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

This is the new Home screen. The most visible change is the shifting of the navigation from Left to top center. Along with it comes a new centralized hub for all your content. You can now see recommendations from friends on Boxee, Facebook or Twitter (via RSS feeds), recommendations from Boxee’s staff and partners (Featured) and the latest episodes from your favorite shows or things you’ve saved for later (Queue).

The new global menu, makes Navigation even more easier than it was before. This menu makes it easy to access helpful resources (TOP – Logout, Settings, Now Playing, Queue, Feed, History), the main menu (MIDDLE – Photos, Music, Movies, Home, TV Shows, Apps, Files) and shortcuts (BOTTOM) to your favorite Apps, TV Shows, Movies, or folders. This has to be my favorite new feature of the Boxee Beta. Makes me feel that the old navigation was boring and slow!

The screenshots above show the new TV Shows Library and Photos in action. The new sidebar on the left, makes searching/sorting etc. even more easier than it was before.

The New Boxee makes sharing even more fun and easier. After all the entire Boxee experience is a social experience. So now you’re gonna have an endless amount of media to consume thanks to your friends.

At the heart of the new Boxee is the Queue that runs thorough out the software. As you browse your library, you can continuously queue up items. So the next time you don’t have to remind yourself that you wanted to catch up with the latest episode of “How I Met Your Mother”!

There’s a lot more that’s changed in Boxee beta, which I can’t talk about, because I don’t have direct access to the Beta. But looking from the screenshots already posted on the internet, I’m already in love with the new Boxee.

Now coming to the Boxee Box from D-Link, here’s what Senior Marketing Executive Daniel Kelley at D-Link had to say :

“By pairing Boxee’s innovative social entertainment platform with D-Link’s technology we’re able to create a solution that introduces people to what TV should be. Additionally we’re bringing a new level of social interaction to the living room.”

The Boxee Box will have HDMI, SPDIF and RCA Audio connections, Plus two USB ports and it will work on both 802.11N. The price isn’t known yet, nor are the other technical details. What we all know is that Boxee will debut it during at the CES 2010. However rumors point to sub $200 price point which I believe will be very attractive to many home users.

Looks like 2010 will be the year when Digital Media finally makes the transition into our Living rooms. Thanks to Boxee, this is a space that we are all excited going into 2010.

Image Credit : Phil Campbell | Screenshots via Boxee Blog

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……

While the commercial and technical superiority of both the formats has long been debated, but with the pullout of the HD-DVD camp, things stand clear for Blu-ray. We would finally see the High Definition Video market take off, with the availability of cheaper  HD TV’s and the market penetration that Sony would achieve with Blu-ray. For most people the format wars are over, and Sony is now effectively the market leader in HD Video.

But things aren’t going to be all that easy for Blu-ray. For sure, Blu-ray is going to be the preferred choice for Disc media in the near future. But isn’t just about everything moving online? Yes HD Video downloads from the Internet are going to be a serious threat to Blu-ray. In the future, we will all be buying and downloading the stuff directly from the Internet, rather than buying Physical Media.

With iTunes, XBOX Live, and Vudu already offering HD Downloads on their services, we might as well see another war on the HD Video format. But iTunes and the other online services are still in their infant stages, so it would take them atleast a year to catch up with Blu-ray. But Apple TV seriously has the potential to tap the HD Movie Market, with its rental service.

With the competition that Blu-ray would face from online solutions, there also lie challenges for services like iTunes, because HD Media demand more storage and bandwidth. Storage isn’t a problem really but Bandwidth will remain a concern. At the current rate of growth, HD Video will clog the pipes.

So the next generation HD Video battle lies ahead.. Who do you think has an advantage here? Lets discuss in the comments.

For the time being the Meebo integration is via Joost Widgets, but over time you can expect it to become more direct and better. Here is a screenshot of the inline Chat in Joost in action :

Its nice to Joost innovating and adding new features. With over 15000 shows and 250 channels Joost is getting ready for the primetime. On a related note, the Joost client has become more stable and faster recently which is good news for a lot of us.

Via Techcrunch

My favorite P2P Application, Joost has received a major makeover in the first public beta release. Joost 1.0 comes with a revamped UI, that is super slick and is better than the old one. I have really fallen in love with the new UI. Joost 1.0 has everything rearranged, and the new Navigation system is the best I have seen in a P2P Application.

Now coming to technical side of it, Joost now has become more tolerant of poor network performance and will attempt to retry and restart streams that have become stalled. This is one of the biggest problems I had with the earlier versions of Joost. Also added is an updater service that will automatically update Joost whenever there is a new version available.

For more details on what is new in Joost 1.0 see the Release Notes.