June 24, 2009, 8:02 AM — Yesterday was a big day for Boxee, the aggregation tool that strives to bring a television-like experience to online video, music and digital media.
The first big announcement was that an alpha of the Windows version of Boxee is now available for anyone interested in testing it out (Boxee has previously been available for OS X and Linux). That alone ought to give their userbase numbers a good bump, since Boxee appears to do pretty much everything Windows Media Center does, and more.
The second big announcement was a partnership with MLB.TV Premium, which offers live and on-demand baseball for enthusiasts. The service does require a subscription, but that's coming from MLB.TV, not Boxee. Founder Avner Ronen says he hopes to add other sports and live events to the Boxee lineup.
Other new additions to the Boxee lineup include video from Digg & Tumblr, as well as news site Current.
Users still face the challenge of getting the content onto their television, of course. You can hook a computer up to your TV directly (it'll run on Apple TV, which seems a popular option), but there isn't (yet) a way to stream Boxee to a DLNA enabled device such as the Xbox 360, PS3 or dedicated media extender.
But even on the desktop or laptop, Boxee seems like a nice (and free) way to put a unified face on many different online media sources.
Here's an introductory video to give you more of an idea of what Boxee can do for you:
quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.
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