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Is MOXI Toast?
onosko writes "Moxi Digital, one of the big hits of the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show in January, has bitten the dust, absorbed by one of Paul Allen's companies, Digeo. At CES, Moxi showed a Linux-based PVR and home entertainment server system that used Ethernet or 802.11a to distribute video, audio and JPEGs throughout a house. Last week, Digeo announced that it would not use Microsoft's interactive TV software."
This really looked liked the best of the upcoming PVRs. Bummed to see it
collapse. Here is a somewhat related and really entertaining short bit about Tivo turning 3
I would not think that by assuming a new ownership, they've died and gone away. They just got bought out by a much larger company that will have more resources to make their projects a reality. This is a good thing.
"The TiVo folks did celebrate it, though. We let go. In fact, almost nine months to the day after we shipped Blue Moon 5 babies were born to TiVo employees within 5 days of each other. (True!)"
Hmmmm.... nah.... I couldn't be....
Wait a minute!!!!!!! Dad's B-day - 5th of March. Mine - December 10th - ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHH
S.t.e.v.e.
-- Find the Truth...
Word on NPR this morning was that they were BOTH Vulcan funded companies. Are you sure that this is really a change in ownership, or just more of a consolidation?
No relation to Happy Monkey
For those of you new to the world of TiVo, or who have never heard the story before, tomorrow is a very special day in the world of TiVo. Tomorrow is the 4th Annual Blue Moon Holiday.
Tomorrow is not a blue moon, but 3 years ago, the last day in March was a blue moon. The historians of Silicon Valley will show that TiVo shipped Version 1.0 on March 31st, 1999, during the 2nd full moon of that month, and about a month before any competitor shipped a PVR.
The story goes something like this. We had just come back from a very exciting CES show in January, and our booth had been located yards from ReplayTV. We know our competition. We had looked into their eyes.
Our CEO, Mike, called a company meeting, and we all gathered in the big open common area. He told us he was proud of where we were, but that now was the time to show what we were made of. He told us that the company that shipped first was going to get the leap that would put them on top of this new and exciting category. In the middle of January Mike stated, in a fairly comprehendible Scottish accent, that we were going to ship on March 31st, or we were going to die trying.
By my best calculations, I was the head of Quality Engineering at the time, we were about 4 or 5 months from really being ready to ship. I went back to my desk after that meeting and sunk into my chair. I just stared at the open TiVo in front of me. I couldn't imagine how that thing was going to be ready in just 2 and half months.
You could feel the tension all over the company. You could hear the low murmurs of engineers grumbling to each other that it simply couldn't be done. It wasn't that we didn't agree that we needed to ship first. It was that we had already had a grueling Fall and Winter, and we were already pretty burnt out, and there just wasn't much more give in our lives. At the time I was regularly pulling 60, and often 80 hour work weeks. We all were.
But a good friend, Steve, went back to his cube and noticed something. He had a giant lunar calendar on his cube wall, and he noticed that March 31st was a blue moon.
The next day we had an engineering meeting to figure out the new schedule, and better understand how we were going to bring in the schedule by more than 50%. We played with numbers, lied a bit, and eventually we came up with a very hair-brained plan that given a little magic, a small manipulation of the space-time continuum, and a willingness to forgo sleep for a while, might just work. We needed a rallying cry, which for Engineering teams is often a good codename. Someone suggested Mission impossible, which was too negative, and then I told the team about what Steve had seen on his cube wall. Once in a blue moon, greatness happens, and we decided to codename TiVo 1.0 Blue Moon.
At the end of that meeting one of our heads of engineering showed us the clip of Olivier's St. Crispin's Day Speech, from Henry V. (Yes, we're really that sappy.)
quote:
"But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:*
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
I can't remember all that happened in those next months. Much of it was a sleepy dream. I remember a lot of days on end that coudn't be formed into weeks, because they all ran together. I remember that we also came together as a team. Engineers fixed bugs while everyone else, Marketing and Sales and executives, beat on their TiVos trying to break them.
And we made it. We damn near killed ourselves and each other, but we shipped TiVo on March 31st, 1999. On that Wednesday we went to the plant, adorned our lab coats, and watched the very first TiVos roll off the line. We drank champagne, told stories, and watched like proud parents as the blue boxes came streaming off. We all signed the first few of them. Wouldn't you like to have one of those.
The next day Mike told us how proud he was, how great we were, and that the doors would be locked on Friday. No one was to come to work. It was to be made a national holiday - the day that TiVo changed the way people thought about television forever. He told us it wasn't just our holiday, but that everyone in the world would celebrate it, too. I think Mike may have been tired, too, and maybe a lot of champagne.
The TiVo folks did celebrate it, though. We let go. In fact, almost nine months to the day after we shipped Blue Moon 5 babies were born to TiVo employees within 5 days of each other. (True!) Sacred indeed. Anyway, to this day, we don't work on the last Friday of March each year, as it is known as the Blue Moon Holiday.
So tomorrow, as you tune in to your TiVo to see what joy it has gotten you, remember my band of brothers. Pat your TiVo doll on the head and say, "well done." Post nice things here on the forum, and think twice about calling Customer Care. If you see someone who doesn't know about TiVo, tell them this tale. If you see a TiVo employee give them a hug.
I leave you with my favorite Beetles quote:
quote:
"And in the end,
the love you take
is equal to the love you make."
-The TiVo Minister of Propaganda and Evangelism
Slashdot is disappearing, because BlockStackers sold out to Andover.net!
Slashdot is disappearing, because Andover.net sold out to VA Linux!
Slashdot is disappearing, because VA Linux got out of hardware!
ahem.
MOXI really excited me. Oh well. Now I guess I'll have to cave in and go buy me a Tivo! I can't wait! :)
Dang Adobe Acrobat, here it is !
Sounds like a great opportunity for both companies, not "biting the dust" or whatever TaCO says! It is pretty apparent that Moxi never cared about Linux in and of itself, it was just a cheap means to an ends. We don't want companies like that promoting Leenux anyways!!!
For Immediate Release
D Di ig ge eo o a an nd d M Mo ox xi i M Me er rg ge e
C Co om mb bi in ne ed d c co om mp pa an ny y b be ec co om me es s u un nd di is sp pu ut te ed d l le ea ad de er r i in n d de el li iv ve er ry y o of f
a ad dv va an nc ce ed d m me ed di ia a c ce en nt te er r p pl la at tf fo or rm ms s a an nd d s se er rv vi ic ce es s
KIRKLAND, Wash. and PALO ALTO, Calif., March 29, 2002 -- In a move that will
strengthen and accelerate the development and delivery of advanced media center platforms and
iTV services, Kirkland-based Digeo, Inc. and Palo Alto-based Moxi Digital, Inc. announced
today the signing of a definitive agreement to join forces under the name of Digeo, Inc. Fortified
by additional funding from lead investor Vulcan Inc., the merger will create the industry's clear
leader in the delivery of integrated media center platforms and services for cable and satellite
operators. Through this merger, the two companies will fuse their intellectual capital, market
traction, proprietary technologies and respective product strengths. The new Digeo will pursue
its vision of simultaneously enhancing and simplifying the consumer home entertainment
experience by leveraging its strong partnerships with leading companies such as Motorola, Inc.
(NYSE: MOT) and Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR).
The new company will be under the visionary leadership of Paul G. Allen in the role of Digeo's
chairman of the board, as well as the guidance of board members Jim Billmaier, CEO of Digeo;
Carl Vogel, CEO of Charter Communications; William Savoy, president of Vulcan; Edward
Harris, senior investment analyst of Vulcan; and Kevin Fong, general partner of Mayfield.
The new company's leadership team will be a mix of Digeo and Moxi(TM) senior management.
Digeo CEO Jim Billmaier will become CEO of the new company. Moxi CEO Rita Brogley will
become EVP of business development and marketing. Digeo President of Advanced Systems
Larry Weber will continue in his role. Digeo SVP Bert Kolde will assume the role of COO.
Moxi VP of Engineering Toby Farrand will become CTO.
"This merger will allow us to deliver a family of media center platforms more rapidly," said Paul
Allen. "Besides having the power of a PC, they are incredibly easy-to-use and can also run many
exciting new applications that range from personal video recording to digital photo sharing to
wireless home networking. Their introduction will define a new benchmark for the next
generation of set-top boxes."
"Digeo and Moxi have been working along parallel paths to implement very similar visions," said
Digeo CEO Jim Billmaier. "Integration of the two companies will be swift, our efforts will be
amplified, and we'll deliver an even better media center platform to market sooner. We believe
these new platforms will be very attractive to cable and satellite companies looking for new
revenue opportunities."
"My goal for establishing a world-class technology company that would revolutionize home
entertainment has been realized by Moxi joining forces with Digeo and Paul Allen," said Steve
Perlman, founder and vice chairman of Moxi.
TiVo and Real have announced a partnership similar to the one that Moxi has (had). You'll see that on TiVo in the future, too!
......
It doesn't look so bad, unless they're buying it just to hide it into a drawer.
It seems that Moxi is not dead, just been bought, and their technology IS gonna hit the shelves.
And Digeo is a Paul Allen (MSFT) owned company.... which won't use Micro$oft's Interactive TV software... sounds interesting!
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
One other thing I find of interest are that while both the companies are heavily funded by Microsofts Paul Allen, both are using Linux as the base OS for their products.
I'd be surprised if Moxi is dead. Their not planning to lay anyone off...
See the headline and think Apple was replacing the next version of Mac OS with CD burning software?
Say hello to zMac.
(which is really kind of hard to get to; they hide it behind some Javascript'ed popup):
http://www.moxi.com/articles/press_Merge.htm
"The new company's leadership team will be a mix of Digeo and MoxiTM senior management.... Moxi CEO Rita Brogley will become EVP of business development and marketing.... Moxi VP of Engineering Toby Farrand will become CTO.... The new company will maintain dual headquarters in Kirkland and Palo Alto."
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Just an aside, the term "blue moon" has come to refer to the second full moon in a solar month. But that's a modern distortion of its real meaning. More accurately, a blue moon is the fourth full moon in a season. Thus March 31 couldn't be a blue moon because it was only the second week of the spring season. A full moon on March 19 would probably be "blue"! (Yes, there are web sites that discuss this in detail but I can't remember them and am too lazy to google 'em.)
....
Philosophically, does common misusage of a word or term create a new "correct" usage? Some of us old sticklers don't like it that way but we recognize that "it" happens.
Musically, bom diddy bom di bang a dang dang a bing a dah bing
ReplayTV has wireless distribution via 802.11b? Moxi demoed that at CES. ReplayTV already has the ability to view still images and play MP3s and DVDs? Moxi demoed those features at CES.
Yes, Moxi was showing a technology, not a product. And yes, their overblown claims about partnerships with cable and satellite companies look like wishful thinking more than actual business deals. Yes, at this point they are vapor. And yes, we all owe a debt of gratitude to ReplayTV and TiVo for bringing the PVR to the masses (albeit more slowly than they or we the converted would like). But let's at least acknowledge that they demoed features that aren't currently available on any shipping PVR.
It also didn't seem to want to let you go any furthur that embedding simple hyperlinks and graphics into the TV signal (since most of the clients didn't support anything other than that I suppose.) Since you might get about 2400 baud worth of bandwidth through the TV signal if you're lucky (due to TV stations using most of the VBI lines for test signals, etc), you couldn't push a lot of content down either. Since most people don't watch a TV station for more than 5-10 minutes most of the time, it probably wouldn't work to try to shove several megabytes down to the viewers since they wouldn't stick around long enough to get it all.
I realize that this may be a bit off-topic, but does anyone know when regular dual-tuner TiVos may come along? Of course, I'm aware that dual tuner DirecTiVos already exist, but I'd rather not have to sign up for DirecTV just to get a dual-tuner TiVo :-/.
And for those who are about to ask "Well, why not just get DirecTV for the DirecTiVo?", I live in a townhome with a roommate. And, we'd need two additional receivers (for our respective tv cards in our rooms) in addition to the DirecTiVO in the living room, and that would make for a whole lot of coax cabling running through the apartment and up/down the stairs (since I don't want to drill holes, as it is an apartment).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
ReplayTV doesn't have a built-in cable box.
Having the cable box integrated with the PVR is a HUGE advantage because it lets you record more than one digital cable program.
Without some communication between the cable box and the PVR you can't change to the right channel at the right time.
"Scientists prove we were never here."
-- Devo
Being acquired by and funded by a billionaire is hardly a bad event for the company in question. Who approves such stupidly misleading headlines?
Scottish weather being what it is ...
I'm surprised that given all the interest from the Open Source community that a OSS based PVR isn't being worked on? I looked on SourceForge and found OpenPVR, but it doesn't look to be moving (in any direction)..
Well it uses IP and ethernet, so if you blow $100~$200 on another 802.11 access point, yeah, sure. Er, to the extent it has an distribution at all (as I understand it you have to "send" the show from one unit, and accept it on the other, there isn't an ability to "pretend all the stuff on that Replay over there is all yours" -- which I think the MOXI does have). Of corse the MOXI still doesn't have what I want. You should be able to combine multiple units to transparently get multiple tuners (otherwise if you own say two TiVos you have the schedule things on them yourself TiVo#2 doesn't know that it found a show TiVo#1 recorded two days ago so it should record this less important show that neither TiVo got yet...which is all stuff a single TiVo would do already).
The other thing that is a shame is MOXI isn't really talking about the core PVR features. How good is it at tracking shows? How good is it at resolving conflicts the way you want? How good is it at letting you know what it will do over the next few days, or why it won't get a show you want? Those are all things TiVo does stunningly well, which is why I prefer it to the Reply 4000 even though the 4000 can do way cooler things with the shows if it manages to record them. Likewise, I don't care that the MOXI can wirelessly send shows to my upstairs TV (even if I had one) if it can't actually record what I want! I'm not saying the MOXI will be bad at it, just that them not talking about that kind of feature makes me a little hesitant about the thing.
After all, they were bought by another company, OSDN.
Yeah...
"And like that
See this NEWS.COM story. Looks like both companies are just fine, and it seems to make a considerable amount of sense.
How many episodes would fit on a Tivo?
--- What?
TiVo and Real have announced a partnership similar to the one that Moxi has (had). You'll see that on TiVo in the future, too!
Unless he's joking, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. No such deal between Real and TiVo exists.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
Actually, I'm sorry, I screwed up. There IS a Real/TiVo deal, with the Series2, I was reading too quickly and for some reason read Replay.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
BusinessWeek published an article on Moxi's death spiral about a month ago. They found typical dot-bomb out-of-control expenses, and slimy things like renting expensive office space from insiders. Worse, someone at Moxi impersonated a BW reporter in a witch hunt to try to root out who was talking to the press.
Good riddance.
Nine months is far from absolute. One of my best friends was born a touch more than three months early --- but his twin didn't make it
hawk
2.One who opposes technical or technological change.
;)
Language is not technology. Being a Luddite is not fear of all sorts of change. Heck, even the definition above (from dictionary.com) shows an original meaning and one from latter day usage.
Perhaps it's not technological, but it sure is technical.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
They haven't had a gig together in ages. They were truly one of the coolest bands ever.
Reality has a liberal bias