Streaming TV service Boxee has already made forays into set-top boxes and personal antennas, and now it's creating an embeddable system for televisions. By partnering with system on a chip provider Sigma, it can build a platform that essentially lets manufacturers put Boxee's cloud-based DVR, live TV, and streaming apps inside their TVs. The pitch is that manufacturers won't need to spend their own money on developing smart TV tools; Boxee, meanwhile, will be able to move further into the mainstream by (it hopes) getting its product into the TVs people would buy anyways.
Boxee has been fairly inclusive of different content models, but it's worth noting that when we asked CEO Avner Ronen about smart TVs last year, he argued that they wouldn't succeed without being periodically upgradeable. "If they rely on people upgrading their TVs to get the next generation smart TV experience," he told us, "that's not going to happen." This embeddable system seems potentially upgradeable or even replaceable, but Boxee will need to find a way to deliver the versatility of its set-top boxes without the same modularity.