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Viodi View Newsletter - January 19th 2004 Issue

Indie Telco Local Content Workshop Advertisement

My Random Walk Through CES

By Ken Pyle, Viodi, LLC

One of the things that may allow SBC to provide different business models are unique consumer premise equipment, such as what was announced from 2Wire. I saw a mock-up of the 2Wire box at the booth of the company that designed the housing. This box has just about all the inputs and outputs imaginable:

• Satellite inputs
• Off-air and cable inputs
• Video outputs (composite, svideo, component, HDMI – High Definition Multimedia Interface) output
• A TV RF output (ch 21-69) for driving a second television
• A DVD Player/Recorder
• USB and Ethernet ports

It really is more of a media center, than traditional set-top box.

Another box that could be of interest to independent telcos is the net-box from Axentra. This all-in-one box could be either be viewed as a competitor or a value-add service for SOHO applications. Starting at $499, this box includes a web server (somehow works even with dynamic IP addresses), a back-up server and an integrated access point with email, address book and calendar server applications. It won a 2005 CES Innovations Award.

Regarding downloading, a car emblazoned with Comcast’s logo caught my eye in the Delphi car audio booth. Comcast and Delphi announced an exclusive relationship whereby over the next six to eighteen months, they are going to attempt to productize downloading movies to media players in the car. The concept seems to be a movie would be downloaded via Comcast’s DOCSIS system through an access point in the home directly to the personal media center in the car.

The goal is to be able to download a full length movie in four to ten minutes. It appears that a customer would be able to provision the download of content in multiple ways. In their demonstration, they showed a “car” icon on the television. The customer would interact with the set-top box to provision the movie that would be delivered over the DOCSIS system. Interesting.

On the flip side of the Comcast/Delphi view of the world, Orb Networks showed a subscription based service that allows one to stream any of their media on their home PC Network to virtually any web enabled device. Something like this will probably be the wave of the future; it just depends on when the future is.

Judging by the number of suppliers at CES, VoIP is a technology/service whose future is now. There were too many suppliers for me to track. What impressed me most was a relatively simple product I saw from Olympus. In the next few months, they are going to be offering a variation on their standard cordless telephone that will serve as a terminal adaptor for VoIP. It has both a line for the regular Public Switch Network line, as well as a line for an Ethernet cable. At $99, it will be very competitive and I can imagine it being packaged with various VoIP services.

Finally, the favorite thing I saw and experienced at CES was the KILOWATT from Powergrid Fitness. This device promises to help you “build muscle strength and get in shape while playing video games.” This device connects to all the popular video game consoles as well Apple and Windows PCs. It physically reminded me of the vibrating exercise belt that my Aunt Loulie kept in her junk room. With this device, one just stands up and pushes a handle. The harder the handle is pushed, the faster your car goes. I tried it for about 15 seconds and, I am embarrassed to say, I did feel a bit of a workout in my stomach area. Of course, this may be a testament to how out of shape I am.

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