flux.

Boxee is an open source media center that allows you to enjoy your movies, tv shows, music and photos in one place and pull more streaming content from the web. You can recommend items to friends – and see what your friends have recently watched or what they recommend.

I installed Boxee on my Macbook Pro running Leopard OSX 10.5.6.  Boxee automatically discovered the music, movies, tv shows, and pictures on my hard drive, allowing me to navigate by format of choice.

One of the great simple features about Boxee is that I have the option to go online within each category seamlessly. For example, under “movies” I can access my Netflix account and stream movies from my instant queue. Under “music” I can log in to my Last.fm account and stream a station. Also cool is the ability to discover content from CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, Hulu, etc under “television”.

I can set up RSS feeds to add niche-specific shows that I prefer. This is where it gets interesting.  Should I feed in a TED video podcast? How about CNN breaking news clips – or a torrent of Gossip Girl?

Extremely intuitive, sleek design. Awesome. Now how do I get this from my mac to my television?

For picture I connected my laptop to a Samsung 36″ HDTV using a DVI-D to HDMI adapter. For audio I used a basic Y Cable running from the laptop’s digital output to  Onyko 5.1 Surround. Still looks sleek. In settings I can check real-time details to monitor how close I’m getting to 60 Hz.

Pretty cool. Now how can I control Boxee remotely to make the experience akin to watching television?

I discovered that the Boxee remote app is due any day. In the meantime, found an app called AirMote and installed it on my iTouch running 2.2 software.

All of this sounds fine and dandy. But, how does Boxee handle streaming?  I can have access to all the content in the world but if the streaming quality is bad – buffering does not a good movie watching experience make.

Speakeasy.net tells me that I’m clocking in at a 1.5MB pull. Not bad. I watched a few trailers from the apple site and it looked great. I then went to Hulu to catch the latest episode of 30 Rock. Halfway through I almost forgot that I was watching over the internet. The stream was crisp and there was no buffering at all. The quality was about the same as watching television but higher bandwidth paired with more HD offerings could easily solve that. Streaming a movie from my Netflix instant-queue was different. It didn’t buffer but the video occasionally dropped a few frames.

I skated over to the music category and streamed music from my library then visited Last.fm. Would love to pull in music from other sources such as Pandora or Slacker, too.

Boxee allows me to friend other users and see what they’re watching. I can recommend programs to my friends and view items recommended to me on the Boxee homepage. At friendfeed, Twitter, and Tumblr I can share my recommendations, what I’m watching, and what I’m listening to.

I like having all of my digital media in one place. It’s fun albeit a little strange to lifestream what I’m watching.  However I can’t multi-task and surf around on my computer while I watch. Time to save up for a Mac Mini! Then I can network all of my media somehow…. Which makes me wonder how I would go about backing it all up…ahh there’s always something.

Anyway, 2 thumbs up for Boxee.

note: thanks to Andy Sternberg for the Alpha version invite.

5 years ago when I was in grad school, my media theory professor proclaimed that “years from now you’re going to remember me as the old lady yakking on about something called convergence”. I was intrigued. Then and there I decided to work this into my career somehow. Although I wasn’t quite sure how as this very process of convergence – the merging of television, internet, and radio – was and still is unfolding before our eyes.

This merging of mediums distinctly affects how we receive media from both a technological standpoint and an experiential one. Given the growing advantage of communicating easily and directly between viewers via mobile technology and the internet, the experience is no longer passive.

The other afternoon as I waited in line to pick up dry cleaning (mine, not someone else’s thankyouverymuch) I caught a few scenes of an old episode of Married with Children. The show seemed so dated and not just because of Marcy D’arcy’s wacky hairdos. The script plodded along and lacked the jumpy camera shots, asides, and irreverent dialogue that we’ve come to expect from reality shows and newer sitcoms like 30 Rock and Arrested Development that seamlessly weave multiple characters, story-lines and alternate visual scenes.

Narrative has evolved past traditional mis-en-scene on a studio set with scripted dialogue. With the advancement of technology it allows not only backchannel conversation about a show but also sets a stage for supplemental original content and conversation (there are also tremendous marketing opportunities here of which I’ll touch upon in another post).

The second season of AMC’S Mad Men that just wrapped a few weeks ago incorporated the micro-blogging tool Twitter to further the viewing experience by allowing a viewer – or simply the curious – to engage in direct dialogue with each of the main characters. Twitter updates from the so-called characters (called “brand-ambassadors”) provide bonuses like tiny updates throughout the day like what the character may be doing on a given day and what his or her thoughts are on relationships with the other characters. You can even send direct messages to your favorite character and receive a message back.

This season I followed Don Draper, Betty Draper, Peggy Olson, Roger Sterling, and Ken Cosgrove. One evening I fell asleep watching an episode and awoke to notice that Betty Draper was following me on Twitter. If that’s not spooky enough, I Twittered about the experience and almost immediately received a response from Betty: “I hoped it’d be a nice surprise, I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m sorry.”

In Australia a show called OZ Girl is slated to launch January 12th, becoming Australia’s “first social web show”. The show streams online only and encourages fans to participate by interacting directly with the main character on Facebook, Twitter, and email.

By paving the way for this non-linear narrative between television and the internet, a stronger bond is created between the viewer and the brand.

The viewer becomes an empowered fan with the ability to learn more about the characters identity, participate in dialog surrounding last night’s episode on chat rooms, buy music heard on the show, leave comments, stream b-rolls or supplementary content, and share media with friends.

For the content creator this provides almost instantaneous feedback. It also allows direct marketing opportunities, more of which I’ll touch on in a later post. As a viewer, the show becomes increasingly integrated into my lifestyle. I can watch and participate how, when, and where I want to – and this seems to be where we’re headed.