Open-source media center Boxee debuted a new Alpha release tonight, adding support for Pandora music streaming, PBS video feeds, and changes that open it up to more multimedia goodness (oh, and fix Hulu streaming, too).
Here's a look at what's new in the latest build, as well as the newest plug-in from some Boxee-loving code tweakers:
Pandora: Built using a newly-released API for developers, Pandora's official plug-in allows users to sign in and track their listening, listen to favorite stations and create new ones. And anyone can create a "quickmix" or type in artist or song names for "sounds like" listening. It should be available in the App Box section, under "Add New Application."
PBS: This one comes from the folks at BoxeeHQ, who offer an repository of some neat Boxee plug-ins.
To get PBS videos, GameTrailers clips, and other BoxeeHQ stuff, head to the App Box section of the left-hand menu in an up-to-date alpha release. Navigate to the category list at the top and head to "Repositories," then move down to click "Add Repository." Type in dir.boxeehq.com, and you should see "BoxeeHQ" added as one of your repositories.
Now head up and click the "New Applications" menu, then choose PBS or whatever else you'd like to add. You'll find PBS in your Video/Internet menu. It was working pretty well this afternoon, and offers a pretty impressive range of shows.
Radio Time: Boxee's support for Radio Time brings more than 100,000 local and regional radio stations into your media center, and it knows which stations are near you for easy streaming.
New API, new browser framework: More of interest (hopefully) to content providers and Python hackers, but pretty good news for everyone. Boxee opens up with a new API specification that allows anyone with some Python knowledge, an RSS feed, and/or XML skills to create plug-ins that can be added through repositories, just as with the PBS plug-in above.
UPDATED: The browser that powers Boxee's web video playback is switching over to an XUL framework. In other words, it'll have the same kind of guts as Firefox, and the developers are hoping that makes it easier to play back all kinds of stuff on the net. The immediate effect, according to the Boxee folks, is that any HTML page can be displayed in Boxee, and videos or other media embedded in feeds should play a lot smoother. Those clicking on the Hulu RSS feeds, for example, should "see the Hulu page for a few seconds and then the video will start playing in fullscreen."
Boxee's newest alpha is a free download for registered beta users of Mac OS X, Linux, and patch-sticked Apple TVs. Windows users who have gotten into the private alpha should check in at their download location to grab the latest release.