NUONÆ Technology Powers New Broadband Services Via Motorola Streamaster 5000 Advanced Set-Top Box

NUONÆ Delivers Multimedia Entertainment Capabilities In Set-Tops Deployed By Blockbuster Entertainment, Enron Broadband Services, Aliant Telecom And TransACT Communications

9-Jan-01

VM Labs' NUONÆ technology is the multimedia power behind Motorola's Streamasterô 5000 line of advanced set-top boxes, bringing a new level of broadband entertainment to the mass market. Service providers Blockbuster Entertainment, Enron, Aliant Telecom of Canada and Australia's TransACT Capital Communications Pty have separately announced their decision to deploy the NUON-enhanced Streamaster 5000 to deliver broadband interactive services to customers on two continents. NUON technology brings full compatibility with NUON video games, and NUON-enhanced movies and music titles. The highly flexible, 128-bit NUON media processor provides the horsepower to support existing open standards, while being versatile enough to anticipate new content formats. NUON core ""mediaware"" already provides broad support for leading entertainment formats, including MPEG video with enhanced features, DolbyÆ Digital, MP3 and Spatializerô 3D Audio, MIDI music and powerful 2D/3D graphics. NUON authoring systems and guidelines enable video game, movie and music content developers to target NUON-based set-tops, whatever the delivery medium - broadband, broadcast or DVD. The NUON-enhanced Streamaster 5000 is one of the first advanced set-top boxes designed to enable service providers the capability to deliver high quality audio and video, together with three-dimensional interactive content across a broadband pipeline into the living room. Further, Streamaster 5000 enables such advanced consumer features as digital quality broadcast television, high speed Web access, 3D games, video and music-on-demand, karaoke and online shopping. Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI), a publicly traded subsidiary of Viacom, and Enron Broadband Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enron (NYSE: ENE), will use the Streamaster 5000 for trial deployment in their video-on-demand entertainment service announced last summer. Aliant Telecom will deploy the Streamaster 5000 to deliver digital broadcast television, Web access, e-mail services, an interactive program guide and digital audio channels to customers of its VibeVision service in Atlantic, Canada, marking the first full commercial deployment of the Streamaster 5000 in North America. TransACT Capital Communications Pty Limited will use the Streamaster 5000 to begin offering digital-quality broadcast television, video-on-demand, Web access and e-mail via VDSL services in February 2001 to subscribers in Canberra, Australia. ""NUON technology helps enable Streamaster 5000 to provide consumers with powerful audio and video features plus interactive games as an important element of delivering broadband entertainment services,"" said Jacqueline Beauchamp, Director and General Manager, Multimedia Systems Division, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector. ""Motorola looks forward to working closely with VM Labs to provide compelling technology, content and services to enable the telcos' success."" ""Broadband is the next logical step in the evolution of the NUON business model, and one that will generate new revenue streams for both VM Labs and its partners. Manufacturers, service providers and content developers can all take advantage of NUON's power, flexibility and open standards support,"" said Richard Miller, CEO, VM Labs. ""NUON provides our customers with a long term cross-media platform strategy bringing them the assurance of compatibility, a fast response to emerging standards and a competitive feature set for the consumer."" VM Labs currently teams with a number of hardware, software and peripheral partners. NUON-based DVD players from Toshiba and Samsung already offer consumers a wide variety of new movie viewing features, such as the ability to use the menu while the movie plays, powerful zoom and pan, ultra-smooth forward and reverse shuttles, specialized film formatting and simultaneous multi-angle playback. NUON DVD players also have the ability to play games and display visual light shows while listening to music CDs. For more information about NUON, visit www.nuon.tv.

Read More:
http://www.nuon.tv