Open source media platform Boxee has announced plans to partner with consumer electronics manufacturers to create a Boxee Box platform – an open Internet video hardware set top box.

Here’s the text of their announcement:

We launched our public alpha for Mac/Linux in January at CES. During the show we met with several device manufactures interested in embedding Boxee into their existing devices or building a dedicated Boxee device.

I am very happy to announce we have signed our first partnership with a CE company. At this point we can not say more about the partner or the specs of the device, but we can tell you we are working closely with them to make sure we deliver a great Boxee experience on it.

We will show mockups of the box and share more details at our upcoming Boxee Beta Unveiling event in Brooklyn, NY on Dec 7th. RSVP here.

Over the next few years there will be a great change in the way we consume entertainment on our TV. The Internet is (finally) coming to the TV and with it will come a whole new world of content, applications and innovations.

We are building Boxee as a platform that would:

• make it easy for users to consume and find content – no matter what the source
• give content owners, aggregators, and developers the tools to create unique experiences with a variety of business models
• enable CE companies to enhance their Connected devices

This will be the first connected device running Boxee, but the idea is to provide consumers with a way to get Boxee in their living rooms, no matter whether it’s on a Connected TV, game console, set-top box, BluRay player, computer, etc.

Our goal is to be on every Connected device in the living room.

Apple TV showed tremendous promise when it was announced, because it offered a way to play Internet video and user-generated content on your TV.

Apple TV has stagnated, though, while the open platform Boxee has blazed forward, so the idea of a Boxee Box is a very interesting development.

What do you think? Will the Boxee Box beat Apple TV and turn Internet television from a “hobby” into the future of television?