Oracle Corp formally launched its much-previewed Oracle Media Objects on Friday, claiming it to be the first multimedia authoring tool to enable developers to create applications for both CD-ROM and interactive television. Home Box Office, The Weather Channel, Cambridge Digital Media and the University of Michigan were on hand to show what they had done with the pre-release version. The system uses a Hypercard-like interface and supports integration of real-time audio, video, images, text and animation. It currently runs on Macintosh and Windows machines and the Apple Computer Inc set-top box, Microware Inc’s OS/9-based David boxes and Scientific-Atlanta Inc’s PowerTV system. It can also be used with a data source such as Oracle Media Server to deploy networked interactive applications such as personalised news readers, home shopping programmes and video-on-demand navigational systems. The production version of Media Objects will be available for the Macintosh, Power Macintosh and Windows in mid-1995 at under $500 for the authoring system, with run-time licences free.
