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Boxee was a cross-platform freeware HTPC (Home Theater PC) software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV that enables its users to view, rate and recommend content to their friends through many social network services and interactive media related features. Boxee was originally a fork of the free and open source XBMC (now Kodi) media center software which Boxee used as an application framework for its GUI and media player core platform, together with some custom and proprietary additions.〔 〕〔 〕〔 〕〔 (【引用サイトリンク】title=History of boxee )〕〔 〕〔 〕〔 〕〔 〕〔 〕 Marketed as the first ever "Social Media Center",〔 〕〔 〕 the first public alpha of Boxee was made available on 16 June 2008. The UI design of the Alpha prototype was designed with design firm Method Incorporated, who also created Boxee's brand identity. The first public beta version was officially released for all previously supported platforms on 7 January 2010.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Boxee Beta Goes Public, Download Now )〕 Boxee gained the ability to watch live TV on the Boxee Box using a live TV stick in January 2012.〔(【引用サイトリンク】date=14 December 2011 )〕〔(Startups Can't Ignore Washington - Businessweek ). Mobile.businessweek.com (2012-04-12). Retrieved on 2013-10-30.〕 By the end of 2012 the developers had discontinued all desktop versions and support. Boxee co-developed a dedicated set-top box (hardware) called "Boxee Box by D-Link" in cooperation with D-Link which was the first "''Powered by Boxee''" branded device to be announced and launched,〔 〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Boxee Box by D-Link )〕 as well as a similar media player device called "Iomega TV with Boxee" (available in the UK & Europe) in cooperation with Iomega and a 46" high-definition television from ViewSonic with integrated Boxee software. Boxee was owned and developed by a single for-profit startup company, (Boxee, Inc.), which began as a high tech stealth startup based in Israel and the United States with seed money from several angel investors, & was then known to be financially backed by venture capital firms such as General Catalyst Partners, Union Square Ventures, Softbank, Pitango, Spark Capital and Globis Capital Partners.〔(Boxee Adds $6 Million Second round; Aims To Take On Microsoft, Apple In Living Room ). Reuters, 12 August 2009 (cached )〕 The company's main offices are located at 122 West 26th Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10001.〔 (【引用サイトリンク】title=Why You Should Wall Mount Your TV )〕 On Wednesday, July 3, 2013 online media sources revealed Samsung would hire key employees and purchase Boxee's assets for around $30M. Samsung confirmed the acquisition with ''The New York Times'', but did not disclose the amount. ==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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Boxee Walkthrough-Alpha )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=10 most prominent FLOSS projects compared )〕 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Boxee for Windows, Moving up to the Major Leagues )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The BoxeeBox Cookbook )〕 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Hulu Situation )〕 Boxee later reinstated the feature using Hulu's RSS feeds,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Trials and Tribulations of Innovation )〕 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 source code is otherwise in majority based on the XBMC (now Kodi) 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Boxee」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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