Big Predictions, and a Hardware Announcement, From Boxee

We've written about the Boxee media center application a number of times here on OStatic. One of the main differentiators between Boxee's open source media center platform and other similar applications is that Boxee is chock-full of social and sharing features. You can discuss shows and video clips and music with friends online--as you consume them. Boxee is also gaining more and more community-built plug-ins. Today, at the NewTeeVee Live event in San Francisco, Boxee CEO CEO Avner Ronen made a significant product introduction, and quite a few surprising predictions.

Boxee's big announcement was that it will integrate its open-source media center software into a new consumer electronics device that will allow a user to watch online video in the living room without the trouble of connecting a PC to a TV. Who the manufacturer is isn't named yet, but the device will show up in 2010 and compete with offerings from Roku and Vudu. The move toward Boxee's software coming pre-bundled with hardware devices has been expected, and points to promising new directions for the venture-backed company.

One of Ronen's big predictions was that by the year 2015, the biggest show won't be a TV show, but an Internet-delivered show. He cited "social interaction online," mobile viewing, and other trends as reasons for that prediction. Ronen also predicted that Apple will be a bigger video content delivery player by 2015 than Comcast will. Again, his reasons had to do with the rise of socially-shared video, and mobile viewing.