Got these news just recently:
Tuesday July 9 5:44 PM EDT
Sony, Philips to embrace WebTV Internet technology
By Therese Poletti
NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuter) - WebTV Networks Inc, a private, start-up company, will unveil Wednesday a television set-top box technology to access the Internet. It will also
announce its first major consumer electronics partners, Sony and Philips Electronics.
WebTV, which includes Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen among its investors, will announce that Sony Corp 6758.T and Philips Consumer Electronics Co PHG.AS plan to use
WebTV's technology and online service for television this fall.
"It hooks up to your phone line, you plug it in and you are surfing the net," said Steve Perlman, president of WebTV.
WebTV has developed a set of technologies and guidelines for manufacturers to create a set-top box that will let consumers user their TVs to browse the Internet.
The devices can be hooked up to any regular television and a telephone line. The new set-top boxes released in the fall by Sony and Philips can easily plug into a standard TV
and quickly plug into the WebTV Network Service, its Internet access service.
The service will be priced to compete with the online services and Internet access providers, with a device based on the WebTV reference design built into the TV.
The system uses a microprocessor developed by the MIPS Computer Systems unit of Silicon Graphics Inc .
A modem running at a speed of 33.6 bits per second is also part of the set-top box design. WebTV said that it cannot yet disclose the cost of the device because of the
competition between Sony and Philips.
"We view $500 as much too expensive as a mass market product and Web TV is viewed as a mass market product," Perlman said, adding that the system is very easy to use.
WebTV's online service has a custom browser which presents content from the World Wide Web in a form that fits the TV and includes an interface that does not assume any
prior knowledge of the Internet or the World Wide Web.
With this launch, WebTV Networks, based in Palo Alto, Calif., joins a flurry of other consumer electronics companies, such as Zenith Electronics Corp , that are trying to turn the
television into an Internet access device, or a PC/TV.
But analysts said among the many products companies are launching in this nascent area, WebTV's is among the better ones.
"They have the best approach I have seen to putting the Web over a TV," said Adam Schoenfeld, a Jupiter Communications analyst. "They have an excellent
software/hardware fix to the screen resolution problem. They have overcome one basic hurdle in that the Web does not look terrible over their service."
Does anybody know what technology these guys are using?
Serguei |
