OStatic

When online video powerhouse Hulu recently released its own application for watching video, many observers interpreted the move as explaining why Hulu had asked open source media center player Boxee to remove support for its content. Hulu had been the number one type of content that Boxee users watched. Over at NewTeeVee, you can watch a video interview with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, where he discusses the release of Hulu's competitive application. He holds out hope that Boxee and Hulu can mend fences, and claims that Hulu's move validates the worth of media applications like Boxee. Check it out.?

As reported on DeviceGuru and the Boxee blog, there is now a new Linux version of the Boxee open source media center application, including support for Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04). The new release adds many of the features that have already made it into the Mac OS X and Windows versions of Boxee, including App Box (a Boxee application store), Pandora and RadioTime for radio, and a customized browser that offers support for what Boxee officials have said is the number one form of requested content on its platform: Hulu. With Boxee out in rich, flexible versions on multiple platforms, there could be even more opportunities for hardware bundles and other commercial opportunities than ever.?

Last month, we covered the news of online video powerhouse Hulu's removal from the open source Boxee media center. Boxee has become a very popular and flexible media center application, allowing people to break away from their computers and watch online content on big screens with remote controls. It's especially popular for use with AppleTV. However, under pressure from large broadcaster content providers such as NBC, Hulu was forced to reluctantly request that Boxee remove support for it. In a blog post, Boxee officials lamented that Hulu was the most requested content provider on Boxee. Now, you can get Hulu on Boxee again. Here's how.

As noted on Lifehacker, the new beta version of open source media center application Plex offers support for Hulu. Plex is for Mac OS X users only, and is noted for its glitzy, skinnable interface. Like Boxee, which was recently forced to remove support for Hulu content, Plex is a fork of the XBMC Media Center project. Here, you can view screencasts showing how Plex and its galaxy of plug-ins work.

Do commercial open source companies need better evangelists? There are some good reasons to believe that they do. For example, Savio Rodrigues notes that in Fast Company's recent roundup of the the world's most innovative companies, there isn't a single open source vendor listed. Sun Microsystems made the list last year, but this year only appeared in the ghettoized list of 33 companies from last year?s Fast Company 50 that didn?t make the list this time but deserve watching. I don't think the problem here is lack of innovation among notable open source candidates for a list like Fast Company's; instead, the problem is poor evangelism.

In a few recent posts, we've covered the Boxee open source media center, which has begun to get rave reviews from users, and attention in the mainstream press. Boxee is a mashup of a powerful media center application that can run and organize videos, photos and more on the Mac, AppleTV, (eventually Windows) and Linux, with social media sharing features thrown in. Many of the Boxee users that I run into have raved about its ability to let them watch Hulu videos on their big screen TVs, but that's coming to an end. In this blog post from Hulu, the company's CEO Jason Kilar makes clear that Hulu's content will no longer be available through Boxee. How did this come about and who's to blame?