Monday, February 12, 2007

Emarq says No IPTV, HomeZone It

It looks like Embarq is saying No to IPTV in NC, according to the Biz Journal. Not enough density for the millions in investment. (Millions? Try Billions). Embarq is looking at a "service called Homezone, which combines high speed Internet, satellite television and home networking using a single box-type device." Pics of the 2Wire set-top box are on Engadget.
"The 2Wire box (which looks disappointingly similar to their MediaPortal STB) features a 250GB drive for storage of live DISH, MovieLink, and Akimbo programming, dual TV outputs for simultaneous TV playback (more on that after the break), HDMI (presumably with HDCP), two QWERTY remotes (saywha?), Ethernet, and three USB ports. ....If it's anything like its older 2Wire sibling, the Homezone box will play back Real audio and video, MPEG-2/4, DRMed WMV 9, AAC, MP3, support up to 1080i, and even have WiFi."
Homezone is what AT&T is rolling out in markets not getting FTTx. Might not be a bad idea for CLEC's, smaller MSO's, and RLEC's.

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