Overview
Boxee supports a wide range of popularly used multimedia formats, and it includes features such as playlists, audio visualizations, slideshows, weather forecasts reporting, and an expanding array of third-party plugins. As a media center, Boxee can play most audio and video file containers, as well as display images from many sources, including CD/DVD-ROM drives, USB flash drives, the Internet, and local area network shares.
Through the processing power of modern PC hardware, Boxee is able to decode high-definition video up to 1080p. Boxee is able to use DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) on Windows Vista and newer Microsoft operating-systems to utilize GPU accelerated video decoding to assist with process of video decoding of high-definition videos.
With its Python-powered plugin system, the Boxee software incorporates features such as Apple movie trailer support and subtitle downloading, access to large on-demand video streaming services Netflix, Headweb and VUDU; a range of popular online internet content channels like audio services Pandora Radio, Last.fm, Jamendo, NPR, SHOUTcast radio streams; video services from ABC, BBC iPlayer, Blip.TV, CNET, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, Funny or Die, Joost, Major League Baseball, NHL Hockey, MTV Music, MySpaceTV, Revision3, MUBI, OpenFilm, SnagFilms, IndieMoviesOnline, EZTakes, United Football League, VEVO, Vice Magazine, TED, The WB Television Network, YouTube and image services from Flickr and PicasaWeb picture viewing plugins. All are available as media sources available alongside the local library.
Some of the services are via specialized connections (e.g., YouTube), while the rest are a preselected list of podcast channels for streaming using generic RSS web feeds (e.g., BBC News). Boxee also supported NBC Universal's Hulu quite early on, but in February 2009 was asked by Hulu to remove the service at the request of Hulu's content partners. Boxee later reinstated the feature using Hulu's RSS feeds, but Hulu once again blocked access.
Even though both the Boxee App and the Boxee Box support Netflix, the Boxee App supports only a limited instant queue, missing more recent TV shows and movies available through the web browser and iPhone apps.
Boxee recently introduced a new plugin architecture based on the XUL (XULRunner) framework which technically allows any web-based application to be ported into an application for Boxee integration. Because of this Boxee can now utilise Mozilla corebase architecture for most of its plugins – since this is the same core architecture that Firefox uses, Hulu will see Boxee as "any other Mozilla browser so Hulu doesn't block the app." Hulu's latest attempt to thwart Boxee involves JavaScript scrambling.
Another interesting aspect is how Boxee manages to play Adobe Flash content from sites such as YouTube and Hulu, and display HTML5 or Silverlight content from such web-based services such as HBO Go and Netflix. Boxee seems to be shipping with a closed source, binary-only, program called "bxflplayer", which seems to load Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight proprietary plugins. This program communicates with the main Boxee process via shared memory and it renders the video onto screen. By using this approach, it is possible for Boxee not only to play Flash Video and Silverlight content that is protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management) but also allows for the user to control the player using a remote control and other input devices that are more suitable to laid back watching. Same as with the above mentioned "libboxee", it is not clear if this way of using "bxflplayer" as closed source libraries with a GPL licensed software passes as GPL linking exception or not.
Boxee also includes a built-in BitTorrent client, with a frontend for it integrated into the Boxee interface, and there are also Torrent links to legal BitTorrent trackers download sites available incorporated by default. Through Boxee's Python plugin system it is also possible for end-users to add unofficial third-party plugins to enable Torrent downloads from sites such as The Pirate Bay.
Boxee source code is otherwise in majority based on the XBMC Media Center project's source code which Boxee uses as its software framework, and the Boxee developers contribute changes to that part back upstream to the XBMC project. So Boxee is partially open source and those parts are distributed under the GNU General Public License, however Boxee's social networking layer library, "libboxee" is closed source as it deals with proprietary methods of communication with Boxee's online back-end server which handles the user account information and social network communications between the users in the Boxee userbase, it is not clear if this way of using closed source libraries with a GPL licensed software passes the GPL linking exception or not.
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