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Hybrid Web System Developed Start-up makes CD-ROMs heart of interactive TV By Peter Clarke, EE Times Munich, Germany -- Just when it seemed that the fight for consumers' eyeballs was between multimedia PCs and Internet browsers for TVs, a startup here, Edgar Online GmbH, is planning to join the Internet TV revolution with a different approach: a hybrid CD-ROM/Internet device aimed at bringing multimedia to a home TV. The company has developed an X86-based set-top box reference design, its own operating system and "Web fetching" software, and persuaded Acer to take a chance on making the Edgar Multi-online box for the German market. "We won't replicate what WebTV or Diba has done, nor are we trying to replace the experience of surfing the Internet from a PC," said Patrick Thomas, chief executive and founder of Edgar Online. Although Thomas declines to criticize WebTV Networks Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) and others, his fundamental premise shoots at the heart of the Internet TV business model. "Multimedia doesn't exist over conventional telephone wiring. I'm not talking about trials with this or that specialized technology, but over available phone lines the bandwidth just isn't there," said Thomas. "The people we are aiming at are primarily in homes without PCs. They want video, they want sound and animation. They want multimedia but it can't be delivered over telephone lines," he said. As a result, the Edgar Multi-Online box, which is due to be shipped through German retail outlets later this year, is based on a CD-ROM drive. It uses a TV for display but will not operate without a CD-ROM to provide the basic information and an information structure. "Think of it as a cross between a Sony Playstation and a WebTV," said Thomas "You always use a CD-ROM with our box, but you are able to go online to fetch time-sensitive information." Thomas gave the example of a city guide on CD-ROM that lists theaters, movies, restaurants and so on. The bulk of the information--including maps, animation and video sequences--is available off the CD but to find out what films are showing on a particular night, the box would be able to go online and grab data from a Web site. The box could also be used to play video-CD films or a PC game shipped on CD-ROM and played through the television. The Edgar Multi-Online Box is a reference design based on either an AMD K5 processor or a Cyrix MediaGX. It features a 33.6-kbit/second modem, a CD-ROM player, an RF output to a coaxial TV input, 12 Mbytes of DRAM and 640 kbytes of flash memory. Because Edgar grabs textual data rather than downloading Web pages, Thomas said that even a 14.4-kbit/s modem speed operates acceptably. There is also a smart card reader to allow viewers to use such cards for subscription services and verification. Although standards do not yet exist, Thomas expects that goods and services will be bought securely over the Internet using the box and money could potentially be downloaded to smart cards in the form of electronic purses. Further details can be found at www.edgar-online.de. (Next article.)
[This article comes from EE Times in a joint cooperative effort with the Motley Fool. For more articles like it, please look at Fool's Gold every weekend or simply go to the Fool's Gold Mine and page through our back issues, which all have clever and cool EE Times articles in them.]
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