Just a few weeks ago, we reported that Hulu had pulled all of its content from Boxee, a popular cross-platform media player. However, as one could almost expect, Boxee, which has yet to work out a new deal with Hulu, found an easy workaround and Hulu’s content is now back on Boxee. The company now simply routes Hulu’s public RSS feeds to a new feed reader plugin in Boxee.
Update: Looks like we were wrong about Hulu’s ability to keep Boxee down. According to a statement on Boxee’s blog, Hulu has now blocked Boxee’s browser from accessing the service.
Update 2 (8:20pm PST): According to the latest Twitter update from Boxee, Hulu on Boxee should now be working again, but at least for us, that was not yet the case. Clearly, Hulu and Boxee are currently playing a cat-and-mouse game, which is really a shame, because both companies are offering great services. Hulu is probably under a lot of pressure from its licensing partners to prevent Boxee from being able to display their content on a TV screen (of course, for quite a few users, that line is already completely blurred anyway). In the long run, this is going to only make Hulu and its partners look foolish, but for now, the game continues…
Boxee also released a new version of its player today, which includes a new application store (the ‘App Box’) that allows users to easily install new apps and plugins. Boxee’s application is now also able to auto-update itself whenever a new version is released.
Hulu is Back
We had a chance to test Boxee‘s new Hulu integration today, and while it is billed as a workaround and not quite as pretty as Boxee’s previous implementation, it actually turned out to be a very workable solution. All the shows are lined up in alphabetical order and while Boxee clearly overlays its own user interface over the Hulu flash player, you actually have to look very closely to see this.
App Box
The main addition to Boxee’s feature line-up in this new version, however, is the new built-in app store/plugin repository. Unlike other app stores, Boxee uses a model that is similar to that of many Linux distributions: Boxee lets you add your own repositories to the mix, so that you are never locked in to the service’s official selection of application. We can’t help but wonder if this won’t allow some enterprising developers to create another Hulu app that replicates Boxee’s old Hulu integration.
