Audio Video News

Hoping to fulfill the long-awaited promise of delivering broadband entertainment direct to the television, Intertainer, uniView Technologies, and Microsoft have buddied up and announced that they will join ZoomTown.com to market-test a service that will provide asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband entertainment directly to consumers' televisions. ZoomTown.com says it expects to deploy the service to its more than 35,000 subscribers next year following completion of the trial.

According to the group, this joint effort will use a DSL set-top box featuring streaming video, manufactured by uniView, to connect standard televisions to the Internet via ADSL technology. During the market trial, companies say that subscribers will have access to Intertainer's entertainment-on-demand broadband service using Microsoft's video format and digital rights management technology, Windows Media Player.

Intertainer's Jonathan Taplin explains that "it is our strong contention that {delivering} IP technology directly to the television will revolutionize home entertainment. Bringing Intertainer's entertainment-on-demand service directly to the TV gives ZoomTown.com customers the freedom, choice and control to watch what they want, whenever they want."

ZoomTown.com's Mike O'Brien adds that "what we're doing here, converging state-of-the-art technologies to move an application from the PC to the consumer's TV, gives the user a more robust, meaningful experience. We've had great subscriber response with the PC-based Intertainer service, and we believe delivering the content with the uniView box to the TV will provide a great new venue for entertainment options."