Moxi Digital's Future Convergence Box Announced

Many readers have submitted news of a new do-everything media box being hyped at CES. Fofer writes: "Steve Perlman, the founder of WebTV, is attempting to infiltrate the living room again, but this time it looks like he's on to something. Officially unveiled at CES 2002, the Moxi Media Center is a souped-up digital media server with an 80-gigabyte hard drive. It can deliver, to as many as four televisions, video recorded from a TV signal off of its integrated cable/satellite receiver, video or audio downloaded to the hard drive or from a built-in DVD/CD player. ... Articles with more info are here(1) and here(2)." When a product is still vapor, it's pretty easy to make it buzzword-compliant, too, and this one is supposed to work with Macs and IBM-style PCs, be based on Linux, work with Firewire drives, etc. Read the linked PR stuff to find out more.

Comments

How long until they get sued?

[MarkLR]

Any company with a patent in the Digital Recorder area (Tivo, Replay, MS?) will likely sue them to try to stop the competition.

A DVD recorder to archive recorded TV shows to something better than VHS would also be nice. The Firewire port would allow this once the price goes down.

Re:How long until they get sued?

[Lumpy]

and they will have good luck trying.. Motorola and the 3 big cable companies are behind this. Nothing like an ant trying to sue a giant.

From the plans I have seen, TiVo and the like will become useless as your digital cable box will replace it, and you wont have to subscribe to a special service to get the listings.

What is coming is really cool, and the Ultimate TV,TiVo and others will die because of it.

The Ultimate Digital Media Server!

[3141]

I already have a "digital media server" that supports instant messaging, email, DVDs and CDs. It's my computer.

Flash Interface, and price?

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Hmm, looks like it has a flash interface. Maybe it's just my system, but Flash doesn't run very well for me under Linux. I have a 900MHz CPU, but flash animations, especially games, are very, very slow. How will they overcome that?

I know I'll get modded for redundant but hey, I wonder how much it will cost. I'm guessing this will be a > $1,000 device. Butm an, if it really can do all it says, maybe it would be worth it.

*crosses fingers* DVD playback with progressive output would be nice, too.

Re:I read about that!

[11thangel]

No money at all compared to the thousands you will spend on the actual machine itself. It's completely true considering the price of cables these days.

Rearden Steel technologies

[flacco]

His Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is also announcing a name change, to Moxi Digital Inc. from Rearden Steel Technologies.

Looks like an Ayn Rand fan.

Re:Rearden Steel technologies

[Tackhead]

> > His Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is also announcing a name change, to Moxi Digital Inc. from Rearden Steel Technologies.
>
> Looks like an Ayn Rand fan.

As many have said "due to licensing restrictions, remote DVD playback is not available in homes using wireless networking".

Looks to me like then he's been beaten by the parasites at MPAA. While there are no doubt other reasons for the renaming, I'd say "consistency" is one of 'em.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice- you may know that your society is doomed."

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Rearden would have built it, and told MPAA to go fsck themselves.

In light of this, I applaud Perlman's decision to rename his company, as I'd have to grit my teeth every time I saw Rearden's name attached to a company with a cool idea, but who paid tribute to the parasites in the MPAA.

Tremendous potential - good and bad

[Ldir]

This could have tremendous potential as the next killer product in consumer electronics. Besides replacing (or perhaps consolidating) your CD/DVD players and your VCR/PVR, it's only a couple of features away from being a standardized gaming platform and even a personal computer. Sure, most of us will still want dedicated PCs. But, if Moxi does a good job on the UI, Joe Six-pack could find that Moxi II is all that he needs to surf, e-mail, and write term papers.

I think it can sell well just as a super-DVR. We have two Tivos already, thinking about a third for another TV in another room. If this box can serve up content to four sets from a central location, it would eliminate our desire for multiple DVRs. It's not that we want to record that many programs; we just watch them in different places.

Further, since the Moxi incorporates the content management that studios lust after, it is likely to be very well received. It's easy to imagine studios providing all sorts of exclusive offerings for the Moxi to undercut interest in vanilla Tivo and Replay systems. Couple that with a new round of lawsuits from studios, and competing technologies may die on the vine. Again, Joe Six-pack won't care, may not even notice, as long as the studios don't get too greedy.

(IMO, the studios' unbridled greed is the only reason they don't already own the digital entainment market. If they would settle for 90% of the potential profit instead of shooting for 120%, most consumers would happily line up behind whatever they - the studios - supported. But I digress.)

The interesting angle will be how many companies launch competing-but-incompatible systems. Again, I could see greedy studios trying to establish their own tech instead of signing up with Moxi. If this new product family gets bogged down in yet another format war, it may become just another footnote on the road to Microsoft's domination of digital entertainment. Or, MS may preempt the whole thing by buying it (again).

This will be interesting to watch no matter how it plays out.

Re:Tremendous potential - good and bad

[severian]

Further, since the Moxi incorporates the content management that studios lust after, it is likely to be very well received. It's easy to imagine studios providing all sorts of exclusive offerings for the Moxi to undercut interest in vanilla Tivo and Replay systems.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I hate to be a pessimist but in the end, I think the platform that will win out won't be the most technologically sophisticated or the easiest to use. Rather, it's going to be whichever platform best panders to the media conglomerates and incorporates all the digital rights management policies that they want implemented. Then they'll get access to exclusive content and be able to work closely with the cable and satellite providers to make sure their systems are compatible while everyone else's mysteriously can't record shows properly.

Sounds like Mr. Perlman (founder of Moxie) is no fool. By creating an integrated solution that can completely control the entire process of recording/accessing/transmitting media he's given the media companies exactly what they want. In return, I expect they'll be very good to him too. If you dont believe me, just notice how every article about this new product spends almost as much time touting its copyright protection abilities as it does describing its features.

What's point?

[atdt]

So my family want to watch the same TV program in front of 4 different TV sets in 4 different locations in the house? Unless it can deliever 4 different programs at same time, I am not interested.

Questions:

• Who gets the remote control? Are there 4 remotes in the 4 rooms?
• Why not people all sit together in a big coach?

More bass-ackward thinking from geekland.

[-=[ SYRiNX ]=-]

When geeks think something is cool, they foolishly assume everyone else will agree. Building a personal media library is a geek-born idea. Average people just want low-cost media on demand.

Science fiction always depicts instant media on demand for little or no cost; personal media libraries only exist for unique or personal content. There's no need for personal copies of centrally available media.

Smart entrepeneurs realize this fact and are working toward two things: ways to stream media over the wire, and heavy-duty centralized servers. Personal digital video recorders or in-home servers are a temporary and weak solution that really only appeals to an expert minority of consumers.

These devices will quickly become irrelevant once a reasonable media on demand solution is implemented. Building a new business around a dead-end concept is hardly a plan for success.

Re:More bass-ackward thinking from geekland.

[GunFodder]

Good point. The same could apply to computing. Who wants to have to maintain a complex computer themselves when someone else could do it for them? A heavy duty centralized "mainframe" could do all the heavy lifting and a relatively simple "terminal" could provide services that the consumer wants.

The consumer could relax knowing that the provider will make sure that the service is always available and that all applications are secure and bug free. And the provider would be responsible for software installations and upgrades, as long as there was enough demand for them.