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

ReplayTV?

[Rosonowski]

My question is, though, is, if this comes into being, will it run into the same copyright issues and whatnot that the ReplayTV 4000, with the ability to send video over ethernet is coming under fire for?

Re:And and and and

[DavittJPotter]

The poster didn't say it. Timothy, with his usual self-indulgent preaching, condemned it to vapor.

No interactive DVD?

[DodgyGeezer]

Also at CES is a demo of interactive DVD set top boxes. All this convergence and integration, and this Moxi box doesn't even offer this feature. For now I think I shall keep my money for other things until the market matures... I'll let those people with more money than sense be guinnea pigs for this kind of technology.

52 channels and nothing on

[tcdk]

It may be just this cold getting me down, and I actually already have a home-builds DVR (ati All-in-wonderpro 128 and 40gb hd, software to burn VCD from the captures - results playable on my DVD player), but I'm not going to invest anything in entertainment hardware the next few years.

The thing is, well, I actually record a lot of stuff using this machinery, but the truth is that I rarely watch it - not even when I'm home with a cold. Why, you ask - well, most of it is actually crap. There's so little on tv that I havent already seen at the cinema or brought on DVD a long time ago.

Damn it, this evenings top selection of movies in Denmark for people with the big cable selection is : Twister (Helen Hunt) and Company Business (Gene Hackman). There are other options, but the core of is that these movies has been shown on tv like a bazillion time before and will be shown at least as many times again. Why should I record one of these movies? Will I ever wake up one morning and say to my self: "Wow! I really wish that I could watch Twister with Helen Hunt right now!"?

I dont think so! That will happen maybe sometime in the future where I've lost all sense of value and taste and Twister has gone public domain a long time ago, so I'll just download it directly to my home entertainment system in about 123ms.

There's just not enought quality stuff on TV to justify an expensive digital recording system (compared to the price of a VCR).

Maybe the replay-function would be interesting if I where interested in sports, but I'm not.

Maybe when the total package (Digital Video Recorder, hyper-multichannel, digital widescreen wallmounted TV) becomes payable I'll look into it.

Re:The Ultimate Digital Media Server!

[b_pretender]

Why don't any of these Media Servers collect and organize my digital photographs for me? I'm forced to archive my photographs onto CDs and label the envelops.

Isn't digital photagraphy a form of media? Aren't millions of digital cameras being sold? Why don't people demand a photo-management box? That would be easy compared to a DVD decoder. All that mine requires is PostGresQLa, PHP, and Apache. Probably USB so that the camera can upload to that rather than my PC.

Moxi vs. iMac

[Jeffrey Baker]

I just got back from the Macworld Expo keynote address by Steve Jobs and there could not be more contrast. Apple is putting all of there efforts into software and hardware to let customers make and share digital media. Moxi and Microsoft and the rest are trying to build devices that maximize the consumption of digital media.

Hmm.

Convergence devices... chasing a dream

[ThomasMis]

There are so many groups attempting to build this holy grail of technology. For those not falling off the bleeding edge of techno hype, convergence devices for the most part promise to distribute voice, video, and data to the home consumer through one service. This service will also provide for some type of QOS, such that, your phone conversation doesn't die when little johnny pulls the entire season of jackie chan adventures. Convergence devices are also going to be responsible for having your toaster talk to your PDA, so that from your car, you can order up a nice warm pop tart that will be waiting for you after the evening commute.

An embedded systems start-up (now dead... once "the money burn" caught up to us) I was part of partnered with a networking company that claimed to have solved "the last mile" problem. They even had AT&T lined up as an initial customer. They didn't however, want to engineer anything in the home, thus sub contracted that out to us. We had a line of PowerPC single board PC104 form factor computers we were going to build this device from. This is when I first learned about convergence devices and the mad mad mad chase in the industry to be the first group getting inside the consumers home.

Never had any of these products taken off... and there have been many. However, with that said (this is now relating to an earlier /. post on MS's new device), XBox is in the best position to be a home convergence device. I'm sure that's what MS had in mind all along when they designed the system initially. They just needed a foothold into the living room. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next version of XBox it will act as a home router... that's also a cable box... that has some type of .NET services to recieve data and voice. Goodbye baby bells and local cable... hello MS providing everything through a convergence device.

Am I being realistic... prolly not. But basically that's why every company from Motorola to a bunch of small start-ups are trying to get into the home, so they can be a one stop shop for all your communication needs.

Re:More bass-ackward thinking from geekland.

[SteveM]

There's no need for personal copies of centrally available media.

Unless your ISP goes out of business. Anybody @Home?

Or you're in an airplane at 30,000 feet. No use radio devices permitted, but feel free to use our $5 per minute GTE Airphone!

I'm sure there are other examples. These two are ones I've recently experienced.

Sure instant on, wireless broandband, with redundant servers, at an affordable price (hardware and service)would sure be nice.

You're right, someday there maybe little reason to own personal copies of such thing. But that isn't today. Until then I'll be wanting a personal copy thank you.

Steve M