ozsource Australia

The popular xbmc fork with a social networking twist, has just had its impressive beta unveiled at an event at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The Boxee team will open up this Beta to the public on Jan 7th (at CES) and over the next 4 weeks will gradually release invitations to our early access users.

Features and Enhancements include:

• Windows DXVA hardware acceleration. (This is a biggie!)
• Overhauled and completely Redesigned Skin
• Numerous Bug fixes
• Performance improvements
• Official support for Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Karmic
• New apps (similar to xbmc plugins/scripts)

As part of the Beta we also changed the underlying graphic library on Windows from OpenGL to DirectX, and we’re now taking advantage of DXVA, which means Boxee for Windows just got faster and can play 1080p without your CPU breaking a sweat. There is now a long list of affordable Windows-based devices that can turn into a kick-ass media center (e.g. Acer Revo, Dell Zino, HP Mini)