Gadget Reviews, Product News, Electronic Gadgets

Motorola was on the scene at CES 2012 with the details on how they would change the face of DVRs by replacing those recording units with home video gateways designed to move content between all of your devices and technology (including gaming consoles, computers, tablets, smartphones or other set-top boxes).

FierceCable had the opportunity to interview Larry Robinson, Corporate VP and General Manager of Home Devices at Motorola to get some more of the down-and-dirty details.

The interview asked some of the questions we have all been wanting answers for, including when we can expect to see these devices hit the consumer market. Robinson indicated that the timeline was really dependent upon other companies with the first set of vendors targeted as cable companies that will be deploying their DCX-3600 video gateway.

The interview made it obvious that Motorola was not really trying to replace other methods of content delivery (such as using gaming consoles to view video content) in so much as it is trying to streamline the content coming into a home in an effort to make it available to multiple devices. This distinction is more about source than it is about the streaming itself –you can still use your xBox 360 to stream content to your television set but you might be picking that content up from your single Motorola video gateway. Delivering content in this manner means a single source of streaming and storage (potentially) which is great news for those of us with tablets and computers and televisions (oh my!).

I think the most enlightening part of the interview comes from Robinson explaining why Motorola’s technology is actually useful in a way that makes sense to the layperson. Motorola wants to do all of the translation and decoding so that content providers (such as your cable company) can deliver your video in their proprietary format and it can run through Motorola’s device and be delivered anywhere in the format each device requires.

This technology and the overall evolution of the television is very exciting and proves that you have to use it or lose it in this brave new world if you’d like to survive. Cable companies seem to be starting to understand this, hopefully it happened in the nick of time.