxee;[8][9] the company is also interested in licensing the Boxee media center software and its social networking service as a third-party software component to other companies for them to use the Boxee software in their hardware, such as game-consoles, set-top boxes from cable-TV companies, Blu-ray Disc and DVD players, or embedded computers built-in directly into Television sets.[10][11][12][13][14] Boxee has also stated that their goal is to have Boxee run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible.[3]

Boxee media center software is being developed by a startup company, (Boxee, Inc.), which is financially backed by venture capital firms General Catalyst Partners together with Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.[15]

Contents

[edit] Overview

Boxee supports a wide range of multimedia formats and includes features such as playlists, audio visualizations, slideshows, weather forecasts reporting, and an expanding array of third-party plugins. As a media center, Boxee can play most audio and video file formats, as well as display images from many sources, including CD/DVD-ROM drives, USB flash drives, the Internet, and local area network shares.

Through its Python plugin system, Boxee includes incorporated addon features such as Apple movie trailer support and subtitle downloading, as well as online internet content channels and services, like BBC iPlayer, Jamendo, Joost, Last.fm, NPR, SHOUTcast internet audio plugins, ABC, Blip.TV, CNET, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV Music (music videos), MySpaceTV, Netflix, Revision3, YouTube, The WB Television Network[16] internet video plugins, and Flickr and PicasaWeb picture viewing plugins. All are available as media sources available alongside the local library. Some of these are specialized connections to services (e.g., YouTube), while the rest are a preselected list of podcast channels for streaming using generic RSS web feeds (e.g., BBC News).

Boxee had supported NBC Universal's Hulu quite early on, but in February 2009, was asked by Hulu to remove the service at the request of Hulu's content partners.[17] Boxee later reinstated the feature using Hulu's RSS feeds,[18] but Hulu once again blocked access.[19][20] Boxee recently introduced a new architecture based on the XUL framework. Because Boxee will now use Firefox's core architecture, Hulu will see Boxee as "any other Mozilla browser so Hulu doesn't block the app."[21] Hulu's latest attempt to thwart Boxee involves JavaScript scrambling.[22]

Through the processing power of modern PC hardware, Boxee is able to decode high-definition video up to 1080p. Boxee is able to use Nvidia's VDPAU on Ubuntu Linux installations to accelerate HD content with the help of a system's GPU.[23] However, Boxee does not currently support other hardware video decoding, so the entire load of the video decoding process is handled by the system's CPU which means that users need, by today's standards, a very powerful CPU to decode native high-definition videos encoded with a modern video codec like H.264.

Boxee source code is based on the XBMC Media Center project's code, and the Boxee developers contribute source code back upstream to the XBMC project.[24][25] Boxee open source parts are distributed under the GNU General Public License, however Boxee's social networking layer library, libboxee, is closed source as it deals with proprietary methods of communication with Boxee's online back-end server which handles the user account information and social network communications between the users in the Boxee userbase.[26]

Boxee also includes a built-in BitTorrent client, with a frontend for it integrated into the Boxee interface, and there are also Torrent links to legal BitTorrent trackers download sites available incorporated by default. Through Boxee's Python plugin system it is also possible for end-users to add unofficial third-party plugins to enable Torrent downloads from sites such as The Pirate Bay.

[edit] Features

[edit] Social Networking Layers

The social networking component of Boxee is its major differentiator from other media center software, in several ways, as follows.

Boxee requires registered user accounts, which form a social network of fellow Boxee users. Users can follow the activity of other Boxee users who were added as friends, and can publicly rate and recommend content. Users can also control what media appear in the activity feed in order to maintain privacy. If a user recommends something that is freely available from an internet content service then Boxee will let others users stream it directly. If a user recommends something that is not freely available then Boxee will try to show metadata, and movie trailers if it is a movie that the user recommend.

The user's friends' Boxee activity feeds are displayed on the user's home screen, as is the user's own recent activity. Internet content is accessed through a sub-menu of each of the video, audio, and photo menu items, such as Video -> "My videos" and Video -> "Internet videos."

Boxee can also export a user's media activity feed to other social networking services such as FriendFeed, Twitter, and Tumblr. The list of connection to such supported third-party social networking services is currently small, and this feature is one-way only, (it is for example not yet possible to monitor Twitter feeds from within Boxee), but this type of third-party integration is different from the way content sources as treated. Through FriendFeed, Twitter, and Tumblr it is then possible from those third-party social networking services for a user to choose to post the Boxee activity feed to social networking sites such as Facebook, (currently through FriendFeed, Twitter, and Tumblr apps for Facebook).

[edit] Audio/Video playback and handling

Boxee can play multimedia files from CD/DVD media using the system's DVD-ROM drive, local hard disk drive, or stream them over SMB/SAMBA/CIFS shares (Windows File-Sharing), or eventually UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) shares (not available in v0.9.14[27]). Boxee is designed to take advantage of the system's network port if a broadband Internet connection is available, using the IMDb to obtain metadata information, thumbnails, and reviews on movies, TheTVDB for TV show thumbnails and metadata, CDDB (via Freedb) for Audio-CD track-listings, and album-cover thumbnails via AMG. Boxee can stream Internet-video-streams, and play Internet-radio-stations (such as SHOUTcast). Boxee also includes the option to submit music usage statistics to Last.fm and a weather-forecast (via weather.com). It also has music/video-playlist features, picture/image-slideshow functions, an MP3+CDG karaoke function and many audio-visualizations and screensavers. Boxee can in addition upscale/upconvert all 480p/576p standard-resolution videos and output them to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p HDTV-resolutions.

[edit] Format support

Boxee can be used to play/view practically all common multimedia formats. It can decode these in software and optionally pass-through AC3/DTS audio from movies directly to S/PDIF output to an external audio amplifier or receiver.

Supported formats:

[edit] Video playback in detail

Boxee video-playback uses an in-house video-player 'core' originally developed by the XBMC developers as a DVD-player for DVD-Video movies, including the support of DVD-menus, (based on the open source and free libraries code libdvdcss and libdvdnav). This video-player 'core' support all the FFmpeg codecs, and in addition the MPEG-2 video codec, and the audio codecs DTS and AC3 (based on the open source code libraries: libmpeg2, libdca/libdts, and liba52/libac3 respectively). One relatively unusual feature of this DVD-player core is the capability to on the fly parse and play DVD-Video movies that are stored in ISO and IMG DVD-images, DVD-Video movies that are stored as DVD-Video (IFO/VOB/BUP) files on a harddrive or network-share, and also ISO and IMG DVD-images directly from RAR and ZIP archives. In addition to this, the developers of this video-player 'core' also claim that it offers better quality upscaling of all DVD-Video movies when outputing them to a 720p, 1080i or 1080p HDTV resolutions than what most high-definition television set's own native function for upscaling/upconverting video offers. Another interesting aspect is how Boxee manages to play Flash content on sites such as YouTube and Hulu. Boxee seems to be shipping with a non GPL, closed source, binary-only, program called as bxflplayer, which seems to load Adobe's proprietary flash plugin. This program communicates with the main Boxee process via shared memory and it renders the video onto screen. By using this approach, it is possible for Boxee to not only play arbitrary Flash content, it is also possible to control the player using remote controls and other input devices that are more suitable to laid back watching.

[edit] The Video Library

The Video Library, one of the Boxee metadata databases, is a key feature of Boxee. It allows for the automatic organization of your video content by information associated with the video files (movies and recorded TV Shows) themselves. The Library Mode view in Boxee allows you to browse your video content by categories such as Genre, Title, Year, Actors and Directors.

[edit] Audio playback in detail

For audio playback, Boxee includes an audio-player called PAPlayer (Psycho-Acoustic Audio Player) developed in-house by the XBMC developers. Some of this audio-player core's most notable features are on-the-fly audio frequency resampling to 48 kHz, gapless playback, crossfading, Replay Gain, cue sheet and Ogg Chapter support. PAPlayer handles a very large variety of audio file-formats: MP2, MP3, Vorbis, Musepack, AAC, AACplus (AAC+), APE, FLAC, WavPack, Shorten, AIFF, WAV, DTS, AC3, CDDA, WMA, IT, S3M, MOD (Amiga Module), XM, NSF (NES Sound Format), SPC (SNES), GYM (Genesis), SID (Commodore 64), Ad Lib, YM (Atari ST), ADPCM (GameCube). It also supports many different tagging standards: APEv1, APEv2, ID3v1, ID3v2, ID666 and Vorbis comments.

[edit] Music Library

The Music Library is one of the Boxee metadata databases and another key feature of Boxee. It automatically organizes your music collection by information stored in your music files ID meta tags, such as title, artist, album, genre and popularity.

[edit] Digital picture/image display in detail

Boxee handles all common digital picture/image formats with the options of panning/zooming and slideshow with "Ken Burns Effect", with the use of CxImage open source library code. Boxee can also handle CBZ (ZIP) and CBR (RAR) comic book archive files; this feature lets you view/read, browse and zoom the pictures of comics pages these contain without uncompressing them first.

[edit] Add-on plugins (widgets/gadgets) python scripts

Boxee features a Python Scripts Engine and WindowXML application framework (a XML-based widget toolkit for creating a GUI for widgets) in a similar fashion to Apple Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets and Microsoft Gadgets in Windows Sidebar. Python widget scripts allow non-developers to themselves create new add-ons functionality to Boxee, (using the easy to learn Python programming language), without knowledge of the complex C/C++ programming language that the rest of the Boxee software is written in. Current plugin scripts add-ons include functions like Internet-TV and movie-trailer browsers, cinema guides, Internet-radio-station browsers (example SHOUTcast), and much more.

[edit] BitTorrent client, interface, and torrent trackers

Boxee also includes a built-in BitTorrent client, with a frontend for it integrated into the Boxee interface, and there are also Torrent links to legal BitTorrent trackers download sites available incorporated by default. Through Boxee's Python plugin system it is also possible for the end-users to make themselves or add unofficial plugins made by third-party persons for other BitTorrent trackers.

[edit] Skins, skinning, and the skinning-engine

Boxee GUI source code is based on XBMC Media Center which is noted for having a very flexible GUI toolkit and robust framework for its GUI, using a standard XML base, making theme-skinning and personal customization very accessible. Users can create their own skin (or simply modify an existing skin) and share it with others via public websites dedicated for XBMC (and Xbox) skins trading.

[edit] Programming and developing

As free and partially open source software program, Boxee is developed by a commercial start-up company with the goal to someday make their software and social networking service profitable for them. Boxee is however encourages users to submit their own source code patches for new or improved features and functions in Boxee. Boxee, like XBMC Media Center (which Boxee is based upon), is a cross-platform software programmed in C++ (and some assembly); uses the Simple DirectMedia Layer framework with OpenGL renderer for all versions of Boxee. Some of the libraries that Boxee depends on are also written in the C programming-language, but are used with a C++ wrapper and loaded via Boxee's own DLL loader when used inside Boxee.

[edit] Limitations and known issues

This is a list of current software limitations in the Boxee code, (Boxee's base source code is based on XBMC Media Center software source code so Boxee has many of the same software limitations as XBMC).

  • Boxee currently cannot play any audio/video files protected/encrypted with Digital rights management (DRM), such as music purchased from the iTunes Store, MSN Music or Audible.com before DRM restrictions are lifted.
  • The ISO 9660 and UDF reader classes currently in Boxee's source code do not support reading multisession authored CD/DVD-media. This means that Boxee, as it is today, can only read the first session of a multisession burnt CD or DVD media disc.
  • Boxee is only available for x86-based platforms, 64-bit x86 is not officially supported, and Boxee requires a OpenGL hardware accelerated graphics GPU and device drivers that support OpenGL 1.3 or later with GLSL. Boxee is not available for the PowerPC, ARM, and MIPS architectures.
  • Some users have noticed Boxee video playback is "choppy" on Apple TV when playing high-resolution video, such as current CBS or Hulu episodes.[28][29][30] A workaround to fix general Boxee issues is performed by reinstalling the launcher from the Boxee menu in Apple TVs Frontrow.[31]

[edit] Reception

In October 2008, Boxee won CEA (Consumer Electronics Association)'s i-Stage award[32], and with it $50,000 prize money to go towards the continued development of Boxee, as well as a free booth at the 2009 International CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the world's largest consumer technology trade show[33]. Boxee then in turn donated half of the $50,000 prize money to the developers of XBMC[34].

On January 9, G4 announced Boxee as the winner of their "Best of the Best products of CES 2009" award (in the "Maximum Tech" category) among all the products displayed at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2009 trade show[35].

[edit] Legality

[edit] Patents

For most popular video and audio codecs, Boxee includes native support through free and open source software libraries, such as LAME, libmpeg2, and libavcodec (from the FFmpeg project). Since these source code libraries are released under free and open source licenses they are legally redistributable. However, some of these compression methods algorithms, such as the popular MP3 format, are in many countries protected by software patents. Absent a license, this could possibly make it illegal in certain countries to distribute compiled versions of Boxee which includes support for these formats.

[edit] Web Scraping

Main article: Web scraping#Legal issues

Boxee has built-in web scraping to automatically download metadata information and online artwork from sites like IMDb, freedb, and Allmusic. There could be some legal issues associated with web scraping, as it is against the Terms of Use policy of many websites, however the enforceability of these terms is unclear.[36]

[edit] Privacy

As part of the social networking functionality, information about what content users watch is transmitted to Boxee.tv Inc's servers. Concerns have arisen over the use of this information, as Boxee is being created by a for-profit company and possible revenue-generation models for media center applications include the sale of user activity data to advertisers and other interested parties. Boxee's privacy policy[37] does not directly address this issue.

[edit] Other

Boxee uses libdvdcss to support playback of DVD-Video movies encrypted using the CSS (Content Scramble System) encryption. The distribution of executable versions of Boxee containing this code could possibly violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S. and the Copyright Directive in European Union member countries which have incorporated it into national law. However, this has never been tested in court for open source projects.

[edit] See also

Free software portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Adam Pash (2008-06-23). "Boxee Is XBMC with Newer Look and Social Flair". lifehacker. http://lifehacker.com/396382/boxee-is-xbmc-with-newer-look-and-social-flair. 
  2. ^ Avner Ronen (2008-06-25). "boxee blog - why we made boxee social". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/06/25/why-we-made-boxee-social/. 
  3. ^ a b Apple TV Hacks (2008-07-03). "Boxee mini review". appletvhacks.net. http://www.appletvhacks.net/2008/07/03/boxee-mini-review/55. 
  4. ^ CrunchBase (2008-05-08). "Boxee". CrunchBase. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/boxee. 
  5. ^ "What are the minimum system requirements to run Boxee?". Boxee. 2009-06-23. http://support.boxee.tv/forums/49598/entries/42689. 
  6. ^ John Biggs (2008-10-01). "Boxee makes your AppleTV better". CrunchGear. http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/10/01/boxee-makes-your-appletv-better/. 
  7. ^ Avner Ronen (2008-06-18). "boxee for Mac first alpha release is available for download". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/06/16/boxee-for-mac-is-available-for-download/. 
  8. ^ Avner Ronen (2009-01-16). "a boxee box?". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/01/16/a-boxee-box/. 
  9. ^ Adam Pash (2009-11-12). "Dedicated Boxee Box to Come Preloaded with the Popular Media Center". Lifehacker. http://lifehacker.com/5403314/dedicated-boxee-box-to-come-preloaded-with-the-popular-media-center. 
  10. ^ Peter Kafka (2009-01-12). "Boxee: WebTV That Makes Sense. Is That Good or Bad for Big Cable?". The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD.com. http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090112/boxee-webtv-that-makes-sense-is-that-good-or-bad-for-big-cable/. 
  11. ^ Chris Albrecht (2007-06-10). "Scoop: Boxee to Go Alpha on Monday". NewTeeVee. http://newteevee.com/2008/06/10/scoop-boxee-to-go-alpha-on-monday/. 
  12. ^ Robin Wauters (2008-10-18). "Boxee Raises $4 Million For Socially-Networked Media Center". TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/18/boxee-raises-4-million-for-socially-networked-content-aggregator/. 
  13. ^ Brad Stone (2009-01-16). "Boxee, Used to View Web on TV, Generates Buzz". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/technology/internet/17video.html?_r=1&em. 
  14. ^ Richard Lawler (2009-08-12). "Boxee locks up additional funding, plots route from underground to mainstream". Engadget. http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/12/boxee-locks-up-additional-funding-plots-route-from-underground/. 
  15. ^ Boxee Adds $6 Million Second Round; Aims To Take On Microsoft, Apple In Living Room. Reuters, Aug 12, 2009 cached
  16. ^ Adam Pash (2008-12-04). "Boxee Updates, Adds Support for Netflix, Windows on the Way". Lifehacker. http://lifehacker.com/5101903/boxee-updates-adds-support-for-netflix-windows-on-the-way. 
  17. ^ "The Hulu Situation". boxee blog. 2009-02-18. http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/02/18/the-hulu-situation. 
  18. ^ "The Trials and Tribulations of Innovation". boxee blog. 2009-03-06. http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/03/06/the-trials-and-tribulations-of-innovation/. 
  19. ^ Greg Sandoval (2009-03-06). "Chess match: Hulu blocks Boxee once again". CNet News. http://news.cnet.com/chess-match-hulu-blocks-boxee-once-again/. 
  20. ^ Darren Murph (2009-03-06). "Hulu blocks boxee browser entirely, gloves get ripped halfway off". Engadget. http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/06/hulu-blocks-boxee-browser-entirely-gloves-get-ripped-halfway-of/. 
  21. ^ Roberto Baldwin (2009-03-25). "New Boxee Release Includes Hulu and Pandora". MacLife. http://www.maclife.com/article/news/new_boxee_release_includes_hulu_and_pandora. 
  22. ^ Martin Millmore (2009-04-01). "Hulu get defensive!". Martin Millmore. http://www.milliesoft.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53:hulu-get-defensive&catid=2:latest-news&Itemid=13. 
  23. ^ "Boxee for Windows, Moving up to the Major Leagues". boxee. 2009-06-23. http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/06/23/boxee-for-windows-moving-up-to-the-major-leagues/. 
  24. ^ Avner Ronen (2008-05-30). "boxee blog - XBMC DEV CON (hosted by boxee :-))". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/05/30/xbmc-dev-con-hosted-by-boxee/. 
  25. ^ Ronen, Avner (2008-07-05). "boxee blog - boxee is powered by XBMC". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/07/05/vote-for-xbmc/. 
  26. ^ Boxee (2009-06-23). "Boxee end-user software license agreement". Boxee. http://app.boxee.tv/static/eula. 
  27. ^ [1]
  28. ^ Jonathan Hawkes (2009-01-01). "Apple TV, Boxee and Hulu". TechHead. http://blog.techhead.biz/2009/01/apple-tv-boxee-and-hulu.html. 
  29. ^ forum (2009-01-28). "Why use Boxee instead of Apple Tv software". Boxee forum. http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=5207. 
  30. ^ forum (2008-11-28). "Apple TV choppy". Boxee forum. http://forum.boxee.tv/archive/index.php/t-1744.html. 
  31. ^ forum (2008-03-30). "Can't see Hulu video". Boxee forum. http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=7305&page=3. 
  32. ^ Anver Ronen (2008-10-20). "Boxee won CEA i-Stage Competition". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/10/20/we-won/. 
  33. ^ "CEA Announces Finalists for I-Stage Competition". Consumer Electronics Association. 2008-09-15. http://www.ce.org/Press/CurrentNews/press_release_detail.asp?id=11579. 
  34. ^ Avner Ronen (2008-09-17). "boxee is an i-stage finalist". Boxee. http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/09/17/boxee-is-an-i-stage-finalist/. 
  35. ^ Johnson, Stephen (2009-01-09). "G4 Announces Best Of The Best At CES 2009". G4TV.com. http://www.g4tv.com/ces2009/blog/post/692297/G4_Announces_Best_Of_The_Best_At_CES_2009.html. 
  36. ^ "FAQ about linking - Are website terms of use binding contracts?". www.chillingeffects.org. 2007-08-20. http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi#QID596. Retrieved 2007-08-20. 
  37. ^ "Boxee Privacy Policy". http://www.boxee.tv/static/privacy. Retrieved 2009-07-07. 

[edit] External links

[edit] Official site

[edit] Scripts and plugins (addon extensions for boxee)

[edit] Scripts

[edit] Plugins

[edit] Reviews

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