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Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Video, Mac mini, Apple TV

Boxee releases new alpha, adds Netflix support



It's a pretty awesome day to be a Netflix fan. Not only is the Watch Instantly service officially available for OS X, it's also now working via boxee, my favorite media center application!

Boxee pushed out an impromptu update last week for Apple TV owners, specifically to address issues with the 2.3 firmware update. Today's update is targeted at all boxee versions and adds a host of new features, including the big dog: Netflix support for US customers. Note: Netflix support is currently only in the Mac version of boxee. The boxee team is working hard to bring it to the Apple TV, but they need to work around some of the hardware limitations. They'll be posting updates on the boxee blog on their progress.

Here's the rundown:
  • Netflix support for Mac users
  • Improved Hulu performance and a new Hulu interface, including access to your personal Hulu queues
  • Access to TheWB.com (US only unless you use a proxy)
  • The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog - amazing photos from around the world
  • MTVMusic - songs/artists in your collection are now linked with music videos
  • New YouTube interface, improved performance and .h264 support
  • Custom interfaces and improved playback for CNN, Flickr and Picasa
All in all, this is a pretty stellar update. When I talked to the team from boxee last week, they made it clear that Neflix was the #1 priority. That they got Netflx running in boxee in under two weeks is nothing short of amazing. Yes, I do wish that support would be extended to Apple TV users, but I can be patient.

If you haven't tried boxee, you can go to http://boxee.tv/tuaw and get an invite. You'll need an Intel Mac running OS X 10.4 or OS X 10.5 or an Apple TV. Boxee is also available for Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04, though I'm unsure if the team was able to implement Netflix support for Ubuntu yet.

Give it a shot and tell us what you think in the comments!

Filed under: Multimedia, Hacks, Apple TV

Install Boxee or XBMC on an Apple TV


We've been expecting something interesting to happen to the Apple TV, but with nary a peep out of Cupertino it seems that atv-bootloader creator Scott Davilla has been busy. We've posted about Boxee before: it's a media center application based on XBMC with a social networking spin. Previously it was limited to Intel Macs running Leopard (and Ubuntu Linux), but it's now been ported to Tiger. That means that it's compatible with the Apple TV, which runs a modified version of Mac OS X 10.4.

So what does this mean? Simply that you can now install the Tiger versions of Boxee or XBMC (for Mac) on your Apple TV. First you use need to use Davilla's handy atvusb-creator on your Mac to convert a USB flash drive into a patchstick. Then you just need to plug it into your Apple TV, wait for the patch process to complete, and install either Boxee or XBMC from within the plugin. In the end you get an Apple TV with all the extra functions of XBMC or Boxee including much broader codec support, the social networking features, etc.

The atvusb-creator is a free download from Google Code for Intel Macs. To use Boxee, however, you'll need to request an account at their site.

[via Engadget]

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