Metamenu Featured in Red HerringLeading Technology Journal Showcases New Interface's Potential Manhattan Beach, CA - July 28, 2006 - Metamenu is featured in the current issue of popular technology journal and investors' bellwether Red Herring. The text of the article follows: What if you could use your DVD menu to search for scenes in The Matrix that reference The Wizard of Oz? Or send an instant message to people watching the same movie? Lionsgate Entertainment recently released five movies on DVD enhanced with Metamenu, which could pave the way for these features. Interactive tools for the next generation of digital media could be big business. DVD sales and rentals generated $23 billion in 2005, according to market research firm Digital Entertainment Group. One-year-old Metabeam, based in Manhattan Beach, California, says Metamenu will take movie-watching to the next level. But first, it must sell studios on the market potential of making DVDs interactive, then convince them to adopt Metamenu as a standard. The five titles with Metamenu, which include Crash and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, are available only on Blu-Ray, a next-generation DVD format. Users click a button to bring up a sliding menu, which is superimposed on the screen. The menu items are similar to what is available now on DVDs, but in the future, Metamenu will allow DVD producers to attach metadata anywhere in the movie, giving consumers many new ways to search. The six-person startup has raised "a few hundred thousand" dollars from angel investors, says CEO Chris Brown. He says Metabeam is profitable and has a customer list of three DVD developers. A graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music, Mr. Brown, 39, has made his mark in digital media before. Sonic solutions bought his last company, DVD software developer InterActual Technologies, in 1994 for close to $10 million. Eventually, when DVD players become networked, users will be able to access online content and services, such as instant messaging. The more users take advantage of the Metamenu system, the stronger it will become, or so the theory goes. "With all the citizen networks emerging, there is a way to connect them to popular data," Mr. Brown says. The previous article is copyrighted by the creators of Red Herring and may nor be reproduced without permission. |
