CES 2009: Digeo Launches Moxi HD-DVR Player--No Fees, No Problem

The Paul-Allen-owned company Digeo announced today the availability of the Moxi High-Definition Digital Video Player.  The Moxi acts as a central brain for high-def cable, PC, and Internet media in the home.  Their award-winning (an Emmy, believe it or not) interface acts as a simple GUI for all TV, Cable, and digital content such as MP3s, photos, and more.  The player also integrates with several web services, such as Flickr and Finetune.  Each element of the GUI and recording features is designed for a 16:9 native aspect ratio, so it's at home on widescreen HDTVs. 

There's a native search engine that can search both the Internet and your local media for videos, music, and photos.  In can integrate and pull media not just from your networked PCs, but from sites like Flickr--for example, if your friends update their Flickr feeds, the Moxi can see and show it right away.  It adds these services when you set up a Moxi account, where you can add your login information for various web services so that you'll never need to use an onscreen keyboard to use them with your Moxi unit.Like TiVo, it can intelligently suggest and schedule recordings for shows you might like.  The Superticker seen in Digeo's other products, which are Internet widgets you can add to retrieve news, weather, etc., is also present here.  You can schedule show recordings via web interface and from mobile devices.

The Moxi unit itself is a CableCARD-equipped Broadcom set-top box with dual HD tuners and a BCM7400 dual-core processor running a 3D graphics engine.  The guts of the Moxi are strong enough that you can record two HD shows while watching a third.  It comes with a 500 GB ESATA hard drive to store about 75 hours digitally-recorded video at 1080p resolution.  Firmware and software updates are delivered automatically for the life of the product at no charge.  Interestingly, there are no subscription fees and no ads served in the player as with many current DVRs.  That means that at $799 it's more expensive than traditional DVRs, but it's an upfront cost and with no subscription or service fees, it should be able to make up its cost in short order.  It's geared specifically towards cable subscribers only.

Digeo CEO Greg Gudorff also announced a partnership with Monster to produce iTV Powercenters driven by the Moxi user interface and network protocols starting around June of this year.

Also shown was the upcoming Moxi Mate, shipping later this year, which is a client unit with no hard drive or fan allowing you to have access to your MoxiNet content in any room in your home.

The Moxi HD-DVR Player costs $799 and is available now at Amazon.com.

--Aric A.