Engineers at Pioneer in Japan are working on a client/server system that allows digital audio, video, and Internet content to be accessed through televisions in the home and are hoping to launch it in the North American market in the second quarter of 2003.
At the center of the system, which is intended to connect to the same Ethernet network that is already present in many homes linking broadband modems to personal computers, is the DL-1000 server. The unit has an 80GB hard drive on which music, video, and images will be stored, said a Pioneer representative at World PC Expo, where the system was on display on Wednesday.
The server connects to a television set through which the content can be viewed and also uses the network to access streaming content from the Internet, through a custom version of Yahoo's Launch multimedia service.
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