It took minimal enabling from April to push me over the edge — buying an Apple TV was only about $50 more than building a box and soooo much easier.

The result? First, I’d be really hacked off if I’d bought an AppleTV pre-Boxee. Really not much more useful than using the Xbox360, although the music player and the slideshow are much more slick. I’m continually amazed by Apple’s ability to make small, crappy images look great.

Installing Boxee was so easy that it was almost a little unsatisfying. Really didn’t make me feel like the geek I was pretending to be. (Although, I will note that the Gizmodo instructions were better than Lifehacker’s.) For an alpha, it works amazingly well.

It’s not yet a total replacement for the native Apple TV firmware — the music player and slideshow is inferior. But that’s a minor quibble, and perhaps a red herring, as for me Boxee is all about video. Not only does it automagically find data, cover art and trailers for all your movies, it allows you to access the major video sites (Hulu, Joost, MTV, etc.) on your TV. It’s seamless and works really well.

In fact, it’s scary how well it works in some ways. I had a downloaded English-language film that happened to come with Romanian subtitles. I was careful when copying it to my Apple TV to leave out the subtitle file. But when I ran it on Boxee, confirming I was running the local version, it had the subtitles. They only went away when I deleted them from my Mac, meaning that Boxee was smart enough to take the local film and scan my network for the subtitle file on my Mac. Amazing.

But that’s a bit of arcane geekery — the point is that my TV watching habits have completely changed. I no longer sweat DVR-ing individual episodes of The Daily Show. I know I can get ‘em on Hulu. And having my movie library easily navigable means I’m watching more of it. I’d forgotten how good The Dana Carvey Show was, but I idly flipped to it while eating dinner the other night. I’ve always been sorry I missed the short-lived live-action TV version of The Tick. I’m not anymore.

It comes down to this: The promise of Interwebs video has always been tripped up by the fact that we like watching our TV on the couch and writ large; not on our laps or at a desk. Boxee makes it easy to unwire your media and to explore using your television.

And again, it’s just an Alpha. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next. High on my wishlist is an easy way to connect a USB drive to my Apple TV, ‘cos the existing methods are beyond my ken.

Oh, wait. You said Brooks & Dunn, Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and Brad Paisley?

Sigh. Nevermind.

Bonus tunes:

Hank Williams III: “Dixie” from Straight to Hell. – NSFW

Robbie Fulks: “Countrier than Thou” from Georgia Hard

If you're happy and you're stylized, put your hands on your hips...

I recently bought Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 on the strength of its reviews. It may have been a mistake, as I haven’t been this addicted to a video game since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. (I know that GTA 4 was empirically better, but I just never found it as engaging.)

I’ve been shorting myself on sleep and the dogs find me very boring as I sit on the couch wandering the post-apocalyptic wasteland, listening to 1940′s jazz and fragging mutants.

The odd thing is that I can’t entirely explain why this fairly repetitious RPG/FPS mashup is so addictive…

Maybe it’s the massive universe, the clever dialogue and the post-apocalyptic vs. Leave it to Beaver art direction. Maybe it’s because the government propaganda featured struck a little close to the post-election hype of the past week. Maybe it’s because just when I realize I’ve been mindlessly fragging mutants for hours I get a side-quest that sends me after a delusional woman in an ant suit.

One thing the game does better than any other I’ve seen is make you manage resources. There isn’t ammo or health points laying in every random corner, so you’re pretty much always seconds away from death. Tends to keep the adrenaline flowing.

Anyway, I gotta find a way to taper down my playtime. It’s been a good salve on some frustrating days lately, but I’m starting to feel a bit ridiculous for logging this many hours on the couch.

Trailer:

The game’s freedom of action is leading some people to create some silly videos:

Propaganda / gameplay video: