Monday, March 02, 2009

Boxee: the TV revolution is underway

The Columbia Media Conference happened last Friday. Panelists talked about the way media and especially TV is recreating itself. Eminent VCs and media business folks were talking about the emergence of new platforms that will unleash developer's creativity and give way to a whole new world of TV consumption and entertainment. The hottest company around is called Boxee.tv. It is a media entertainment open platform. Users can watch TV or listen to music from different sources on the same platform. Boxee's API is available to the open source community, to develop original applications on top of it, like Facebook.
I have recently heard Boxee's CEO giving a fascinating example of the type of applications that are created on Boxee. A developer has released an application that allows users to link their Last.fm customized radio to music videos on YouTube. As soon as a song on last.fm is playing, the application looks at its corresponding music video and shows it on Boxee. Hence, people have a kind of MTV channel customized to their current mood.

This is only the beginning of a new world where the TV content and distribution will be free of the major cable companies and channel networks control, and that's great news.

Ido Shamgar

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