Telepocalypse

A dongle a day

A valued reader directs me to take a peek at this coolio product (pic reproduced with permission):

It's called the nabjac, which stands for "Not a box – just a connector". What is does is upend the concept of the TV set-top-box (STB) by building the whole thing into a connector.

So, what does it do? Our correspondent says:

...it is built on top of a TV SCART connector, using an old low-cost, high-volume MPEG2 decoder. In addition to SCART it has an Ethernet port, and a connector for an infrared detector. It has very limited inteligence, it decodes MPEG2 streams by itself, but for menus, EPG and browsing it does a VNC session to a "smart" Linux server.

So it is a "dumb" edge device, connecting as a VNC terminal to a "smart" server also on the edge of the network.

(VNC is a way of displaying text and graphics from another computer remotely.)

I just love this kind of innovation, gently shredding vertically integrated business models into prosciutto-thin horizontal slices. Stick this device on your TV, get your program information from anyone you like. No need to be locked into the provider of the actual media signal to get your metadata. Want to receive your IMs on your TV too? Just click here to enable...

Every function is now up for grabs by third parties.

Shame it's precluded from the outset in all those DRM-infected HDTV appliances that outlaw reintermediating any information flow, ever.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 4:57 PM

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