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Boxee makes me happy. Boxee is an open source media center solution.  It does a great job of allowing you to access your local media or access online media like major network TV shows, great movies, and you tube videos.  It has a good layout and easy to use controls, but its most differentiating feature is that it is also a social network.

The people who created Boxee started with a great media center based off of XBMC.  They made it easy to stream music, videos, or pictures in almost any format from anywhere on your network.  They added internet sources from all over the web, including you tube, but most of it was from independent sources.  These Internet sources were a great idea because they allowed you to stream media from sources that were always updating.  The biggest problem was the content.  Like I said, most of the content was from independent sources, which was interesting, but it wasn't the prime time stuff that people loved and wanted.  The great people who develop Boxee, saw the problem and they soon had a solution.

The latest version of Boxee includes internet videos from CBS, Comedy Central, and Hulu.  The first 2 are self explanatory, but if you don't know what Hulu is, you will want to check it out.  Hulu was originally created by NBC but is now ran by a separate corporation.  It has over 900 TV shows from NBC, FOX, USA, and many more, and most of them look great even at full screen.  Hulu is great by itself (with new episodes added quickly, and classics like alf and the a-team), but with Boxee's interface it allows you to replace your cable box or antenna. I hooked my laptop up to my TV at 1920x1080 over DVI and the quality was almost as good as bright house's HD channels.

On top of all this great content is a social network.  It isn't as complex as Facebook or Myspace, but it allows you to interact with others who have Boxee.  You can recommend a movie or song to a friend, or check out what your friends have watched and whether they liked it or not.

Boxee is currently in invitation-only alpha, but is getting close to a beta release.  If you want an invitation, let me know and I will e-mail you.  It currently is only for Mac, AppleTV, or Linux, but a windows release is planned for release soon.  After you see it in action, you can only hope that this is the future of TV.

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