boxee in the man cave!

I got a bit tired of my Apple TV last year and decided to hack the Boxee Beta onto it (among other things). The promise of a Boxee set-top box was amazing. I had played with the app on my computer for some time, and it worked fairly well when I installed it on my laptop. I figured the jump to Apple TV would be just as good an experience. Nope. Well, maybe that’s too harsh. It worked pretty well at first. But over time it became sluggish, unresponsive, and would crash more than actually do what it was supposed to. Par for the course for Beta stuff, I suppose.

All in all, though it was a great conversation piece in the home, and really demonstrated for me how close we really are to completely transitioning from clips on your ‘puter to clips wherever you want them. Then YESTERDAY I got fed up enough with it crashing, etc I decided to reset my Apple TV and updated it to the latest Apple firmware. I gotta say - I love it all over again. It’s not quite Boxee, but I seriously love my Apple TV. Good news!

better news

Holy shit balls, look at this little gift from our friends at Boxee. A clever, handsome, useful piece of hardware that promises to work just like the Boxee app (and then some).

Getting the awesome web-to-TV software, set up in your living room used to be a headache if not disfunctional. Not anymore thanks to the Boxee Box (around $200; Q1 2010). This angled wonder lets you consume all the free movies, TV shows and music from the internet, all from your couch — and hooks it up to your system with just a single HDMI cable. Like the standard Boxee software, it also sucks in your own videos, music and photos, playing just about any media format that still resides on your broken down laptop. I’m in. Santa, you listening?

speaking of democratization...

Just stumbled upon this today. “3000+ channels, all available on line - FREE.” Do you hear that? FREE.*

Read more on what I thinksh about Free TV here and here.

*With a paid (and ridiculously over-priced broadband account.

make internet TV

I’m not sure where your politics stand on the case of whether or not video should be free online but one thing’s for sure: if the folks at Miro get their way video will become even more democratic than it is now.

and why shouldn’t it?

you downloaded joost. it was fun - for a whopping 10 min. now it just sits on your hard drive with all the other stuff you tried for a a millisecond. why? i think its because (as cool as joost is) it still FEELS like your old TV. And TV, for the most part, just isn’t (as intriguing) as the stuff the citizen videographer puts forward.

And Miro is betting the farm on it.

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from vimeo widget on Vimeo.

If you hit the link above my new favorite music video you saw that it lands on a back-door Miro site that teaches you how to create and post your own content. Still not sure? Head to the “I’m Overwhelmed?” section for an even more pedantic (but helpful!) approach to getting started.

i see it this way

There’s lots of places to consume video content - but there is still no channel-minded platform that relates this new world of video consumption to the model we are all used to. (An important and missing link in my mind.) Joost has made the attempt - but where’s the fabric? Where’s the citizen videographer? There’s an opportunity to build a new, open mass medium of online television. Unlike traditional TV, everyone in this new medium will have a voice. And this new world of agnostic content needs an infrastructure. Miro is aiming to make creating and watching video online “as easy as watching TV”. Cheers to that.

Miro is a cross compatible, open-source Internet TV application that combines a media player and library, content guide, video search engine, as well as podcast and BitTorrent clients. Described by some as the “firefox of content applications”, it is specifically designed to give video creators and viewers more freedom. And it is built to work with “as many video hosting sites and video search engines as possible.” Miro allows the user to choose the end-publishing scenario that is best for them but also allows the browser access to every and all video search engines, even organizing content between the different networks.