According to the company, Akimbo is "the first fully functional marriage of TV and the Internet, combining easy access to new and fresh video content with the comfort of watching it on your TV".
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Akimbo has teamed with more than 30 content providers including CinemaNow, CinemaPop, Golfspan, and iFilm to offer video on demand (VOD) through broadband Internet connections. When the Akimbo Service begins in June, it will feature more than 10,000 videos in 50 categories including independent films, foreign language, news, health and fitness, sports, children, and education.
The heart of the system is the Akimbo Player, a stylish set-top box (STB) that can store up to 200 hours of digital video on an 80 GB disk. An Ethernet port connects the player to your home network or directly to a DSL modem. Standard audio/video outputs provide the connection to your TV.
The Akimbo Player is based on Intel's
set-top box reference design, and uses a 733 MHz Celeron processor and 64MB of RAM. Akimbo's STB is currently based on Windows CE .NET, but the company expects to move to Windows XP Embedded in the future. The company claims that the Akimbo Player is the first device to decode video fully in software. This offers maximum flexibility for supporting multiple codecs.
The Akimbo Player is expected to start at $199. The monthly subscription to the Akimbo Service will be $9.99.
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