Telsey’s BLOBbox Absorbs the Web’s Free Content and Services to Enjoy Directly on Your HDTV

(12 mar 2009) - TVBLOB and Telsey began shipping the BLOBbox, a hybrid set-top box for analog and HD televisions that allows users to watch and record digital terrestrial television (HD PVR, built-in HDD), download podcasts from all over the world using Miro and BitTorrent, as well as browse services like YouTube, GMail, and Wikipedia.
Unlike other set-top boxes already on the market, users are not limited to watching content only from premium providers, but instead enjoy access to popular web services, in addition to play, watch and browse all of the content that they already have on their PC or home network. The Telsey BLOBbox aims to solve a problem that has plagued owners of televisions since their inception: what to watch?
“In one room I had my PC with virtually unlimited access to downloaded content, and in the other I had my 42" HDTV where I ended up watching the same DVD over and over,” explains Dario Golia, who recently began using the BLOBbox. “Now I sit on the couch and watch everything on my TV.”
The BLOBbox software, which is based on Linux and includes a full-featured web browser, does much more than access Internet video and record digital television. It makes TV truly interactive and personal by enabling features such as favorites and downloads. Most importantly, everything is controlled with just the television and remote control.
TVBLOB, maker of the set-top box software, has already worked to optimize popular Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Picasa for the TV, and is supporting others such as companies, podcasters and bloggers via an open source TV development community — BLOBforge [http://www.blobforge.com] — and a free Software Development Kit, which permit them to create their own television channels, or even invent new services for TV. This is an important step, as the company moves to change the way we look at the Web.
“Web sites were originally created for PCs, and many are now being optimized for more and more user devices such as mobile phones,” explains Telsey R&D Manager Riccardo Costacurta. “A similar process will happen for TV because watching from the sofa with a remote control is a whole new way of seeing and interacting with the Internet.”
As this sort of TV-centric Web gains favor, the BLOBbox platform is positioned to thrive. With an open garden approach, any individual or company using standard Web development tools will be able to realize new services for television without intermediation by third-parties.
“It may amount to a television revolution,” says TVBLOB CEO Fabrizio Caffarelli. “Starting now, people can publish personal web pages or full-blown services directly to television. As they begin to test the limits of their creativity, they can even find an audience and create the next killer application for TV.”
The Telsey BLOBbox is available for purchase now from TecnologieCreative at [http://www.tecnologiecreative.it]. It requires a standard television with analog or HDMI input and a broadband connection.