Be Launches Home Audio Appliance Platform

Be, Inc. most known for recently releasing its operating system, the BeOS, has been hard at work creating embedded software for use on all kinds of home Internet appliances and the like. Its most recent creation was unveiled at CES this week, in the form the Home Audio Reference Platform, or HARP. HARP is designed for Internet-enabled home stereo equipment, according to the press release, and uses BeIA to play CDs, tapes, and LPs.

BeIA was developed at Be, Inc. specifically as an Internet appliance solution, and is now being customized to fit a vast range of said devices.

HARP uses this platform to turn home stereo equipment into a jukebox that can encode, organize, and quickly play any music in your home collection. President of Marketing for Be Lamar Potts told reporters "The beauty of HARP is that it is highly modular and can be managed
remotely, without user intervention."

It utilizes standard connections to make it easy to set up and run immediately out of the box. It can acquire audio from CDs, tapes, LPs, handheld MP3 players, and Internet sources (AIF, Wav, MP3, RealAudio, etc.). And it can stream those popular Web formats.

The HARP should be available to home stereo equipment developers to create branded products in the second quarter of this year.

For more information read the press release.