Open source media Centre Boxee adds Movie Library

Following its launch as public beta in January of this year, the Boxee developers have announced the release of a new beta – version 0.9.22.13692 – of their popular part-open-source cross-platform media centre with social networking and community features. According to Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen, the latest public beta adds "the foundations of a new Movie Library to complement the TV Show Library".

Source: Boxee The new Movie Library features a selection of thousands of films from Boxee's four launch partners: EZTakes, Indie Movies Online, Openfilm and MUBI. Kippen notes that, while some movies are available for a small fee, most of them are supported by ads and viewable for free. Additional movies and services will reportedly be added "soon". A short video from Lifehacker of the new Movie Library is available on YouTube.

Boxee is a fork of the XBMC Media Center that includes several customised additions, including Web 2.0 services integration with Twitter, Tumblr and Digg, as well as major audio, video and photo portal integration (such as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, Shoutcast, Flickr and Picasa). Boxee also includes a built-in BitTorrent client so users can easily download media over the web from within the application. Users can add extra functionality through App Box, an add-on App Store that lets users select and install a variety of new applications and plug-ins.

More details about the latest Boxee Beta can be found in a post on the Boxee Blog by Kippen. In order to download and use the software, users must first create a Boxee account. Version 0.9.22.13692 of the Boxee Beta is available for Windows, Mac OS X 10.4 or later (Intel Only) and Linux (Ubuntu 9.04 & 9.10 – 32 & 64-bit).

The Boxee developers welcome user feedback and encourage users to report any bugs that they encounter. Parts of Boxee are released under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2) and other parts, including the libboxee networking layer library, are closed source.

See also:

• XBMC drops support for XBOX, a report from The H.
• Open source DVR MythTV 0.23 arrives, a report from The H.

(crve)