MS enables TV access to PCs

Microsoft has announced products that will enable home TVs to access video, music and images stored on personal computers.

Reuters reports that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates demonstrated his plan for "seamless computing" at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with products that synchronise with Microsoft software.

The new software package, Media Center Extender, will provide up to five televisions remote access to PCs running the Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Two US satellite radio companies, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio, are now competing for viewers with systems that transmit video to cars using the same infrastructure as their radio networks.

An Associated Press report says Sirius hopes to offer three or four video channels within 18 months and is looking at tiered plans that will also offer stock quotes, traffic information and sports scores. For safety reasons, Sirius plans to put full-motion video on screens visible only from back seats.

XM is showing music videos, cartoons and other video on its system, but says it doesn`t believe a video system is a viable business yet.

Motorola is licensing wireless technology from the Wheels of Zeus company led by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to develop devices and services to monitor the locations of people, pets or possessions.

Although devices to track the location of children, pets and Alzheimer`s patients already exist, Wozniak told Associated Press his company is trying to make new inroads and bring existing products down to everyday prices.

The "wOZnet" wireless platform uses a tag that picks up signals from global positioning satellites, then transmits that information to receiving devices using a low-power radio signal within the spectrum used by many cordless phones.

SuSE Linux, a seller of the open source operating system, has begun a partnership with IBM to bundle its software with Big Blue products geared for hi-tech cash registers.

ZDNET says the companies hope the deal will help Linux move into the point-of-sale (POS) terminal market, where IBM already has a strong position. The report says the move is the latest example of the growth of Linux into "embedded" computing systems such as video recorders or radar systems that have chips and operating systems.

The combined product will include a version of SuSE`s Linux for POS terminals, IBM`s SurePOS terminals, as well as back-end servers and software to which the terminals connect over a network.