Open BoxeeBox

Boxee gave a preview of the long-awaited Boxee Beta release in New York today. Frustratingly, the Boxee Beta won’t be available for public download until January 7 (at the soonest).
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Shipments of Ultra-Mobile Devices (UMDs), including a range of emerging devices such as UMPCs (Ultra-Mobile PCs), netbooks, and MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), are expected to grow to 385 million units annually within five years. Their main obstacle will be smartphones, such as the iPhone and various Android models.
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A 20-page downloadable whitepaper compares 10 free media center applications, with an eye toward discovering their potential synergies. The study, from the Telematics Freedom Foundation’s “Freedom Box Project,” aims to standardize and promote open, free, and user-friendly web-based TV media center platforms.
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Despite today’s gloomy financial climate, Boxee has just closed a $6 million Series B round of funding. The investment will go toward improving the product, increasing the number of content sources, attracting independent application developers, and embedding boxee in consumer devices, says the company.
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Mediafly’s A/V podcast aggregation service will be added to Roku’s $100 digital video player set-top box (STB) this Fall, the companies report. According to Mediafly, its service will provide free access to “tens of thousands of audio and video podcasts” from NBC, CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central, and other sources.
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After losing patience with waiting for Netflix video streaming to come to the Linux version of Boxee, and needing to relocate my Roku Netflix Player to the garage’s fitness equipment zone, I decided to add a Windows partition to the BoxeeBox (my DIY media center STB) so we could continue to enjoy instant Netflix downloads on our family-room TV.
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We recently reported on a reader’s discovery that his “Energy Star compliant” Sony HDTV was consuming 200 times its advertised standby power. Now, he’s back with good news: the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to plug this gaping energy-draining hole via a new release of its Energy Star TV specification.
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The Linux version of Boxee’s eponymously-named multimedia platform has finally been updated to include several new features introduced into the OS X and Windows versions over the past few months. Key additions include an “App Box” and restored support for Hulu.
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In recent years, two new sub-$500 mobile device categories have burst onto the scene: the “mobile Internet device” (MID), with the iPhone representing its greatest success; and the “netbook,” popularized by the Asus Eee PC. Get ready for the third wave: the “netpad.”
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Boxee has restored support for Hulu to its free media center platform for PCs and Macs. The support, a hack to Boxee’s RSS feed functionality, has a DIY aspect to it.
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