iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Thursday, April 2, 2009
News Category: Apple TV

Boxee, a freeware media browser that allows users to watch web video, streaming TV shows, and any other non-DRM content shared on their network through a user-friendly interface, now derives 25% of its total traffic from Apple TV devices that have been hacked to run the Boxee software. According to new statistics published by Fortune, Apple’s products account for 92% of all Boxee use when the Apple TV users are combined with the 67% of users who run the software on Macs. Boxee founder Avner Ronen explains that the software became publicly available on Mac-based systems first because members of the development team “were all switching to Macs as our personal computers, [a]nd we felt many of the early adopters were going there as well.” While 370,000 people have downloaded the software since it became available last June, only 4% of those are running the software on Windows PCs, mostly due to the current alpha build, private-release status of the PC software. Installation of Boxee on an Apple TV requires a download from Boxee, as well as some unauthorized hacking of the Apple TV system software that results in Boxee appearing first as a menu item, then as a separate application with its own interface.