amiga-news.de - Genesi: Further details on STB-strategy

07.Mar.2003
Martin Heine (ANF) Genesi: Further details on STB-strategy
In two comments of Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco (Genesi) on Amiga.org you can find further details on their Set-Top-Box-Strategy. It follows an extract from these comments:

[After reflecting about the success of BSkyB in Great Britain:] "Now, do something inexpensive with a 403 PPC and a DTV tuner with MorphOS (in this case) and you could have something quite special that can handle anything as well as everything retailing for 400-500 Euros at less that 25% of the cost. Sounds like something another BSkyB-like company might take a risk with? Yes, you bet!"

"Everything we learned before collectively (VisCorp, PhaseV, bplan, Thendic, etc.) is coming to play today in Genesi for a very large company that wants to do *exactly* that."

"Speaking of which there is a good article about Murdoch here. [...] BTW, This article should also be read by others who may be underestimating this DTV STB market at the price point we are delivering hardware to it (contrast that for example with the super STB from Pace at 350 £!)."

"Our customer [...] has a pricing strategy that tells us they understand the market and their customers."

"As far as we can tell, the BSkyB boxes in the UK are completely non-standard. They use WAP which may sound off the wall given it's designed for mobile phones but being designed for low end systems with low bandwidth makes it perfect for STBs. There's a lot of technology available now that supports WAP development. We actually will have a WAP stack/Browser ready."

"Remember, we will not integrate the uplink initially to reduce cost (we will have a WAP portal for people to use mobile phones as an unlink though and a handy little connector to support that process). We have a phased modular strategy that adds functionality akin to the base station of a radio/remote phone designed normally for home use. The receiver chip for the radio signal will have been already introduced in the STB (as is found in the home handset associated with the base station that anchors the system in the home with power and telephone line connection -- incidentally overcoming the no telephone connection near the TV problem)."

"On the smart card side, we will use them to unscramble parts of the signal already there. This can be done on a subscriber or pre-paid basis (for anonymity or one game at a time). The signal itself can *also* be data driven to individually addressable STBs. Here smart cards can be further used as recording devices. In our case viewing data can be exchanged for movie credits... Of course, this flexibility can be promotion/advertising oriented too..." (ps) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 07. Mar. 2003, 10:05] [Comments: 0]
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