LAS VEGAS -- In an announcement highly anticipated in the convergence entertainment field, Rearden Steel has revealed the innovation it has secretly been working on for two years. Founder Steve Perlman has unveiled an all-in-one home entertainment hub called the Moxi Media Center and disclosed that its first customer is EchoStar Communications Corp., with key technology partners RealNetworks, Macromedia and NDS Group.

Perlman, best known for having created WebTV, also disclosed that Rearden Steel has changed its name to Moxi Digital Inc. He will continue as president and CEO of the well-financed company.

The Moxi Media Center is a unit slightly larger than a standard DVD player that combines a digital set-top box, a video and music jukebox, a media server and an Internet gateway with security firewall.

"It takes all your digital media, no matter where it comes from, and brings it not only to your PC but also your TV and audio system," Perlman said.

The box, which the company refers to as "the MC" in a wordplay on "master of ceremonies," can handle all kinds of digitized content -- film, television, music and more -- whether it's being delivered in real time, recorded or on the Internet. Interactive TV, instant messaging and e-mail also are integral to its capabilities. EchoStar will deploy the Moxi software platform on its mainstream satellite receivers, providing customers with advanced entertainment applications and services as well as enabling new revenue streams for the giant direct-broadcast satellite television company.

In the near future, EchoStar plans to offer personal video recording functions, digital music services and advanced pay-per-view offerings like DVD-enhanced movies.

Perlman said that supplying customers with the Moxi Media Center rather than traditional boxes will be financially competitive for operators -- $425 for a single-TV household, adding $250 to equip a second TV. Moxi also will integrate the RealNetworks RealOne Player as the preferred streaming media player in the box, making it easy for customers to subscribe to Real's MusicNet-based music service over their Moxi Media Center.

The Moxi Media Center was demonstrated in the EchoStar booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The box comes equipped with an 80-gigabyte hard drive and can send programming to as many as four devices, which it connects to using wireless, ethernet, USB, firewire or existing coaxial cable wiring. It also can be connected to computers, handheld devices and additional hard drive capacity. The hooked-up devices function completely independently of one another. While one person is watching a live television program, for example, another person could be viewing a recorded movie. Even if two people are watching the same thing, one can pause or otherwise manipulate the program without altering what the other is seeing.

Perlman is a pioneer in ITV, having created WebTV and selling it to Microsoft for $500 million in 1997.

Moxi is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and has 115 employees. The company is backed by a $67 million first-round investment from such companies as America Online, Cisco Systems, EchoStar, Mayfield, Vulcan Ventures, the Barksdale Group, the Washington Post Co. and Macromedia Ventures.

The Moxi Media Center has three main capabilities. One is the Moxi Media Guide, a patented navigation system that reduces the number of clicks necessary to find specific things. All content can be located by the time-based schedule familiar to television subscribers or by several other options regardless of the type of content. A search for Mick Jagger, for example, would return his solo recordings, his music as the singer for the Rolling Stones, movies in which he appears and specials in which he's featured, no matter whether these things are already stored as part of the user's collection, being broadcast or located on the Internet.

Second is the Moxi Media Player, a secure multiformat video and music playback system that is fully integrated with the Moxi Media Guide.

Third is the Moxi Music Jukebox, which can store and organize thousands of tracks, again regardless of where they reside, and is integrated with All Music Guide indexing and editorial content.

In the future, Moxi plans to add IP telephony, online gaming and digital photo and video management. These will be structured so that network operators can create new revenue-generating applications without the need to upgrade subscribers' hardware.

Moxi's strategic relationship with NDS Group means that cable and satellite providers will have an open, secure, revenue-generating platform with inherent conditional access systems using NDS' Open VideoGuard.

Macromedia Flash Player 5 has been integrated throughout the Moxi platform, which will make it easier for content providers to customize elements of the user interface.

Moxi will license the technology to cable and satellite TV operators, allowing them to choose whichever hardware and software partners they wish; Moxi will not manufacture the hardware.

Perlman said Moxi is based on the open-source Linux operating system to make it easier for other companies to build compatible applications.te