Video Without Boundaries Signs CableLabs' CHILA Agreement

--Launches Portable Media Player/Recorder

Consumer electronics manufacturer, Video Without Boundaries (VWB), has signed the CableCARD Host Interface Licensing Agreement (CHILA) offered by US cable-industry research-and-development body, CableLabs. Signing the agreement will allow VWB--which says it plans to "make interactive two-way digital cable products a retail certainty"--to implement OCAP-compliant middleware on its next-generation MediaREADY media center devices. (Note: the OCAP specification, which is closely related to the European Multimedia Home Platform standard, was developed by CableLabs to allow retail consumer electronics devices to run any OCAP-compliant application or service being delivered by cable operators. Other consumer electronics manufacturers that have signed the CHILA agreement to date include Panasonic, Samsung, Digeo, and LG Electronics.) "This is an unprecedented first step in the consumer electronics industry," VWB CTO, Terry Glatt, said in a prepared statement. "As the only company with experience in the retail deployment of Linux-based media center technology to have signed the CHILA agreement to date, VWB is blazing new ground in combining two-way digital cable service with fully featured media center capabilities for the retail market. We plan to work closely with CableLabs and to further develop interactive applications that offer consumers a never-before-seen television experience." In addition to OCAP support, VWB says that its next-generation media centers will include an interface for the CableCARD removable security module: the latter encapsulates MSO-specific conditional access technology, thus enabling nationwide portability of CE devices.

In other VWB news: the company is launching a new portable media player/recorder device, dubbed CoPilot. The flash-based MPEG-4 device, which will retail for under $200, features AV input recording, in order to allow easy connection to DVD players, VCR's, and cable and satellite set-top boxes for recording programming. It features a 512MB flash drive, and its memory is also expandable via its SD card slot, allowing it to store more than five hours of video at 320 x 240 @ 30f/s resolution. It also supports MP3, WAV and WMA formats, as well as Line In Audio for simple playback and recording of music. Other features include an internal microphone for voice recording, the ability to view photos, and video output for playback on TV.

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