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Shortly after unveiling a new “featured services” strategy at CES 2008,
and announcing alliances with four companies–Flickr, Finetune,
Accedo Broadband and CloverLeaf Digital–that it said would be
providing content services for its flagship Moxi platform, Paul Allen-
owned Digeo announced a major restructuring that saw CEO, Mike
Fiedler, leave the company, along with half of its staff, and president
and COO, Greg Gudorf take over his role. (Note: the Moxi platform
allows end-users to store, access and manage a variety of entertainment
content through a single, unified menu. The platform is notable for its
interface, which won Emmy awards in 2004 and 2005, and which
replaces the standard “spreadsheet” EPG interface with a so-called
“cross-hairs” configuration, consisting of two intersecting animated
lines at right angles to each other: customers use the left and right
arrow keys on their remote control to scroll through a series of
customizable categories–dubbed “filters” by the company–on the
horizontal line: e.g. HDTV, sports, news, movies, photos, games, MP3
Jukebox, etc.; they then use the remote’s up and down arrow keys to
scroll through the sub-listings of the currently highlighted category,
which appear as a vertical line intersecting the line of categories. Digeo
has secured a number of patents for the technology, and recently settled
a long-running patent-dispute with Gemstar-TV Guide.

Digeo says that it will now focus its product-development efforts on
fewer platforms: it has abandoned plans to release a number of
previously announced retail products, including its Moxi Multi-Room
HD DMR and its Moxi Home Cinema Edition DMR. Instead, it plans
to focus its efforts 1) on its “next-generation consumer DMR,” which it
says has been in development for some time now, is targeted for retail,
and will be announced later this year; and 2) on the Moxi HD DVR for
Cable, which is targeted at cable operators, and which it says is
currently in trials and should be released as planned. The company
claims that all its current content and development partnerships,
including its product collaboration with Monster Cable, will remain in
place, and that the employees whom it let go were “not critical to
development of the new products.”

Digeo’s corporate reorganization has also seen it restructure its
development team: three new engineering groups now report directly to
the office of the CEO, in order, the company says, to ensure greater
accountability and transparency. “As we assessed our situation, it
became clear that the best action for Digeo was to focus our work on
the next-generation product for the retail market,” Gudorf said in a
prepared statement. “Building the software and hardware for this
category is a complex endeavor, with dynamic technical standards,
regulatory issues and content considerations. Previously, we were
spreading our energies across too many platforms. This focused
strategy promises to bring a set of advanced and compelling DMR
features to consumers, at the right cost and at the right time. We remain committed to bringing the best television experience to our customers and we are confident that we’ll emerge even more successful as a result of this focusing effort.”