MOTOROLA RE-NAMES BLACKBIRD MULTIMEDIA PLATFORM.

Motorola Inc unveiled the new name for its video entertainment and video communications multimedia technology, which was previously known as Blackbird, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday. The Blackbird Home Media Platform, a set- top box cum home entertainment device announced in September last year (CI No 3,494) was the first product of a planned family to use the technology, which will now be known under the name Streamaster. It supports interactive 3D graphics, Java, MPEG digital video, audio, internet access, electronic commerce and broadband networking in a single unit, according to Motorola. The new family of products will be centered around internet broadband access and intelligent internet access devices, and are being described by Motorola as the first "soft" set-top boxes. Streamaster uses the OS/9000 operating system from Microware Systems Inc as a foundation, running Microware's David 2.2 Digital Audio/Video Interactive Decoder and Maui Multimedia Application User Interface, and an HTML engine based on Spyglass Inc's Device Mosaic 3.0 embedded systems browser. It will also use Sun Microsystems Inc's Personal Java and Mountain View, California-based VM Labs' Project X video entertainment platform, now re-named as the Nuon Media Libraries. Nuon is based around replacement circuitry for MPEG 2 decoders and a set of development tools and APIs. The hardware will use an embedded PowerPC processor. Motorola has now added smartcard capabilities through a relationship with SCM Microsystems Inc, and back office support development for interactive digital television through a relationship with Bethesda, Maryland-based Imake Consulting Inc. Motorola plans to sell the technology as a reference platform for consumer electronics companies, as assembled and software-loaded motherboards to OEMs, and as private-label turnkey systems. Development boards and boxes are being manufactured by Selectron Corp.