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Boxee Brings Back Hulu by Adding a New Browser, Launches API

By Scott Gilbertson April 7, 2009 Categories: Software & Tools

If you’ve got an Apple TV or a Mac hooked up to your TV, you need to grab the latest version of the Boxee video streaming application. The latest Boxee alpha release restores content from video site Hulu.com, which rather noisily blocked Boxee users earlier this year. The update also adds PBS videos and adds the ability to stream music through Pandora.

But the really big news in this release is what’s under the hood: a new Boxee API and a new system for downloading content based on Mozilla browser code.

If you’ve never used Boxee before, think of it as a web browser just for online video — a way to grab all your movies, TV shows and music, as well as tons of of web-based video from sites like Vimeo and YouTube, and play it all on your television.

Included in the latest alpha is Boxee’s new XULRunner browser, a revamped web client that runs within Boxee allowing it to render full HTML pages. The new browsing engine is based on the same code that powers Mozilla’s desktop apps (think Firefox without the skin). So, now you can visit any video website and see the same view on your television as you would on your computer. This not only enables Boxee to bring Hulu.com content back to its set-top box experience, but it also means you can now add just about any video RSS feed to Boxee and it’ll automatically pull in the latest episodes of your favorite online content.

The new API will allow developers to build Boxee add-ons, much like Firefox developers. At the moment, there aren’t any add-ons to play with, but expect an ecosystem to take off as curious programmers dig into the API and start experimenting. As a companion to the API release, Boxee is also launching a repository called the App Box. It will be a place where add-on developers can publish their creations, and where users can search for new add-ons and download them.

For now Boxee is still only available for Mac and Linux, but according to the developers, a Windows release will be the next major step for Boxee.

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