Open-source social media center Boxee released a patch yesterday that essentially jailbreaks AppleTV, Brian Chen at Wired’s Gadget Lab reports. The patch makes it possible for users to play any DRM-free multimedia file on AppleTV.
The patch adds a Boxee button to the main AppleTV menu, and clicking it brings the user to Boxee’s sleek interface, which CEO Avner Ronen showed me in the Beet offices after the company launched this summer. I re-posted the interview above.
Ronen told me that he views Apple as a potential partner rather than competitor, and we hope Apple agrees: Making the Boxee button on their menu official would make the set-top box a lot more appealing. Unfortunately, as Chen points out, if users can freely stream content through Boxee they might be less inclined to purchase multimedia through iTunes.
Boxee is currently in private Alpha testing, which you can apply to enter here. To read more about Boxee’s features, see my previous post.
Here’s the report from CrunchGear.
—Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
