Details are short on the ground, but The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen is reporting on Twitter that Samsung has purchaseds Boxee, maker of the Boxee Box, one of the Apple TV’s main competitors.

The New York Times reports:

An earlier report by The Marker, an Israeli Web site, said that Samsung purchased the start-up for $30 million. In a statement, a Samsung spokeswoman would confirm only that Samsung had acquired some employees and assets of Boxee but did not disclose how much it had paid.

“Samsung has acquired key talent and assets from Boxee,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “This will help us continue to improve the overall user experience across our connected devices.”

Boxee, of course, does more than just hardware: Boxee is home theater software that can technically run on any device. Samsung has been making a big push lately into internet connected televisions, so it seems like a natural fit for them to beef up their presence with one of the more well-respected theater software companies. Armed with Boxee’s talents, technologies and assets, can Samsung push the Apple TV out of the living room once and for all?