The convergence of television, computing and communication technology is providing a revolution in home entertainment. Set Top Boxes, often referred to as Residential Gateways, are the equipment that enables the delivery of digital and multimedia technology at a much higher quality than current methods. The residential gateway is a door that opens up your connection to all of the enhanced services available through a rapidly converging world of communication, entertainment and connectivity. Artesian Direct is a company that provides that gateway.

The term Set Top Box encapsulates a large span of products from units used in the cable industry that are hardly more that digital channel tuners with possibly an electronic programming guide (EPG) to units (i.e. Celerity T6000) that provide a wider array of functions than a personal computer. There is no doubt that Set-Top-Boxes will be a necessary communication component in the future.

The possibilities of what Set Top Boxes can provide is endless, but some of the current benefits are: digital Video On-Demand (VOD), analog and Digital Television from both terrestrial and satellite sources, Web surfing and other Internet functionality, T Commerce, home energy management, security in health care monitoring, games and gaming, interactive television and more. In fact, since a high-end Digital set top box includes a powerful processor (such as an Intel Pentium™), a large amount of memory, and a host of network and peripheral interconnection devices, there is almost no limit to what applications could be hosted on these devices over time. The better devices account for this by having a "software-centric" approach. This allows people with imagination to create applications such as home banking and financial services, all sorts of distance learning and other educational applications, every sort of entertainment, including video, music, graphics, games, and many kinds of home networking activities.

Imagine a hotel room that not only has Digital Video On-Demand (watch whatever you want whenever you want with full VCR like control), cable channels, full Internet and business functionality without having to lug a laptop or printer along, but also becomes what the industry calls the "hotel room of the future". Such a hotel room would be able to control the lighting, heating/cooling, radio, television, and other appliances, and even have your coffee pot turn on at the right time every morning, or place an order to room service for your favorite meal at the right time. Furthermore, such functionality could be customized to individual users with their ID entered by the hotel staff prior to check-in, or possibly through a special access card or code that the guest puts in upon arriving in the room, that way no matter where you stay, you are always treated consistently. This is not that far away!

Imagine an apartment building where mom and dad could be watching Video On- Demand movies in one room, while their older child reviews her homework from the school server, giving her a chance to catch up on Algebra, her toughest subject. In the other room, the younger child is surfing the Internet at speeds of 500 kbps per second on up to 25 Mbps per second, depending upon the network architecture, either using their PC, or another set top box on their television set or the wireless or wired remote. This family can experience, with almost no outlay of capital and with no massive rewiring of the property, tremendous benefits never before available.

As Set Top Boxes begin to proliferate, another obvious benefit occurs: as there become, economies of scale (a large number of set top boxes deployed or deplorable), network operators will become more aggressive in deploying the high speed broadband networks that are needed to offer you ubiquitous service to everyone. Additionally, applications developers, seeing a large market, will spend a good bit more of their time developing set top box specific applications as apposed to PC specific applications. This is important, since set top boxes, although terrific, have different performance characteristics than PC's.

Some other advantages for Set Top Boxes is their ability to provide an expansive array of applications, thus justifying their cost over a number of alternative communication devices including cable, Internet, and phone usage. If a Set Top Box, through home energy management saves you $17.00 to $27.00 dollars per month on your energy bill (an estimate made by the Tennessee Valley Authority), that savings alone will more than cover the initial cost of a Set Top Box. Plugging your home health care appliance (blood pressure cup, heart monitor, blood sugar monitor, or whatever) into your Set Top Box and sending real-time health care data to your provider enabling you to have real-time collaborative discussion with them is priceless. The benefits to education, retailing, advertising, financial services, and certainly to our beleaguered energy industry, each individually pay for the box, and collectively make the box a great idea.

Artesian Direct, is an example of a company that delivers a complete interface solution to broadband. The Artesian Direct solution provides for a seamless delivery of a Set Top Box, printer, keyboard and user interface mouse that allows the client access to all of the enhanced offerings of our rapidly growing broadband world. The main advantage to the user is the delivery of a total interface solution in a convenient manner that limits the requirements on the user to learn an entire new technology interface. Artesian Direct has partnered with the leading Set Top Box manufacturers in the world (Celerity & Pace) to provide the most advanced technology available for the delivery of digital video-on-demand, online audio-on-demand, high-speed Internet service, online gaming, voice over the Internet and a never-ending option of new software applications being offered to the broadband generation.

Artesian Direct is also in the process of adding another dimension to the solution, CAPRISOL ™. The company has partnered with the Hewlett Packard Company (HP) to provide the "printer driver" tools (printer drivers provide for the communication between the Set Top Box and the printer) that will allow users to experience print output from their residential gateways in a high quality digital format manner. Looking over the horizon, Artesian Direct is in the final stages of bringing their CAPRISOL ™ solution to the user as part of the complete interface bundle. CAPRISOL ™ notifies the user and Artesian Direct when the printer has reached a 20% level of residual ink in the cartridge. Upon notification, the user can automatically replenish their ink cartridges from the convenience of their home and have the replacement cartridges delivered directly to their doorstep. No more concerns about proper cartridge selection and the electronic sales method allow the user to experience the most competitive pricing on their ink replenishment needs everyday. This is just one small example of the benefits being made available through the installation of Set Top Box bundles and the delivery of broadband services to the every-day-user.