Announcing NthCode Player, Embedded Software to Connect Home Electronics to PCs and the Internet

[Peter McDermott]

Hollywood creates movies, television, and music for big screens and
big speakers -- not laptop computers and mp3 players. Yet here we
are, with our expensive TVs tuned to boring programs while we use our
computers to watch videos and listen to music.

It shouldn't be this way. And soon, it won't need to be. Because,
today, we're announcing a revolutionary new product to solve this
problem: NthCode Player.

What is NthCode Player? NthCode Player is software that electronics
companies embed in their devices so DVD players, televisions, and
other electronics can play videos and music from network-attached PCs
and the Internet.

It's super cool. Let me tell you why.

First, it's zero configuration. Devices running NthCode Player
automatically connect to home networks and don't require installation
of cumbersome PC software. Instead, users only need to enable sharing
on the media folders of their Windows, Mac, or Unix PCs and NthCode
Player automatically finds, indexes, and organizes all the videos and
music inside.

But putting all the media on people's PCs and laptops at their
fingertips wouldn't be great if they couldn't play it all back. So
NthCode Player supports just about every audio and video format used
today (MPEG1-4, h264, rmvb, WMV, xVid, aac, flac, mp3, ogg, avi, mov,
mkv, and more) at up to 1080p HD resolution on sufficiently capable
hardware. (Just about the only thing NthCode Player won't play is DRM-
protected content.)

Finding and playing videos and music in such an efficient and simple
way provides a quantum leap in usability over other solutions existing
in the market today. This is a huge, huge win for consumers.

In addition to playing media from home network devices, NthCode Player
also plays videos and music distributed over the Internet. To do
this, we've integrated our own web browser with a powerful streaming,
download, and subscription engine so people can connect to Internet-
based media guides to find and play the media they want.

NthCode Player's browser uses the poweful WebKit engine, so sites like
Gmail and Facebook all work great. But, more importantly, NthCode
Player makes it possible for media portals to use the same HTML, CSS,
and JavaScript they know and love to create media guides that can be
navigated using a remote control or touch screen.

Our media streaming and download engine supports all the common
protocols: RTSP, HTTP, MMS, and BitTorrent. So consumers can navigate
to the video or music they want inside NthCode Player's easy to use
browser and then click a link to start download or playback. And
NthCode Player's RSS subscription engine makes it easy to subscribe to
the growing number of audio podcasts and video shows on the Internet
today.

Because NthCode Player is based on open Internet standards, content
owners and providers don't have to cut a deal with anyone to get
distribution, and electronics companies aren't limited to a single
content provider or narrow geographic market. This means consumers
will finally be able to stop cuddling up next to their laptops and
start enjoying PC and Internet media on bigger screens and speakers.

Finally, at NthCode, we've leveraged our combined decades of embedded
software development experience to engineer NthCode Player from the
ground up to run efficiently on the same low-cost, low-power ARM,
MIPS, and x86 hardware that powers home electronics today.

Like I said, it's really cool.

NthCode Player is currently under active development. We are
announcing NthCode Player now so that we can reach out to content and
chipset partners as well as potential customers who are interested in
building products using NthCode Player.

The screenshots and videos at NthCode.com form a demo of what NthCode
Player can do today. Our target is a fully quality-assured software
solution that manufacturers can leverage to quickly create affordable
home media products that people love to use.

To find out more about NthCode Player, please contact us at player
(at) nthcode (dot) com. Additional information, including our opt-in
NthCode News mailing list, can be found at NthCode.com.