SA Plans 'Connected Life' Demos At CES

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 1/8/2007

LAS VEGAS — Cable equipment manufacturing giant Scientific Atlanta (North Hall, upper level suite 227), a Cisco company, will use International CES to offer a number of interactive television concept demos that are part of its "Connected Life" initiative.

SA said the demonstration will show "the power of the Human Network, through the sharing and creation of personal experiences, using Web 2.0, blogging, and unique user-created content."

"By binding the triple play offering —data (computer), video (set-top boxes), cell (camera phone) — together, service providers can offer consumers new services that allow them to browse photos on Flickr on their TV," the company said. "With many TVs now capable of staying on all the time with technology such as LCD, this application will allow consumers to set up screensaver-type slideshows on their TV when it's not in use."

Flickr for iTV is a new Interactive Television 2.0 application that delivers a TV-based interface to the popular Flickr online photo service. The interface is advertising sponsored, allowing users to use the service for free.

Zodiac Interactive has developed a comprehensive set-top software platform enabling the interactive television applications, including Flickr for iTV, one of the most requested services. It will let users view photos on TV screens from the Flickr service, including full screen slideshows, and navigate to a view related photos, using tags.

In addition, service providers can offer a converged access offering between a cell phone, PC, and set-top box client on a shared network within the home for additional photo sharing and viewing, SA said.

Other Connected Life concept demos will include sharing videos from a set-top box with a wireless PSP gaming device, and sharing video from the set-top box with a laptop PC.

In addition, SA said it plans to demonstrate its family of DVR products, including high-definition DVR, multiroom DVR and a DVR with a built-in DVD burner/recorder.

A direct-to-disc concept will also be demonstrated to show how consumers may soon be able to burn movies onto a DVD directly from their TVs using a video-on-demand distribution model offered by cable providers.