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To: BillyG who wrote (35718)	9/4/1998 4:05:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

MOT's Blackbird, will it fly???????????????????????????????????? eet.com Posted: 1:00 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98 Motorola's Blackbird platform prepares to take wing By Junko Yoshida AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector will use the IBC '98 broadcasters conference late next week to detail a flexible consumer-electronics platform, dubbed Blackbird, on which many of its hopes are riding. The company expects Blackbird to fly into interactive game machines and DVD players, digital terrestrial TV sets and set-top boxes. But the launch comes as the semiconductor division, under continued economic pressure, said it will layoff workers as part of an overhaul that includes plans to dismantle its Consumer Systems Group. Although Motorola declined to describe Blackbird in advance of its planned Sept. 12 launch, sources who have been closely working with Motorola on the project said the company is betting big on the success of what they said will be a highly flexible platform. "Considering some industry forecasts showing an Internet set-top and a game platform as an ideal combination, this [Blackbird] strategy does make sense," said Abhishek Gami, an analyst at William Blair & Co. (Chicago), an investment-banking firm. At the heart of Blackbird is the Project X media processor from startup VM Labs. Blackbird uses it to decode digital audio and video streams, to process graphics and as a main processor in configurations for standalone DVD or game players. Versions of Motorola's PowerPC will be used in some high-end configurations. Blackbird can also accommodate a variety of network interface modules (NIMs), which could support terrestrial, cable, satellite or digital subscriber line connections. "Motorola has designed very powerful network capabilities into this NIM," one industry source said, The system will run the latest release of the David real-time operating system from Microware Systems Corp. (Des Moines, Iowa) - version 2.2, which supports Java. It uses Project X's microkernel, along with its own graphics APIs and development tools, to run Project X-enabled games or other interactive applications. The hardware and network flexibility of Blackbird lets consumer OEMs build a variety of products around it, potentially including digital terrestrial TV sets, cable and satellite set-tops, Web-browsing TV set-tops, DVD players and game machines. By using the Project X media processor across virtually all Blackbird configurations, Motorola is paving a route to a unified base of games and interactive applications for the system. Applications can be delivered via a network or digital video disk. Motorola has already forged several deals with key software and service providers. Spyglass Inc. (Naperville, Ill.) recently won a multimillion-dollar contract to provide Web-browsing client and sever technologies and consulting services to Motorola for the Blackbird platform. UniView Technologies Corp., a Dallas-based developer of hardware and network technologies for set-top applications, has agreed to port its Xpressway Internet service to the Blackbird environment, and will market the resulting integrated system to companies seeking end-to-end communication and entertainment solutions. The Blackbird platform stems from the mid-'90s, when Motorola, Microware and a forerunner of VM Labs jointly bid on a request for proposals (RFP) issued by Tele-TV. That ambitious interactive TV joint venture - now defunct - comprised Bell Atlantic, Nynex and Pacific Telesis. Industry sources close to Motorola said the whole NIM concept for the Blackbird platform came from the Tele-TV RFP. While telco video-on-demand plans started to go south in late 1996, Motorola never abandoned its ambition to become a premier supplier of system solutions to consumer OEMs.