This one’s been percolating for some time within Motorola’s labs. We last saw the “Media Mover” back in September sporting a different enclosure and name (MCUBE). Motorola (MOT) hopes the device will become the “Swiss Army knife” of USB widgets. And they’re well on their way.
Not only will the inexpensive bus-powered Media Mover puck transcode all sorts of video stored on your DVR, it’ll also broadcast (transfer or streaming) that content locally or remotely (think Slingbox) via WiFi or Bluetooth (BT transmission is obviously local only) to cellphones and computers. At The Cable Show, Motorola was demo-ing video playback on a Q9 cellphone, laptop (VLC with DRM plugin), and iPhone. Additionally, this little Media Mover gizmo houses an SD slot (for offloading content?) and a low-res camera that Moto described as a placeshifting nanny cam.
While they were reluctant to talk hardware costs and specific distribution plans, Motorola sees this as a low cost way for their cable partners (and their respective customers) to add value to existing services/subscriptions.
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