Augsburg, Germany — (press release excerpt) — Tuxia today announced the signing of a partnership agreement with Tvia Inc., a provider of streaming media gateway processors for Internet appliances, broadband set-top boxes, and digital televisions. As a result of the new partnership, Tuxia's TASTE, a small, fast, and stable embedded Linux platform for information appliances, will be integrated with Tvia's… CyberPro media gateway processors, which offer features such as DuoVision, TVDirect, and three-dimensional animation and text.

Through such features as picture-in-picture (PIP) tools, Internet connectivity options, and e-mail capabilities, the Tuxia and Tvia partnership will provide set-top box solutions that combine the capabilities of the Internet with the familiar medium of television. For example, viewers could watch a football game and simultaneously select different camera angles, look up player statistics, order a pizza, e-mail, chat, or instant message with other fans, and arrange for tickets and airfare to next week's game.

In addition to the integration of TASTE and CyberPro, as part of the new partnership between Tuxia and Tvia, CyberPro will be included as a component in Tuxia's TSE developer toolkit for TASTE. This will allow developers maximum flexibility in implementing CyberPro to configure a set-top box to their exact specifications.

The market for Internet appliance devices is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years. Research firm IDC forecasts that the worldwide market for information appliances will grow from more than 31 million units in 2000 to more than 168 million units by 2005.

 
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