Boxee Question

I am thinking of getting Apple TV.
I live outside the us, and it's not possible to rent movies, etc from the itunes store.
Therefore, the main use for apple tv can be playing media files from my computer or shared drive.
Just to clarify that i got it wright :
If i install boxee, will i be able to stream my divx,xvid,etc files without problems?
At the moment i am not concerned about hulu, my main concern is if i can use it without having to reencode everything all the time