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Syabas Unveils Popbox For Retail

Las Vegas

– Set-top box hardware and software producer Syabas
will use the pre-International CES showcase ‘CES Unveiled’ Tuesday to
demonstrate its $129 Popbox open platform set-top box that streams music,
movies, photos, games, social-media updates and more to HDTVs.

Popbox,

which will be the
company’s first retail distributed product when it ships in March, supports
most audio and video file types and recognizes content from the Internet, a
personal computer and a USB-attached storage device such as a Flip Video HD
camcorder or an external hard drive, the company said.

Popbox also features a new, easy-to-navigate user interface (UI)
that was designed by Dewey Reid, who won an Emmy award in 2004 for his work on
the Moxi Media Center.

The UI enables users to browse content from a wide variety of
Internet-based content channels, as well as a home-networked media library with
full metadata-based navigation. Metadata partners include IMDB for movies.

The Popbox was said to have been designed to handle a wide range
of media file types, which allows media companies to rapidly develop and deploy
a wide range of interactive high-definition applications and content.

Those applications and content may then be given away or sold on
the Popapps Portal, the company said.

Developers can sign up for the program at

www.popbox.com

.

Syabas also said that it has added a new content and application
partners including: Netflix, Twitter, FunSpot (interactive videogames),
Crunchyroll (Japanese anime and Asian entertainment site), and Shoutcast
(32,000 professional and community programmed radio stations).

“I strongly believe that this year over-the-top set-top boxes
will go from the niche enthusiast to the mainstream consumer,” said Alex
Limberis, COO of Syabas. “Popbox is perfectly positioned to deliver everything
from movies to photos, to music to games to Tweets in an inexpensive,
easy-to-use platform that will drive this market forward in 2010.”

Syabas has been developing software for connected entertainment
devices for companies including HP, Netgear, I-O DATA, Pinnacle Systems and
Viewsonic since 2001.

In 2007, the company began shipping Popcorn Hour, its first
over-the-top set-top box.

Popbox is expected to be available in the United States
in March and will be the company’s first product available through the retail
channel.

System specifications include the following:

Video outputs: HDMI (1080p/720p/480p), component video (Y/Pb/Pr)

Audio outputs: stereo analog audio, S/PDIF optical

Content services: Netflix 2.0, Photobucket, Shoutcast Revision3

Developer services: Flash Lite 3.1 support, PopBox SDK, Application
Store (Popapp Center)

Video file containers: MPEG-1/2/4 elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V); MPEG-1/2
PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB); MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS); AVI,
ASF, WMV Matroska (MKV); MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4

Video codecs: XVID SD/HD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2

MP@HL

, MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5,
720p, 1-point GMC MPEG-4.10 (H.264), BP@L3, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], WMV9,

MP@HL

,
SMPTE 421M (VC-1),

MP@HL

, AP@L3.

Audio file containers: AAC, M4A, MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA) WAV,
WMA, FLAC, OGG

Audio codecs: Dolby Digital, DTS, WMA, WMA Pro, MPEG-1 Layer 1,
2, 3, MPEG-4 AAC-LC, MPEG-4 HE-AAC, MPEG-4 BSAC, LPCM, FLAC, OGG Vorbis

Photo formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF

DRM: Cardea DRM (WMDRM-ND), Janus DRM (WMDRM-PD)

Content security: HDCP 1.2, CGMS-A

Remote control: IR remote control.

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