The Philips Consumer Electronics Co arm of Philips Electronics NV, Eindhoven is joining forces with Zenith Electronics Corp, Glenview, Illinois and Compression Labs Inc, San Jose to produce digital and hybrid digital and analogue set-top terminals for the delivery of video-on-demand, video games, home shopping and other services. The products will be aimed at cable television companies and other network providers. Specifically, the new grouping plans to combine Philips’ and Compression Labs’s implementations of the Moving Pictures Expert Group – MPEG – 2 technology with Zenith’s Vestigial Sideband, 16-VSB, transmission and real-time two-way technologies. These technologies are being used within the the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance’s system for high-definition television, which is expected to be adopted by the US Federal Communications Commission as the US broadcast standard next year. In addition, Zenith is providing its down-loadable software, enabling network operators to alter functionality of the set-top boxes remotely, while Philips’ Compact Disk-Interactive system and Microware Inc’s David multimedia operating system based on OS-9 will also be used. Ultimately, the companies say that they will make the boxes compatible with video servers from Oracle Corp, IBM Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, and Hewlett-Packard Co, while they will also be compatible with Compression Labs’s MPEG-2 encoders and Zeniths’s line of head-end equipment.
