Take a look at your laptop and you’ll probably have audio from your music collection, a few videos you’ve grabbed from your own collection, photos of your kids and much more. Problem is that it’s pretty lame to try and watch a movie from your computer screen or show a slideshow from the laptop. As most TVs have a HDMI input, why not connect your machine directly to your TV and browse through the big screen?

Problem is you need some software to get the most from your collection, bring together the various media files and quickly browse through your favourite files. If you have your speakers connected to your TV, you could connect up your laptop, or any other computer, and then listen to your audio tracks.

Boxee is free, open-source media software that integrates with your personal media collection and uses your computer’s Internet connection to bring streaming media to your TV. Better still, if you’re in to social networking, you can use Boxee to share information with other users regarding your current tracks or favourite movie.

Boxee can stream various online movie and TV channels via partners such as CBS, Hulu and others.

Note that Boxee is still an early preview and you need an online account to use the service. The version here is the Windows download.