Turtle Beach Unveils First Mass Market PC Appliance At WinHEC

26-Apr-00

Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc. today announced its first mass market PC appliance - the Turtle Beach AudioTron - at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). The device incorporates home networking technology to remotely play digital music stored on a user's personal computer, as well as audio originating from the Internet. For instance, an AudioTron in the living room can play WMA and MP3 files saved on a PC located in another part of the house. AudioTron is expected to ship this fall in the U.S. and Canada for the holiday buying season.""The vision of having smart, networked appliances in everyday homes has become reality with our introduction of AudioTron,"" said Carmine J. Bonanno, President and CEO, Voyetra Turtle Beach. ""We're expecting extremely strong sales, with buyers mirroring the people who have snapped up DVD players and cable modems over the past couple of years. Digital music has exploded into the mainstream, and AudioTron is able to help move it from the computer room to the living room. It's the distribution mechanism for broadband content delivered over residential gateways.""AudioTron consists of four components - the song capture and management software (Voyetra's AudioStation (4.0), an HPNA-compliant phone networking card, the base unit, and a remote control. Since the digital files are transmitted over home phone wires using the HPNA 2.0 standard, and decompressed on the fly by the base unit (up to a CD-like sample quality of 48kHz), users will experience no interference with normal phone calls or DSL Internet connections. An add-on board providing Ethernet and USB connections will be available for use in homes or offices wired with a dedicated network.Users can play existing digital audio files, record songs from CDs that they own, or download supported file types and streaming audio from the Web. Turtle Beach is currently working with a number of industry organizations to define the rights management attributes of AudioTron, as well as with selected music labels to ease the ability of AudioTron owners to audition and purchase songs through the unit. For more information, visit www.AudioTron.net.Voyetra Turtle Beach, one of the world's leading PC audio solutions providers, has worked with more than 150 leading manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. In addition to its OEM and retail sales, Voyetra Turtle Beach offers its entire line of products directly to consumers via its e-commerce Web site (http://www.voyetra-turtle-beach.com) and customer service center (800 233 9377 or 914 966 0600). The company can be contacted via www.turtlebeach.com.

Read More:
http://www.AudioTron.net
http://www.voyetra-turtle-beach.com
http://www.turtlebeach.com