Boxee, everyone’s favorite HTPC software, just announced that the company just partnered with its first CE company. But that’s all the company is saying. We don’t know anything else. However, there is an event coming up on December 7th right around the corner from John’s house where we should learn more. I’m already excited though. Just think what this means.

Boxee, the media center software startup, has won a lot of fans with its open approach to streaming content. And as a result it has won some more money, to the tune of a $6 million second round, led by Boston’s General Catalyst Partners. The new money will be used for growth: Both expanding the team and expanding the service’s reach in the market, we’re told.

But why now? After all, Boxee raised its first round of funding just 8 months ago, a $4 million round with Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital investing. “We’ve seen a lot of momentum over the past couple of months. It seemed like it made sense to go ahead [with a new round],” Boxee’s new head of marketing Andrew Kippen tells us.

Boxee is holding an event in San Francisco tonight to declare a winner of its App Dev Challenge, in which third-parties created apps for the media platform. But the real winner tonight will be Boxee, which is also announcing a boatload of new features and functionality for its media center software — none bigger than a version of Boxee for Windows, finally.

While many developers go the other way, Boxee started as a Mac and Linux product first. But obviously, Windows PCs are the vast majority of the machines out there. “This is huge being able to serve the rest of the computer market,” Boxee CEO Avner Ronen tells us. And that’s undoubtedly an understatement, given the success Boxee has already had minus all those Windows users.

Tonight at its event in San Francisco, Boxee showed off the first shots of what it’s working on for the beta release of its software. CEO Avner Ronen says Boxee users should expect this in September, though it could be pushed to October.

Forgive the slightly blurry shots, consider this a test of the iPhone 3GS camera at live events. (There are some slightly better ones at the bottom.)

Free entertainment hub Boxee keeps on getting better and better. A couple of hours ago, the venture-backed startup released a full API that allows developers to build applications for the open-source platform using a set of API calls in Python and writing the GUI using XML. At the same time, the company is laying the groundwork for a richer App Box, which it refers to as an open application store where they are not the gatekeeper (like Apple for its iPhone App Store) but rather a facilitator.

Heck, they’re even prepared to act as middleman for connecting freelance web developers with companies looking to leverage their API. Hard not to love that type of company.

Boxee is today also introducing a new test version of the Boxee alpha version for Mac and Apple TV (get it here for Intel Mac OS X 10.4+), adding two applications that were built using the brand new API. The new Boxee alpha comes with a lot of music goodness as it includes both Pandora, the popular music streaming service, and RadioTime, which enables their users to access over 100,000 traditional radio stations from across the globe.

We’ve already shown you one dirty way of re-enabling Hulu on Boxee but now there is an official work around direct from Boxee via RSS. The latest build adds support for video RSS fees and so…all you need to do is add Hulu’s public RSS feed to the app’s reader. It’s surely not as sexy as the past application, but it’s better than nothing. Plus, App Box and auto update show how fast this alpha release is maturing.

It was reported this morning that the latest AppleTV update FUBAR’d Boxee, but that’s not true, says Boxee.

Each firmware update from Apple will normally erase non-Apple menu items from AppleTV.