Moto gives sneak peak at its CES portfolio, showing off new set-top boxes and WiMAX modem

Motorola today took the wraps off what amounts to a mobile digital video recorder—a stand-alone large-screen handheld that renders live mobile broadcast video but can time-shift, pause and record content according to users’ wishes.

Moto announced the device today at a pre-screening of its new products that will be shown at next week’s International CES, which include several new digital TV set-top boxes (STBs), an integrated communications cable STB and a WiMAX home gateway. Though the device, called the Mobile TV DH01, is debuting at a U.S. show, it’s unlikely to show up on a U.S. retailer or carrier’s shelves any time soon. The device uses digital video broadcast handheld (DVB-H) technology, a standard which has gained traction in Europe but so far hasn’t picked up any momentum in the U.S.

The only operator to launch DVB-H commercially in the U.S. was tower company Crown Castle, which only deployed a network in New York under the name Modeo and offered limited service independently of any carrier. The pilot ended this summer, though, with Crown Castle shutting down the network and selling off its spectrum. Aloha Partners also had ambitions of launching a nationwide Mobile TV network under the name HiWire. It launched a trial DVB-H network last year in Las Vegas, but it folded up the project and sold its valuable 700 MHz licenses to AT&T. There is still hope among DVB-H proponents that AT&T will launch its own DVB-H network using the spectrum, but AT&T is more likely to use it for cellular coverage or future 4G networks. What’s more, AT&T has partnered with the country’s only remaining mobile TV provider Qualcomm to use its MediaFLO network.

Motorola, however, isn’t putting its bets behind a single technology like competitor Nokia. It has built a mobile TV phone for the Verizon Wireless CDMA network using FLO technology. But for DVB-H, Moto may be opting to take the direct-to-retail approach available in Europe and Asia. Since the DH01 is a stand-alone media player, not a TV-phone hybrid, it requires no carrier support and can be sold directly by a mobile TV service provider or off the shelf. The vendor plans to sell the device directly to broadcasters and service providers as well as target specific segments of the market, said Venkat Eswara, Moto’s senior marketing manager for application services.

Motorola’s MPEG-4 advanced video compression STB, also revealed today, enables cablecos to bring on-demand and interactive digital cable programming to the home. In addition to providing more HD content, the box is designed to allow consumers to time-shift TV shows and store customer-created multimedia content that can then be shared with other compatible devices in the home, using the DCX as a multimedia hub.A core feature of the product is to offer support for in-home networking for content sharing within the home – an experience Motorola is focused on enabling in 2008, said Rob Folk, director of product management for Motorola’s digital video solutions business.


On the telephony side, Motorola also announced its next-generation SURFboard SBV5433 digital voice modem and integrated DECT cordless phone system, designed to deliver whole-home telephone and data services over cable’s broadband connection to the home. The SBV5422, which can be installed by consumers, adds IP capabilities including visual voicemail, SMS messaging, email access and a Yellow Pages search application from the home handset.

The WiMAX gateway Motorola unveiled today, the CPEi 100, is actually the same WiMAX customer premise box it has been shopping around at numerous WiMAX showcases with Sprint. The gateway originally incorporated Intel’s Rosedale 2 chipset, which was not a Wave 2 compliant chipset, meaning it could not take advantage of the smart antenna technologies of Sprint’s new Xohm network. But today Motorola said the CPE is now Wave 2 compliant, though it did not say whether it contained a new upgraded chip from Intel or was using a competitor’s silicon. Beceem Communications supplies Wave 2 chips for Motorola’s other home wireless gateway, which has not yet been commercially released.