A while back, I posted about an appliance that will change our lives. I described the vision as a piece of hardware that would sit at your home entertainment center and do lots of neat stuff. In the comments, I showed a couple of desktop machines that fit the bill from the hardware perspective. (Many of these machines are being called nettops now.) Today, I saw a bit of news that fits for the ‘other half’ of the problem.
Ars is reporting that Boxee is gaining an apps store (has a new API for Plugins!) and is getting it’s own hardware next year.
I’m sure Boxee is not the only project of this nature in the works right now. I’m also sure that there’s about to be a whole new marketing opening up in front of our televisions soon. If only I had a rich investor friend. ;)
The success of some gadgets seem obvious in retrospect. From mp3 players to netbooks, you never know when something is going to expode. Or do you? I think the next potential explosion will live in our livingrooms.
I recently started exploring home theater computer systems such as LinuxMCE and Boxee. I had a vague sense of what I wanted before I started looking. These applications were interesting, but not the experience I was looking for. I wasn’t searching for a TV replacement. I did want to consume media, but that’s not all I wanted to do. It came to me while Nino’s mom was visiting. I fired up the Wii so Nino could show off Raging Rabbids. Meanwhile, I found myself playing with the news and weather applications. I sat there watching the view jump around a map of the earth while related news items were shown at the bottom. That was the trigger that brought it all together in my mind.
