Boxee takes $4 millon

Media sharing platform Boxee has taken $4 million Series A in a round from Spark Capital and Union Square Venture. As part of the deal, Boxee gets Fred Wilson on their board.

We last wrote about Boxee in August after I had seen them demo at Gnomedex. It was, and still is a beautiful product with a great use case, but my query today remains as it did back then: I just don’t see a solid business model, least not yet.

The key though is getting Boxee licensed onto set top boxes, despite the fact that the platform is currently offered for free and is open source. The $4 million is to do exactly that, and we can only presume that there will be value adding on top of what is being offered now, and that’s where the money will come in.

Boxee is still in private beta, so you’ll need to put your name down and wait for an invite. You can even use a hack to install it on an Apple TV which I did…only to find 3 days later that the Apple TV auto-updated and wiped the hack. I must get around to reinstalling it.

Here’s their presentation from Gnomedex:

(via VentureBeat)

Related posts:

1. Hulu cuts off Boxee, Old Media takes one step forward, two steps back
2. Boxee Beta Set For December 7th Private Trial Release
3. Boxee: Brilliant UI, shame about the business plan
4. $6m in funding uploaded to Boxee
5. Why the rest of us couldn’t care less if Hulu is pulled from Boxee