(Madrid, Spain and Freemont, Cal.) TBA – February 12th, 2001 – Silicon Artists, a Madrid-based high end convergence services company today announced that it has completed the design of a graphical user interface for Metabyte’s MbTV personal television software. Silicon Artists has used its interactive TV experience to create a simple and intuitive interface optimized for the MbTV software.
Metabyte’s MbTV software learns viewers’ television-watching preferences without any user intervention and creates personalized profiles (MbTV Thumbprint) that can be used to provide a variety of services. It can recommend, record, and delete desirable programs based on viewers’ preferences. MbTV’s architecture is based on filtering relevant content into a home from a mass broadcast. It is fully effective on a one-way broadcast stream and does not require changes to the existing infrastructure. MbTV protects viewers’ privacy because it does not require any data to be transmitted from the viewers’ home.
Simon Birrell, president and CEO of Silicon Artists believes that Metabyte’s core technology will become central to the development of personal television. “Personalization is clearly the future of television,â€? he said. “In a 10,000 channel universe, viewers will need sophisticated recommendation systems that can anticipate their tastes and preferences, and Metabyte’s technology is the most sophisticated that we have seen in this area. We look forward to helping package their software in user-friendly interfaces”.
â€?We wanted an aesthetically pleasing GUI that would present our Personal TV software to a viewer in an easy and seamless way and help manage their channel and content navigation and selection”, said Vallal Jothillingam, Director of Product Marketing for Metabyte Networks Inc. “It has been a pleasure working with a professional and bright team of designers at Silicon Artists, who have provided quality work and met stringent deadlines”.
ABOUT SILICON ARTISTS
Silicon Artists is a Madrid-based high end convergence services company, focused on the design and construction of broadband user interfaces for the three key broadband platforms: Interactive TV, broadband PC and the networked kiosk. Clients in Spain, the US and the UK include telcos and cable operators (Telefonica, Telefonica Cable, Menta, Madritel, Supercable), media companies (Planet Hollywood, Antena 3 TV, Sony) and corporations and institutions (Compaq, Wanadoo, Navegalia and the Andalusian Health Servicie).
ABOUT METABYTE NETWORKS
Metabyte Networks, Inc. (MNI) is a personal TV technology and services company. When MNI’s client technology (MbTV) is embedded in a set-top-box (STB) or a hard disk-based video recorder, it automatically builds a profile (MbTV Thumbprintä ) of the consumer’s TV watching tastes, while providing full DVR capabilities, such as record, pause and playback. MbTV is totally automatic and requires no special input from the consumer other than normal TV watching. MbTV integrates with the existing infrastructure and is fully portable to all leading interactive TV operating systems and middleware. In addition, MbTV totally protects consumers’ privacy by maintaining the vast majority of Thumbprints at the STB. MbTV technology provides a way to allow a client STB to filter massive amounts of information. Individual viewers are presented the content that interests them instead of the general population. MNI’s business model complements, not competes with, the business models of cable/satellite system operators, broadcasters, consumer electronics companies and advertisers. MNI is an enabler of Personal TV services such as targeted advertising/t-commerce, video on demand (VOD), targeted t-couponsä and TV portals. Investors in MNI include Thomson Consumer Electronics, a world leader in digital consumer electronics, and Seagate, the world’s largest manufacturer of hard disks. In addition, MNI has alliances with Microsoft, Nielsen Media, Starz-Encore, Western Digital and C-Cube, a leader in digital consumer electronics.