Boxee Learns Their ABCs

Just in time for the Season 5 premiere of ‘Lost’, Boxee has announced compatibility with ABC’s video streaming service. This is a big step in Boxee’s journey to become the aggregator of media, online and offline. Boxee is now capable of streaming prime content from almost all of the major broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox (the last two via Hulu), leaving only The CW (which uses a similar streaming technology as ABC…hmm…).

In a blog post announcing the update, Boxee founder Avner Ronen said, “We strongly believe that given the option most users will opt to stream a TV Show (with a reasonable amount of ads) rather than using a file-sharing service.”

Whether that’s true or not, those who previously relied upon illegitimate file sharing services to watch ‘Lost’ may be turning to the ABC.com stream anyway. CrunchGear reports that ABC is “fiddling” with the broadcast signal, making the show more difficult to digitally capture (and pirate).

The ABC-enabling updates are only available to users running Boxee on Mac and will be released to Apple TV users “within the next few days.”

Boxee is free software (of which I am a huge fan) and is currently available for Macs. If you’re a PC user, you can apply to be included in their private alpha.