Boxee beta officially available

Boxee is one of those magically delicious technologies that you may not "get" until you try it. Then you try it and you're hooked. I'm just talking about the old alpha builds here, which I tried on my non-techy mate and she loved Boxee, frequent crashes and all. With tons of free video and audio streaming content, plus the ability to add your locally stored multimedia wares, it's one of the least painful "media center" tools I've ever used.

Hot on the heels of their Boxee box unveiling at CES, Boxee now has the beta version of the Boxee application ready for download on Mac, Linux and Windows. Apple TV users still get the alpha version, but I keep wishing Apple would just bundle it (they never, ever will). There's a 64-bit version for Linux and some 64-bit lovin' for Windows as well. If you want to know more about the features in the beta, you can read Brad's writeup here.

And lest we not forget the humble browser origins from whence Boxee came, there's a bookmarklet that works on a handful of right-minded sites like Vimeo, Viddler, YouTube and such. The bookmarklet will add videos you want to watch to Boxee. Pretty handy if you see something you'd like to watch on your big HDTV instead of your teensy netbook.

Go forth and download!

Boxee beta officially available