Bijan Sabet

Boxee in the New York Times

I’m happy to see Boxee as the feature story in the New York Times today and picked up on Techmeme as well.

The article is focused on the idea that consumers may use Boxee to bypass cable:

“Boxee has allowed me to replace cable with no remorse,” said Jef Holbrook, a 27-year-old actor in Columbus, Ga., who recently downloaded the Boxee software to the $600 Mac Mini he has connected to his television. “Most people my age would like to just pay for the channels they want, but cable refuses to give us that option. Services like Boxee, that allow users choice, are the future of television.”

That may be true in the future as even cable operators are investing in their own online video products bigtime. Just take a look at Fancast which is owned by Comcast to see which way the wind is blowing.

But the bypass cable story isn’t the entire story behind Boxee. I love Boxee because it’s open and social. As an open source media center you can port it to any hardware. Developers can go nuts with it. That is the key.

And Boxee’s social features like friends recommendations, friends activity/minifeed and twitter integration are just the start of something big as tv becomes social.

(disclosure: we are investors in Boxee)