The rivalry between the PC and TV will take on new urgency as three prominent technology executives sketch out competing visions of their digital product lines.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6 The rivalry between the PC and TV over which is destined to become the hearth of the home will take on new urgency on Monday when three prominent technology executives sketch out competing visions of their digital product lines.

Steve Perlman, a former Apple Computer hardware designer and co-founder of WebTV, will introduce a digital television set-top box as part of an alliance with EchoStar Communications, the satellite broadcaster. The partnership, which is to be announced on the opening day of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will be the debut for Moxi Digital, the company Mr. Perlman founded in January 2000. Moxi was until recently named Rearden Steel Technologies.

Moxi's digital set-top box is designed to function as a home media server, integrating the functions of several devices digital video recorder, CD player, DVD player, MP3 music player with an Internet connection and a high-speed wireless home network. The system, which Moxi intends to license to satellite and cable operators, is built on a vision of a grand media convergence in which TV viewers in any room of the house will have access to all kinds of digital video, music and Internet data.

Mr. Perlman's vision of the future, however, contrasts sharply with the PC-centric view of Steven Jobs, the co-founder and chairman of Apple. Monday is the opening day of Apple's Macworld exhibition in San Francisco, and the company has been going to unusual extremes to create speculation about what kind of product surprises Mr. Jobs will unveil in his presentation, which will open the show.

Since returning to lead Apple in August 1997, Mr. Jobs has increasingly steered the company toward a consumer electronics strategy in which the Macintosh computer serves as a digital hub for a variety of consumer peripherals like cameras, scanners, MP3 players and hand- held devices. Last year, the company began opening a chain of retail stores that emphasize consumer gadgets that can be used with its computers. In October, Apple began selling its own MP3 player, the iPod, which has been well received and is widely viewed as a model for future Apple digital peripherals.

Also in Las Vegas on Monday evening, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, will announce several new technologies and alliances. Microsoft is increasingly taking an agnostic view about the PC, as it begins to place its Windows operating system on all kinds of digital devices.

By contrast, Mr. Perlman, who has backing from investors like AOL Time Warner, Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, EchoStar and the Washington Post Company, is trying to build a new low-cost consumer platform that will allow consumers to blend their own digital content with that provided by the cable and satellite giants.

"He's finding a way to weave new magic," said Richard Doherty, a consumer electronics industry analyst and president of Envisioneering, a consulting firm based in Seaford, N.Y. Mr. Perlman, he said, has basically pursued the same goal of using digital technologies in the home from his days at Apple, General Magic, WebTV and Microsoft before founding Moxi.

Some analysts say that such TV- centric devices may be effective in challenging the role of the PC in the home.

"There is a widely held belief that there will be media shared across televisions and stereos in the home and we will need advice to manage all of that," said Josh Bernoff, principal media and entertainment analyst for Forrester Research. "I don't want a PC at the center of my media experience, and with all due respect I don't want a Mac there, either."

In an interview last week at Moxi's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Mr. Perlman said he had embarked on his current course after spending almost $1 million to build a custom system with similar features at his vacation home in Tahoe.

"Perlman has relied on his own instincts about what he wants in a consumer product, more than trusting market research," Mr. Doherty said.

Mr. Perlman said that after Microsoft acquired WebTV for $425 million in April 1997 he had stayed and tried to refine the product until it became clear that Microsoft's principal interest was in ensuring that its Windows CE operating system was in the box rather than improving the consumer experience.

The Moxi Media Center connects to standard or high-definition TV's and to satellite, cable and D.S.L. networks. It will play DVD's and CD's and has hardware connectors that will make it possible to store digital video and photo data.

The box, which uses the Linux operating system and Macromedia's Flash graphics system, will also have a slot for adding a home wireless network using the new 802.11A standard, which supports data rates above 54 megabits.

The wireless network will make it possible to connect the Media Center set-top box to remote televisions with the purchase of a $36 Media Center Extension. The remote television will share all of the capabilities of the base station, like recording programs, watching live shows and listening to CD's. Although it is technically possible to play DVD's remotely, because of intellectual property restrictions that function is not included in the system.

Mr. Perlman takes an engineer's pride in describing the company's solution to the problem of converting the contents of compact discs into MP3 files that can be stored digitally.

Moxi has designed a specialized device, which would be rented to consumers on an hourly basis, that uses powerful microprocessors to convert 100 CD's an hour and store them as digital files.

He said Moxi had taken significant pains to protect the digital rights of music and video content producers. The system uses cryptography extensively to place barriers against illegal sharing of copyrighted material, the kind of trading that got the Napster music-swapping service into legal trouble.

The theft issue can be minimized if system designers make it convenient to use digital information legitimately, Mr. Perlman said.

"I have lots of multimillionaire Silicon Valley friends who used Napster because it was convenient, even though they could easily afford to buy CD's," he said.

Moxi must prove that such powerful consumer products have a mass appeal, despite the generally slow acceptance of more limited devices like personal video recorders from TiVo and SonicBlue's ReplayTV.

Using new silicon design techniques and taking advantage of falling industry costs, Moxi has been able to lower the cost of its system substantially, compared with earlier digital video systems and high-end cable set-top boxes. Mr. Perlman said the set's cost to satellite and cable providers would be about $425, making it possible for them to lease systems to subscribers, much the way cable television boxes are used.

Mr. Perlman's version of the home entertainment system of the future is likely to increasingly find itself competing for the consumer's dollars with that of Mr. Jobs.

Apple has gone to unusual lengths this year to set high expectations for its announcement.

In December, Mr. Jobs announced that he would move his presentation forward a day so it would fall on the same day as the introductions by Mr. Perlman and Mr. Gates. He also extended the length of his keynote speech by an hour, making it a Castro-like two and a half hours.

This has touched off a frenzy of speculation on the dozens of Web sites that track every move Apple makes.

Most of the analysts who follow the company are guessing that it will introduce a new line of iMac home computers with flat-panel LCD displays, perhaps as large as 17 inches. However, there is wilder conjecture as well, ranging from an "iWalk" hand-held computer to an "iDock" wireless Web tablet using the same high-speed digital network standard being pursued by Mr. Perlman.