(This website is NOT part of any other set-top network or set-top box manufacturer. CLICK HERE for disclaimer. If you are making important purchasing decisions, you may want to first look at a demonstration unit. Enjoy the review.)

AiTV 750 Set-Top Box

About a couple weeks ago, the kind folks at Paradise Innovations sent me an AiTV set-top box. The actual model number is AiTV 750. This is an impressive box. Although there are still some software issues that I think should be worked on, I like this box. For TV watching and Internet surfing, the picture is sharp and has very good quality. This box could give WebTV some competition in the dial-up segment of the set-top box market. The AiTV is not a cable box and is not a satellite box. The AiTV is a telephone-based set-top box. Paradise Innovations is the manufacturer of the AiTV. This set-top box is sold to OEMs only. Retail consumers (the folks who want only one box for personal use) will have to wait to see if another company sells the box under a different name or if the set-top shows up as a white-box product at a warehouse electronics store. Retail pricing is dependent on what price resellers may price individual units at.

Let's take a look at the AiTV. The AiTV let's you watch television, surf the Internet, send and receive email, and do chat. The chat is IRC chat. The AiTV does not have the ICQ-type instant messenger or AOL instant messenger. The email is pop email and not webpage-based email. The AiTV is powered by a 166 MHz Intel StrongARM RISC processor, has 4 meg FlashROM and 8 meg SDRAM, and a 56 Kbps modem. The AiTV uses the pSOSystem operating system and the PlanetWeb browser. SSL for secure e-commerce and Javascript are to be provided in future versions of the browser. Video conferencing is also supposed to be a future feature for the AiTV. Options for the AiTV include the expected smartcard reader, an ethernet port for a cable modem, and a wireless remote control. Since the AiTV comes with a remote keyboard, you may not need to get the optional wireless remote control.

AiTV Keyboard

The AiTV keyboard is one of those new ergonomic mod-shaped keyboards. With the crazy non-retangular shapes that remote keyboards are coming out with nowadays, it would be interesting see these new keyboards come out in bright Mac-like colors so the keyboards can be easily found if lost in the living rooms of the homes of the world. In addition to having a well-distributed keyboard layout, there is a great little mouse in the upper right-hand side of the keyboard. The ESC key works the way you would expect it to work for those computer users out there. There are extra keys for the TV, for Internet surfing, and for the great viewing capabilities of the AiTV. The top row of keys on the keyboard (where function keys would be located above the row of number keys, are keys for Esc, E-Mail, Favs, Goto, Search, Back, Forward, Reload, History, Setting, Help, Edit, Zoom, Find, Video Overlap, Ins/ScrLk, and Del/PrtSC. And there are the keys for Top Page, PgUp, PgDn, and Bottom Page on the right side of the keyboard.

Then there are the special buttons above the regular part of the keyboard. Along the top of the keyboard are buttons for CHannel up and down, VOLume increase and decrease, Mute, Home, Scan, Video, TV Guide, Video In, Modem, and Power. On the left side of the keyboard are buttoms for Select (which is like your click or "GO" button) and Menu. On the right side of the keyboard are buttons for Win (for picture-in-picture "window") and Swap (for swapping the pictures). Below the space bar at the bottom of the keyboard are buttons for Select (the click button) and Menu (which you can also use for moving and resizing the picture-in-picture). Although there is an optional wireless handheld remote control, you can use the remote keyboard to completely operate the AiTV.

AiTV Keyboard Mouse

The mouse is really cool. The mouse is like one of those eraser-head mice you may see in the middle of various laptop and notebook keyboards. Instead of being placed in the middle of the keyboard, the AiTV keyboard's mouse is placed in the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard. The mouse will let you easily move a cursor around the screen. You can scroll up and down through a page. You can scroll horizontally to the right if a webpage extends beyond the right side of the screen.

The footprint of the AiTV box is almost the side of a sheet of paper at 10 inches by 8 1/2 inches. The box is a little less than two inches tall (1 7/8"). The front of the keyboard has lights for E-Mail, Modem, Data In/Out, and Power. The back of the AiTV has jacks and ports for Audio in and out for both right and left, Video in and out, and S-Video out. There is a MIC jack for a microphone, a parallel port for a printer, a serial port (perhaps for a vidcam), a line-in jack for the telephone line, and a jack for plugging in a telephone. There is a jack for the power adapter and a connector pole for attaching a cable TV wire or a rabbit-ears TV antenna.

Back of the AiTV

I plugged in the line for the power adapter, hooked up the phone line, connected the video and audio cables, and watched the AiTV come to life on the TV screen. A PlanetWeb page came up and I went through a sequence for setting up the Internet connection. With the demonstration model that was sent to me, I could either register with the default ISP or manually put in the settings for my regular ISP. I put in the settings for my regular dial-up ISP and for one of my pop email accounts. New users will want to go with the default ISP for an easier setup.

The AiTV setup was simple. The AiTV was treat to set up compared to the difficulties I was having in setting up and rebuilding a cheap pentium computer that I got for my office during the same week I received the AiTV. For the computer, I had to go through the hassle of installing software, then reinstalling the same software, and installing new hardware, etc. For the AiTV, I only had to connect some cords, plug it in, turn it on, and put in settings for my ISP and a pop email account (or go through a registration process for new users). Setting up the computer at the office was difficult compared to setting up the AiTV set-top box at home.

The AiTV is supposed to work with Hewlett Packard Deskjet and OfficeJet printers. Since I don't have an HP printer, I wasn't able to test the printing capability. I would guess the AiTV will support Epson and Canon printers in the future.


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