Boxee one of my favourite startups at the moment is unveiling its beta version of the popular Boxee software. I’ve been using Boxee for almost an year on my Macbook Pro and needless to say the experience is simply wonderful.
With today’s Beta launch Boxee aims to enter newer territories with the launch of a dedicated Boxee Box in partnership with D-Link. What’s more important is a totally revamped and redesigned interface for Boxee, that makes using it even more fun. The UI changes aren’t the only changes though, Boxee beta brings about many major under the hood changes that will allow for less resource intensive playback of your media.
Boxee for Windows will shift from using the OpenGL graphics engine to DirectX runtime, along with support for Nvidia’s cheaper but faster Graphics chips. I believe these are major steps for Boxee, because for so long it has remained in the confines of Mac and AppleTV users, with Windows/Linux Adoption being almost negligible.
Before I tell you about the Dedicated Boxee box, lets have a sneak peak into the new Beta interface. And I have to say the new UI is a marked improvement over the old one, and I can’t wait for the nice people at Boxee HQ to give me access to the beta 
The Format wars for the next generation DVD’s are over. Blu-ray backed by Sony Corp. has finally managed to trump Toshiba backed HD-DVD. Toshiba finally gave up yesterday, and the decision that Toshiba took was an “agonizing decision” that Toshiba had to take, says Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida. But then this decision had to be taken in the best interests of the company.
The tipping point came when Warner Bros. decided to join Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema and Lionsgate to support Blu-ray as the official format, making about 75% of all new movie releases available on Blu-ray. After that Blockbuster, Netflix and Wal-Mart all dropped support for HD DVD, and Best Buy also said it would favor Blu-ray.
But that battle for HD Video has just begun……
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