The Moxi Platform

Filed in archive IPTV on April 23, 2005

You might have heard about the Moxi Media Centers in connection with digital television. This Linux-based technology allows consumers to store, access and manage a variety of entertainment content -- including digitally recorded TV programming, music, photos, games, and VOD titles through a single, unified menu. The platform is notable for its interface, which recently won an Emmy award, and which replaces the standard "spreadsheet" EPG interface with a so-called "cross-hairs" configuration consisting of two intersecting animated lines at right angles to each other.

Paul Allen's products and services company, Digeo, licenses Moxi to other companies. Digeo claims that up to 5,000 Moxi Media Centers are now shipping each week. I am surprised at how low that number is given that another of Paul Allen's companies is Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable company.

Anyways, Digeo had a few announcements at the NCTA show. I note that most of these announcements are about intentions or products that do not yet exist. I will leave it to you to determine their newsworthiness.

It said that Samsung and Digeo intend to enter into a deal to produce the next generation Moxi Media Center product family, the Moxi II, and that MSO's, Charter Communications and Adelphia, have agreed in principal to purchase the Samsung-built box,

It unveiled a new Moxi feature, dubbed "Moxi PC Link," which allows end-users to stream music and share photos from multiple PC's to TV sets throughout the home, using their existing wired or wireless home networks. The new feature is scheduled to debut in late 2005.

It unveiled a low-cost set-top box, dubbed the "Moxi Mini," which is slated for release next year.

It revealed that Comcast is planning a commercial trial deployment of Motorola's Moxi-based set-top, the Motorola Broadband Media Center with Moxi in its Huntsville, Alabama system.

It might be interesting if any Moxi-enabled consumers out there left some messages on this blog telling the rest of us what they think of the platform.

Another blogger whom I respect, Torsten Jacobi, has written about another platform by Akimbo. You might want to check that out, too.