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.

Lawrence Lessig on the Colbert Report, 1/8/09:

“Artists have gotten no more money, businesses have not gotten more profit, and our kids have been turned into criminals.” – Lawrence Lessig

I agree with Lessig. Remixes and mashups aren’t going away. It’s time that Congress developed ways to address the new medium rather than fight it. Artists including Yo Yo Ma have warmed to the idea and encourage remixes of their work. Great collabs crop up daily on the music blogs and beyond. See last week’s Jaydiohead, a Jay-Z and Radiohead mashup by Minty Fresh Beats that, despite what Pitchfork had to say, had people including the likes of Carson Daly talking it up.

I enjoyed hearing Lessig briefly explain his “hybrid economy” theory. Hybrid economies are seemingly more prevalent than we think. This blog is a hybrid. Particularly if I chose to sell ad space on it. So I feature content from other places like Comedy Central on this blog which is hosted by WordPress - a platform that I did not partake in the creation of. When the copyrighted content is fused with the editorial I write, it creates a new piece of work with additional opportunities for revenue.

I believe that artists should get paid for their work and all derivatives thereof. Just as Comedy Central tracks the embed of the above video and WordPress hosts my blog, each creator deserves a fair share of what is rightfully theirs. If Congress could learn to move forward with that idea instead of fighting the very idea of a collabration, remix, mashup, or hybrid project…well…that would be good.

After streaming a full clip or episode, the viewer is given the ability to leave a comment, purchase the full episode, or buy the entire season. You can also create a subscription feed that provides updates on your friends’ activity along with the shows you’ve subscribed to.

The site currently imports content from Hulu (which doesn’t allow for commenting or purchasing just yet).

The networks are smart because they know that in this day and age users will always find a way to get copyrighted content for free.

They figured that they may as well direct eyeballs back to their site, or an affiliates,  to allow free streaming while generating dough from ad-based revenue.

Perhaps just as important as ad-based revenue is connecting directly with viewers on a one-to-one basis. The viewer has the ability to engage with the brand by leaving comments, tagging items, sharing clips with friends, and providing feedback on what they watch.

Users can create profiles allowing basic data to be pulled by the site admin such as age, gender, and location.

NBC and ABC already offer up  full streaming episodes on their sites as does Comedy Central and The CW – and more have come aboard.

Music labels are coming into the fold too although there doesn’t seem to be a site that aggregates music in the same way that Hulu, Sling, or Fancast does for video. Perhaps Imeem?

Indie label Team Love recently launched a music library allowing the perusal/streaming of music from their label and even offering free downloads with no stipulations.

For a content creator, the ability to connect directly with fans is a big deal. There’s a strong possibility that they’ll stick around to purchase, share, participate, or simply watch more to connect with what you have to offer.

Viewers are also directed to your site to discover free content – rather than hitting up P2P, YouTube, or bit torrents for the goods.

Which is always a good thing.