Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc has unveiled its first set-top box, an intelligent digital unit that connects televisions to interactive networks. The 68000-based Mitsubishi STB-1000 is the first in a family of David OS/9-based products that will offer analogue as well as digital capability, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 compression and hybrid fibre and coaxial asymmetrical digital subscriber line and Asynchronous Transfer Mode support. It features a remote controller, simple user interface, application downloadability and support for video-on-demand, and is claimed to be easy to use: it can be supplied with a one-button remote control with a thumb-wheel for control of on-screen viewer choices. By using the OS-9-derived David Digital Audio/Video Interactive Decoder o perating system from Microware Systems Corp, the STB-1000 provides a common operating system environment that can interface with telephone, cable television and wireless networks. And it offers compatibility with the Oracle Corp Media Objects cross-system authoring tool for building and deploying interactive multimedia applications. Although it uses Motorola Inc’s 68000 processor, Mitsubishi says it is considering other processors, such as the PowerPC, for future products.
