New Orleans — Digeo, the Kirkland, Wash.-based developer of interactive set-top box hardware and software for multichannel television providers, unveiled at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) show a range of expanded capabilities for its Moxi Media Center products, including what the company calls “the lowest-cost multi-room solution for cable television.”
Digeo introduced an expansion to its Moxi Media Center products providing digital video recording (DVR); video-on-demand (VOD); pay-per-view (PPV); and playback of DVDs, various digital music files and digital photos on a second TV in the home.
Additionally, it announced an add-on device called Moxi Mate that will sell for $79 and will use existing coaxial cable in the home to relay DVR and digital entertainment services to up to four TVs in a home.
Digeo said it was able to cut cost on the device by 40 percent by using a new X-Stream chip for Moxi Media Centers. The company plans to sell the chip to other set-top box and consumer electronics makers.
The chip combines the functionality of more than two dozen components and will expand the capacity of hard drives that can be used by the Digeo Media Centers, as well as allowing the DVR to serve up to four TVs.
Digeo also unveiled the Moxi Plus — a plug-and-play device for the Moxi Media Center. The add-on box combines additional hard drive capacity to accommodate high-definition TV recordings, DVD/CD playback to enhance movie watching and music listening, and a multi-format memory card reader for digital cameras to simplify viewing photos on TVs.
In other announcements, Digeo said it is working on a Scientific-Atlanta “PowerKey” version of its set-top box that will feature the ability to run software from the OpenCable Applications Platform.
As a result, Charter Communications ordered 70,000 units of Digeo’s Moxi Media Center for Scientific-Atlanta’s PowerKey platform. Digeo expects to fill the order in the fall.
About a week earlier, Comcast announced it had ordered 40,000 Motorola Broadband Media Centers (BMC) versions of the Moxi Media Center.
Charter initially deployed Moxi-powered BMC in its Rochester, Minn. market in April, and intends to begin rolling out the Moxi service to customers using Scientific-Atlanta’s PowerKey platform starting in the fall.
