Timeline..Mediacast 2004 product preview - 27/04/04
One of the most intriguing new products to be featured at the forthcoming Mediacast 2004 trade show, which is taking place between the 25th and 27th of May at the Excel centre in East London, will be a so-called 'portable personal video recorder' or PPVR from Fusion.
According to Steve Lister, vice president of marketing at Fusion, this is "a small device with a three-and-a-half inch back-lit LCD screen screen. It’s got a 40GByte drive in it, and it connects on to one of our boxes, so you can watch TV and transfer your recordings on to it and watch them on the train the following morning." Lister told idtv.co.uk that the new device would be available in the UK "hopefully before Christmas, but more likely in the early part of next year."
Fusion will also 'hopefully' be demonstrating some new LCD IDTV products at Mediacast, said Lister, some of which feature built-in DVD and hard disk combinations. These would be "launching into the market in September," he predicted.
Among other highlights:
Cabot Communications will be unveiling the new software for its seven-day Freeview Electronic Programme guide (EPG). Since Cabot supplies the majority of Freeview manufacturers with its MHEG-based interactive TV 'engine', the new system is likely to become the default solution for most of the industry in the future..
SCM Microsystems will 'probably' be demonstrating its new Top Up TV conditional access modules or CAMs. These look like 'fat' smartcards, and plug into so-called common interface slots to allow them to take a Top Up TV smartcard and unscramble its pay-TV programming. All IDTVs have a common interface, but only a minority of current Freeview set-top boxes do.
FTA Communication Technologies says it will be showing "A state-of-the-art satellite and terrestrial DVR" or personal video recorder.
No doubt there will be further announcements to follow.
