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Channel surfing with Power

Time Warner Cable selects PowerTV's operating system and its multimedia hardware technology for Internet-capable set-top boxes.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
Time Warner Cable (TWX) has selected PowerTV's operating system and its multimedia hardware technology for Internet-capable set-top boxes made by Scientific Atlanta (SFA).

The PowerTV technology will be incorporated in set-top boxes supplied to Time Warner Cable by Scientific-Atlanta, which is expected to initially supply 550,000 of its Explorer 2000 set-top boxes plus related hardware and network control software.

PowerTV technology is also expected to be incorporated into digital set-tops supplied by Toshiba and by Pioneer to Time Warner.

PowerTV provides operating system technology and associated value-added hardware technologies specifically for interactive entertainment and digital set-top terminals. The company develops browsers and Java-based applets to bring the Internet into the home via the TV.

All of this technology comes under the umbrella of Time Warner's broadcast and two-way digital network solution, dubbed the Pegasus project. Pegasus is Time Warner's program to bring next-generation digital video, audio, and data services to its cable subscribers throughout the United States.

"Time Warner Cable selected PowerTV's operating system and Eagle multimedia hardware technology because of PowerTV's ability to provide a multimedia operating system with an open API and improved user interface performance," said Michael P. Harney, vice president and general manager of Scientific Atlanta's digital video business, in a prepared statement.

The PowerTV integrated hardware and software solution provides a real-time OS combined with audio and graphics acceleration technology.