EMAGINE, Malaysia’s 1st Home-Grown Connected TV Service, Will Change How We Watch TV and Online Entertainment

Lean-back and enjoy a more personal, exciting and comfortable full-screen experience on your HDTV when watching the best of online entertainment with a simple click of a remote.

(Kuala Lumpur, February 28, 2013) – Innovating in the highly popular and fast growing area of direct Internet-video streaming to television sets, Select-TV Solutions Sdn Bhd, a leading end-to-end IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) solutions provider based out of Malaysia, today launched EMAGINE, Malaysia’s 1st, home-grown Connected TV service, powered by high speed broadband Internet that brings a wealth of online and on-demand entertainment directly to the home HDTV.

“The Internet has captured our attention and changed our lives like nothing before. Over 4 billion hours of video is watched each month on YouTube alone, with more than 72 hours of video being uploaded every minute”, said CS Goh, CEO, Select-TV. “Watching this colossal amount of online entertainment and educational content on a PC, tablet or a phone alone doesn’t do it justice anymore. The Internet has already changed the way we consume music with Internet-powered streaming services such as Spotify and others, and this change is now catching on to traditional television and online entertainment”, he added.

Consumers want and demand an easier, more enjoyable, comfortable and seamless experience when watching the online and on-demand videos delivered over broadband internet to HDTVs in their homes. As a result, devices such as Apple TV, Google TV and Roku in the US have sprung up to address that pent up demand. EMAGINE pushes the envelope with home-grown innovation and enters the market with a number of first-of-its-kind features.

Highlights of EMAGINE Features:
• Beautiful, intuitive and responsive user interface that makes browsing, searching and managing online videos quick and easy. EMAGINE does not merely connect the TV to the Internet and replicate the Internet on a bigger screen. We studied the way a person watches TV and then we custom-designed an online & on-demand video viewing experience for the TV that provides seamless navigation through beautifully designed channels and push of a button content viewing.
• In addition to the 200 plus and growing selected EMAGINE Net TV online channels in English and Chinese language, EMAGINE also curates and hand-picks top online videos through EMAGINE Picks, so you can easily discover the latest and most popular entertainment & educational online videos directly through your TV. EMAGINE will soon allow you to watch videos shared by your friends on Facebook and will recommend video content to you based on your watching behavior in the future.
• EMAGINE allows you personalize your viewing experience by adding your own favourite online channels, create and share your own custom online video playlists, and watch and bookmark playlists shared by the EMAGINE Community, directly from your TV.
• EMAGINE allows you to share and comment on the online videos you’re watching and even upload your photos to Facebook from your TV.
• EMAGINE offers premium subscription Karaoke-on-Demand as the first service on its EMAGINE Plus Premium-On-Demand platform, with more than 50,000 songs in English, Malay, Chinese and other languages.  More Premium-On-Demand services will be available soon.
• EMAGINE offers in-built Shoutcast Radio with more than 40,000 free to listen online radio stations across 25 Genres.
• EMAGINE offers full High Definition Media Player capabilities with 3 USB 2.0 ports and a dedicated SD card slot, allowing you to watch your videos and listen to music from your external hard disk or a thumb drive and view photos and videos from your camera SD card directly on TV.
• EMAGINE’s HD Media Player supports MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, AVI, MKV and other major video formats in High Definition 1080P; and all major music and photo formats.
• EMAGINE has embedded Intel® Wireless Display (WIDI), which allows Intel® WIDI compatible laptops to share content and their screens wirelessly on TV in full High Definition.
• Home Server capabilities allow you to stream content wirelessly from your computer to your TV. EMAGINE is also DLNA compliant, which allows you to beam videos and pictures from your mobile devices to your TV with 3rd party downloadable applications such as Twonky Beam, available both for iOS and Android devices.
• EMAGINE has an in-built payment platform for subscription to premium content instantly and directly from your TV.

If you haven’t watched online videos in full-screen High Definition with no advertisements in a lean-back, living room environment on your HDTV you will be amazed, because EMAGINE currently offers the best online entertainment experience on TV available in the market.

EMAGINE comes ready for use with a small, elegant, Internet-enabled box with built-in WiFi that is built on Intel chipsets. It connects directly to your existing HDTV via a HDMI cable. A simple wizard guides you to connect the EMAGINE box to your high-speed broadband network wirelessly or in a wired mode and you can watch online videos immediately through beautifully presented EMAGINE channels. Browsing and searching for your favorite online videos is easy, quick and intuitive and done either through the push of the button on the remote that comes with EMAGINE, or via any USB-connected wired or wireless keyboard.

Sources of EMAGINE Content:
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• User’s own custom playlists
• EMAGINE community shared playlists
• EMAGINE “My Channels” where users will be able to add up to a 100 additional channels of their choice.
• More than 200 Net TV Curated Channels and growing
• Eumakh - Top Local Korean Music Video Channel
• Premium-On-Demand service:
o iOK - Karaoke on Demand with 50,000 songs, on your TV, in your living room in English, Chinese, Malay & Indonesian.
o Subscription to premium services is done straight from the box, with no calls or emails, no registration, no contracts.

EMAGINE works with any HDTV with HDMI input and it works best with an Internet connection with consistent speeds of 3Mbps and above. For optimal High Definition experience, consistent broadband speeds of 5Mbps and above are recommended.

The New Content Ecosystem
By giving people the power to watch what they want and when they want it, in the comfort of their own home, on a single, High Definition big screen with no hassle at all, EMAGINE is changing the way people consume their video and online entertainment, regardless of where it comes from – the Internet or an external drive. “This changes the way we watch and interact with our TVs, and the millions of Online Videos previously watched and shared on PCs, tablets and phones are now available directly on your TV, with no advertisements, in full screen and in high definition wherever available”, said James Chong, who leads EMAGINE as the Chief EMAGINEER. “We have also built EMAGINE to be one of the simplest platforms for content providers to charge for their on-demand content on TV and we are already working with several major content owners and providers in Malaysia to provide their content to homes over EMAGINE at very fair and attractive revenue share arrangements”, he added.

“We have an extraordinary product that beautifully showcases the full potential of online entertainment for the home HDTV, with unique content personalization features that allow you to do things on your TV that you have never been able to do before. There are already over 500,000 Unifi and high speed fibre broadband subscribers in the country and this number can only grow exponentially as high-speed quality broadband becomes indispensable in our daily lives, and as next generation LTE wireless broadband becomes more widely available in Malaysia. Not only will EMAGINE bring more entertainment options to existing high-speed broadband subscribers, but we believe it will drive the demand for high-speed, quality broadband much further as well”, he said.

EMAGINE Availability
EMAGINE currently sells at RM399 with no contractual obligations, no additional subscription fees and comes with a 12 months warranty.

“By the end of the year, we will launch the EMAGINE flagship store and we are very excited about this. The store will reflect the EMAGINE brand and more importantly the EMAGINE experience, a friendly place where people can come, relax, learn about and experience the ‘kick–back and enjoy the best of the Internet from your couch’ experience”, concluded Chong.