American Interactive Media Inc, Medford, New Jersey is jumping on the cheap television Internet access bandwagon. It is licensing technology from MSU UK Ltd that it says will provide fully functional Internet access to a television without the need for a personal computer. The price is expected to be well under $500. At the heart of the design is MSU’s proprietary iSP chip, which provides high-resolution graphics, 65,000 colors, 16-bit stereo and an integrated high-speed modem. The chip can support up to 16Mb of 32-bit memory, so it will be able to support Internet applications such as Java. Future operating system software upgrades will be downloadable over the Internet. Most important, American Interactive says, consumers can use any existing television set rather than replacing them with newer, more expensive models. Our goal is to put the power of the Internet in consumers’ hands at an extremely low price, said American Interactive Inc president and chief executive Michael Salaman. If the process is too technically complicated or expensive, consumers will stick with conventional buying patterns and the true value of the Internet as a sales or distribution medium will be slow to materialize.
