Over the years there have been many different Home Theater solutions, both standalone units(Tivo and a whole slew of copy cats) and software you install on a computer often called an HTPC (MythtTV, Windows Media Center, Apple's Front Row, XBMC.) Most of these play legally and illegally obtained videos that you have on your computer and some of them have DVR capability. A few also deliver information from the web like weather and RSS feeds, but none go as far as Boxee.
Boxee doesn't do anything fancy like automatically remove commercials like MythTV because it's not even a DVR. It does play videos from your personal collection, but what it does really, really well is give you a nice interface to browse videos from the web. Instead of sitting at your laptop and going to ABC to watch Grey's Anatomy or Comedy Central to watch The Daily Show, you can browse by title or genre every show that Boxee can find and it's completely legal. Often videos will be ad supported. It will even give you the metadata information from multiple online sources including IMDb so you have far more info than your standard cable guide provides. This same metadata is applied to your personal collection as well which means less organizing and more watching, or maybe even some time outside. (here's looking at you pasty)
Boxee even ties in social networking allowing you to follow other users or share your recommendations with followers using your Boxee account. Facebook and twitter can also be used for sourcing video content and posting your current favorites.
Now Boxee is still in beta, so if you refused to touch gmail for its first 5 years of life then you might want to wait, but all in all Boxee is pretty stable and unlikely to delete your cherished collection of The Golden Girls. The interface is fairly well laid out but you will run across annoyances and glitches. If you aren't that tech savvy or don't have a spare computer lying around then there are some great systems preinstalled with Boxee coming out. Boxee has teamed up with D-Link to bring you the Boxee Box which will be out later this year for under $200 but already out is the Myka ION starting at $379. My personal favorite, the NUU player will be selling for just under $300 but it has a lot more to offer than the Boxee Box. Boxee is also trying to get there software into your cable box and really any other computer that'll have them. Maybe your next SUV will be able to play DVD's, satellite radio and Boxee.
For more information I recommend clicking on the corresponding links above. Also Wikipedia has a great entry on Boxee, I double checked a lot of my info there. Hats off to the Wikipedia collective!
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