I recently found some time to play around with two XBMC-based media
center apps, Boxee and Plex, and I have to say that I’m impressed. Not
only with their design and feature sets, but with their ability to
deliver web-optimized content to a television.
 
Gaming
consoles have long had the interaction model between users, the television, and a computer figured out, so it’s not surprising that
these media center applications evolved from the XBOX modder community.
What is surprising is the extent to which they have been embraced by
early adopters. It’s difficult to estimate the size of these platforms’
combined install base, but judging from the amount of buzz they’re
generating, it’s considerable.

A large portion of the success
of these apps can be attributed to the growing importance of the
problem they help solve. Namely, that lots of people have amassed large
amounts of music and
video on their local computers and want a higher-fidelity consumption
experience than
what’s afforded by iTunes or Windows Media Player and a 15″ laptop
screen. In addition to locally stored content, people are increasingly
interested in watching streaming video from sites like Hulu and TV.com
from their sofas on their shiny new HDTVs. Boxee and Plex do a great
job of solving the problem of “the last ten feet” bridging the divide
between the desk and the sofa.

Delivering
computer optimized content to the sofa is the primary driver for
adoption of this type of software,
but there’s another major attraction, features. For instance, the
ability to pull down related content based on local media files. Both
applications seamlessly blend reviews, ratings, and album art into the
interface and in doing so added a lot of value to my existing media.

Another
attractive aspect of these applications are the crop of supported
iPhone remote applications that have popped up in the App Store. They
represent a super-smart approach to solving a key interaction challenge
associated with the sofa to computer model, lack of a wireless
keyboard. The apps makes use of the iPhone’s screen for navigation and
keyboard for text input and while they won’t please everyone, they do
pass an important litmus test, they make use of hardware that many
users already own. Instead of imposing requirements for new hardware,
as other major media center software vendors have done in the past (you
know who you are). All in all, these apps are another step toward
liberation of content trapped in the desktop interaction paradigm.

Dan Neumann