To say that Boxee is entirely open-source would be a lie. To say that it’s partially open-source, built on the open-source XBMC, and friendly to nearly all operating systems is nothing but the truth. Boxee is, perhaps, the best media-center style software around. It can handle nearly every format, and puts all other ten-foot interfaces to shame. It has as much eye-candy as it does power. Boxee, first and foremost, is a great way to access your digital media library. It collects and organizes photos, music (MP3s, Flac, Ogg- you name it), movies, and TV shows. If Totem or VLC can play it, so too can Boxee. It has quite a few social networking functions built right into the software, like integration to Twitter and Last.fm. That’s all before mentioning the fact that it has an extensive app library, including content from people like TWiT and CNET TV. You can easily view video content from external sources as well by using the Boxee internet browser. Boxee is like a more beautiful, open, and social version of Windows Media Player. In my mind, there is no comparison.
To be fair, there are a few complaints. At times, I find a few things can be buggy. That being said, most of the bugs that I’ve come across have been fixed over time. Development is very active. My only other complaint is that the TV show library isn’t entirely ready for prime time. Boxee thinks that all videos are actually movies, and puts them into that category. There is no way for a custom TV show library, that I have found. Then again, I could have missed something.
Even with those gripes, Boxee continues to impress me. There is no other media center software quite like Boxee. If you consume movies or TV at all using your computer, I strongly recommend Boxee.
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