Last night, hundreds packed into the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn to watch Boxee unveil their new beta product that will allow for easier connectivity to televisions, a more user-friendly layout, and most importantly, an apps tab. Boxee is a free software that creates an on-demand center where you can stream content from sites like Netflix, Comedy Central, MLB Pearl of death the download.TV, Pandora and more.You can also easily share everything you consume via Twitter, Tumblr, etc., truly making it a “social” media center.

Two groups of students from NYU Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) stole the night and the audience’s attention with the two Boxee apps they developed for their semester-long class projects:

Qurious is a Boxee app that in real time will tell you the names of the actors, music and even topics that are on-screen. You can then pull up the actors’ Wikipedia page, Flickr photos and more, instantly within Boxee. Here’s the ITP team’s demo:

Trend Lines is a Boxee app that “dynamically curates online video content based on current, socially-driven trends.” Here’s the ITP team’s demo where they pull video content based on Google Trends, Twitter trends and New York Times content:

While NBC Universal gets scooped up for $30+ billion by Comcast, I urge you to stop caring and watch as a startup video company revolutionizes the way we consume video and entertainment. The problem still remains that all the big bucks are in cable and broadcast. When platforms like Boxee are used with every computer, TV and smartphone, the value of targeted advertising based on the videos we personally curate will prompt a comprehensive game change.

Photo from Flickr user fatcontroller used under a Creative Commons license.