A new digital home entertainment platform has been launched that manages and stores TV, video, music and pictures in a small, easy-to-use unit, aimed at the "totally connected" living room.
Designed by VIA Technologies, the Interact-TV Telly Home Entertainment Server - an entertainment hub the size of a stereo component - was officially launched at Forum 2002, a conference for the home consumer market, held this month in San Francisco.
According to VIA, Telly functions as a home entertainment server to store and catalogue thousands of CDs and MP3s, digital photos and as much as 60 hours of personal videos and time-shifted TV programming selected from a personal programme guide.
It can also check e-mail, weather, stocks, local theatre listings and other information over the Web and can be controlled by a simple remote or any Web-connected computer.
"Telly is a great example of utilising the small, silent-running, highly-integrated components to achieve total connectivity in the home," says Richard Brown, director of marketing at VIA Technologies.
"VIA and Interact-TV share a common direction of the home digital media device as the next big thing in personal computing."
He says the use of standard hardware affords Interact-TV partners and end-users the flexibility of expanding Telly with new applications for the connected home and peripherals to keep pace in the fast-moving home entertainment market.
A recent study by Parks Associates found that more than 50% of American Internet households are interested in networking digital entertainment content among PCs, TVs, stereos and DVD players, and more than 40% have already downloaded MP3 files onto their home computers.
The study concluded that broadband access is likely to sell precisely because it offers greater convenience for consumers.
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