MSNTV

Offer your feedback and comments at Rogi's Kitchen Table.

If ONLY... we webbies are so familiar with this phrase, it might as well be the brand name of MSNTV!

Perlman's a genius. Or, at least, he was a real breath of fresh air, when he came up with WebTV.

But If ONLY this new appliance had come out before everybody else was already on the same track!

Anyway, Interactive TV isn't dead, just languishing, and only temporarily.

Phone companies are scrambling. Under pressure from competition from cell phones and computer telephoning, phone companies are heaving under the weight of their own infrastructures. Those infrastructures depended on phone companies' maintaining control of almost 100% of the phone customer base. Less customers than that, and the phone companies bleed money.

So, don't dispair; Interactive Television is the Next Thing the phone companies are investigating.

In the mean time, here's Perlman's latest fiddlings:


Steve Perlman & MOXI in the news again

Group: news:alt.discuss.webtv.operations
Date: Fri, Dec 12, 2003, 7:57pm (MST+1)
From: (The Editor)

This COPIED article below can be found on the Internet here
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(Editor's note: "There's a couple of great pictures of the Moxi on the website above")
— Here Come the HDTV Recorders! —

***Moxi Finally Ready***
When it launched two years ago at CES, Moxi was a revolutionary concept. But now, after a change of ownership, it's just another HDTV DVR. The finalized Moxi-based box from Motorola, called "Broadband Media Center" (BMC9012), includes two HDTV tuners. It can simultaneously record two shows to its 80 gigabyte hard drive, which stores around 9 hours of HDTV content.

The Moxi is built on an x86 platform, runs Linux, and, in addition to playing back HDTV and regular TV, will also support digital music and photos – although Motorola was not demonstrating those capabilities. Oddly enough for such a brawny box (about twice the size of Scientific Atlanta's 8300), it includes no PC connectivity. A DOCSIS cable modem is included, which allows it to provide IP service to other computers in the house via the built-in Ethernet port.

When WebTV founder Steve Pearlman rolled Moxi out, he made a big deal about its ability to support satellite clients over 802.11a. These lightweight clients were supposed to extend the Moxi out to two other rooms. Sadly, Motorola's initial Moxi implementation does not include support for satellite clients. Scientific Atlanta, on the other hand, seems to have provided an elegant solution.
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