News

Ucentric Unveils Whole Home Music 1.0 (27/10/2003)

Music Application Allows Consumers to Access Music Through Their TVs and Play Music in Any Room

Ucentric Systems, a leading provider of home media networking software and services for the new digital home, announced the release of its latest product, Ucentric Whole Home Music 1.0. Through Ucentric Whole Home Music 1.0, a software application designed to be integrated into set-top boxes and consumer electronic devices, consumers will be able to easily access and play their digital music collection in any room in their home through a user-friendly point and click interface that can be accessed from any screen including a TV, PC, PDA and even a cell phone in the future.

Ucentric Whole Home Music 1.0 is designed specifically for in-home storage, access and playback of digital music files and is the only in-home music application that automatically discovers and aggregates all the digital music files stored on networked appliances like media centers, set-top boxes and/or personal computers. For the first time, consumers will have whole-home access to all music resources in their home including their own CDs that they can rip onto a Ucentric Whole Home Music 1.0 enabled media center and CDs they can burn based upon playlists assembled from their private collection of stored music files. To provide metadata for ripped CDs, Ucentric has partnered with Gracenote, the industry standard in music recognition technology and related content delivery. Initially, Ucentric will provide access to Gracenote CDDB(R) and anticipates adding more functionality from the Gracenote Music Management System, including Gracenote MusicID(SM), Gracenote Clean(SM), Gracenote Playlist(SM), Gracenote Link(SM) and Gracenote Encode(SM); developed to provide a complete music listening experience in all music devices.

"The introduction of Ucentric Whole Home Music 1.0 provides consumers for the first time a convenient, easy to use solution that allows them to access all their collected music resources anywhere throughout the home," said Michael Collette, chief executive officer, Ucentric Systems. "We see this music solution as a valuable complement to our Digital Home Software Suite. For customers that are implementing our Multi-TV DVR solution, Whole Home Music 1.0 adds significant new value to consumers without an increase in hardware cost."

"This is going to change the way people think of their televisions -- now, your music collection will be accessible, not from a stereo hooked up to your TV, but literally, from your TV," said Craig Palmer, president and CEO for Gracenote. "Offering consumers a unique and intuitive application for playing music and interacting with their existing libraries via their televisions is a huge step forward in home entertainment technology."

www.ucentric.com
www.gracenote.com