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Interact-TV Debuts Small-Footprint Home Entertainment Server 

By Tracy Sweadlow
(Jan. 26, 2004) At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Westminster, Colorado-based home entertainment systems provider, Interact-TV, debuted its small-footprint (15" wide, 4.5" tall, and 11.5" deep) Telly MC800 Home Entertainment Server. The new product, whose MSRP is $749, incorporates a DVR, supports CD playback, ripping and burning (end-users can manage and retrieve their music via a "jukebox" feature), as well as DVD playback, and digital photo slideshows; and can be used to retrieve information and files from the Internet. It includes a subscription-free, 7-day EPG (which Interact-TV developed in-house, and which accesses program-listings data from Decisionmark via a broadband connection to a server located at Interact- TV's headquarters) and a "multimedia library" interface that allows viewers to access their stored music, photos, recorded video and other multimedia files. It also features various customization options, including the ability to add more storage, more memory and optical drives: Interact- TV says that its EOS Linux-based Media Platform allows any additional hard drives a user might add to the box to function as one. Another notable feature of the new box is that its remote control includes a trackball for easy navigation.

At CES, [itvt] asked Interact-TV's CEO, Ken Fuhrman, and its VP of marketing and business development, Tom Goldberg, whether the company has any distribution deals in place for the new box: "Currently, we sell this box and its customization options retail through our Web site to early adopters and enthusiasts who are capable enough to hook it up into a home network," Fuhrman said. Although the company has pitched the product to cable operators, "they are not receptive to our approach at this point in time," Goldberg added. Nevertheless, he said, "the CableCARD initiative that is coming out [basically separates conditional access systems from set-top boxes and digital televisions, with the goal of creating a retail DTV equipment market, that does not have to take into account the different conditional access technologies employed by different cable operators] will give manufacturers like Interact-TV the opportunity to get a unit like this into cable environments. So we're very interested in interoperability initiatives like POD and OCAP." The company is also currently seeking to license its technology to large consumer-electronics manufacturers, Goldberg added.