Digeo was showing off Moxi at Digital Experience

Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2007 by MegaZone

BetaNews has a report on Digeo’s presence at the Digital Experience show this week. But it doesn’t look like they had anything new to say, at least from what BetaNews reported. It looks like basically the same stuff I reported on back at CES in January and later in May. Moxi’s interface is decent, but I just wasn’t that impressed by what I saw, especially the PC-style box.

It is really going to come down to what the final specifications and features are, and what the pricing ends up being. They’re going to be up against not just TiVo – who will likely have their lower-cost HD box out by the the time the Moxi units street – but also the cable and satellite DVRs. And probably TiVo’s cable software.

I still think Digeo/Moxi made a big mistake years ago when they pulled back from a consumer launch and decided to focus solely on licensing to cable MSOs, and effort which was largely a failure. With only roughly 420,000 users in about 100 markets after a few years, it can’t really be considered much of a success. And one of their partners is Comcast, who later turned to TiVo for their future needs. I think they could’ve been a contender at the time, along with TiVo and ReplayTV, but I’m not sure they can carve out a niche in the current market environment.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
This entry was posted in Digeo Moxi. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.zatznotfunny.com Dave Zatz

    I’m here in NYC and have a private briefing. If I get time on the train ride home today, I’ll post what I’ve learned. And a few pics. :)

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ megazone

    I look forward to your report. I know someone who used to be a coder for Moxi, starting back before Digeo picked them up. He left a little while ago, and he generally agrees with me as far as their opportunities go. He was never happy with the ‘new direction’ Digeo took the company in and he always seemed to think they should’ve made a real push into the consumer market.

    They had some interesting stuff – networking support with multi-room playback, built-in video conferencing with a camera in the box, etc. A number of things that were unheard of at the time, and still rare, or unavailable, today. I think they had a chance to grab a piece of the market. Personally I think they had a nicer system than ReplayTV – and ‘Moxi’ has the same kind of catchy sound as ‘TiVo’, which is something ReplayTV lacked. Good for branding.

    TiVo has a *huge* head start now, and we’ve seen how hard it is for even an established brand to compete in the DVR market. Digeo/Moxi has a lot of work ahead of them.

    I think the OCAP software they announced may hold more promise than the new boxes. One of the things holding them back in cable was that to use the Moxi software the MSO had to deploy BMC9000 series boxes and not standard STB DVRs