It’s pricey, but hey–what’s another $10,000?

After more than three years and $17.5 million in private investments, Frox Inc. is preparing to ship the first units of its long-awaited interactive home entertainment center some time before Christmas.

Based on high-end digital and computer technologies, the FroxSystem was unveiled during private showings for dealers at the June Consumer Electronics Show. Company officials say response to the $10,000 system was positive–they signed up 120 dealers on the spot, happily more than the 108 they’d targeted.

In fact, they say, Frox’s Seattle dealer has already sold out his quota of 10 systems. Frox president Austin Vanchieri claims that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates ordered the dealer’s entire block of FroxSystems for himself and other Microsoft executives.

Silicon Valley history. Frox has an interesting history, parts of which some readers may know. The company was founded in 1986 by Hartmut Esslinger, founder of the award-winning industrial design firm Frogdesign in Menlo Park, California. Esslinger’s firm designed the look of the Next machine, Sun Microsystems’ Sparcstation and many of Apple Computer’s products.

Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers of the Macintosh and principal designer of the Mac’s system software (now working under a cloak of secrecy at General Magic, supposedly on a consumer communications device), wrote the original operating system for Frox. But at the end of 1989, both Esslinger and Hertzfeld left Frox. Hertzfeld took with him the rights for the Macintosh version of the OS.

Hertzfeld lives on. Though Vanchieri says Frox used none of either Esslinger’s hardware design or Hertzfeld’s user interface and operating system, in fact substantial and important pieces of Hertzfeld’s work remain. (We know this because Hertzfeld did an extensive demo of his version of his Frox OS at a recent meeting of the Software Entrepreneurs Forum in Palo Alto.)

A four-part system. The FroxSystem consists of four main parts: FroxVision, FroxSound, FroxControl and FroxCast.

Vision with a Sparc. FroxVision consists of a video preprocessor, a media processor and three types of monitors: a 31-inch direct-view monitor, which looks like a regular TV screen, a 51-inch rear-projection big screen, and a 10-foot front-projection screen for true “home theater” applications.

Frox calls the Media Processor and the video preprocessor the “heart” of FroxVision. The hardware is based on a patented architecture that uses a Sun Microsystems Sparc RISC chip as central processor and nine custom chips that both perform picture improvement and synchronize the operation of 2 to 16 digital signal processors (DSP) for audio quality.

Software consists of a graphical user interface that the viewer navigates to control everything from color to picture quality to program and device selection to hooking up new components as they become available and/or worth the effort. And yes, it’s easy to program your VCR with Frox–just select the program from an on-screen listing and drag it to a VCR icon on the control panel.

Bring on the digital TV. The video preprocessor pulls in and digitizes a standard NTSC signal, then uses all-digital processing on the picture to improve color, acuity and resolution, and to remove motion artifacts and lines. The result is a very high-quality picture–not quite HDTV quality, but certainly head-and-shoulders above anything seen today, even on Super VHS.

Vanchieri says the system won’t be obsolete when digital TV and movies start to hit. “We just won’t have to do analog-to-digital conversion,” he says. “We’ll just be able to take in the digital signal directly.”

Digital sound, too. FroxSound consists of an analog-digital-analog converter; optional front, rear and center channel speakers and a digital subwoofer; and an optional 100-disc CD system changer.

The sound system is based on what’s called “steered logic,” implemented in the DSP chips, which the company claims will provide quality “identical” to the surround-sound systems found in movie theaters. The reason, it says, is that today’s home Dolby surround systems provide only three decibels of separation between front and rear speakers. FroxSound provides 21 decibels.

Don’t break the glass. Though Frox can connect to a regular analog speaker system, its own speakers are fully digital, including a digital subwoofer to amplify lower-frequency sounds, such as jet engines, that aren’t heard but are felt. The system is also designed to accept digital fiber input from up to 32 speakers.

In fact, the entire FroxSystem is cabled with fiber. Fiber-optic cable does carry more data faster, but since it’s made of glass it can’t take much physical abuse and refuses to be bent at 90-degree angles.

FroxControl. A space-age-looking remote device called the FroxWand controls the FroxSystem. Designed with a base to sit on a table, as opposed to being left on the couch where someone might sit on it, it uses a thumbstick controller to move the cursor around the screen to make selections.

One of Hertzfeld’s creations, the cursor is a grasping hand that closes part-way when you reach a “live” place on the screen. A click on one of the remote’s buttons finishes the selection. (Another one of Hertzfeld’s ideas, which Frox says it plans to implement, is to let users select from a series of hand styles–a neat and very Andy-esque feature.)

FroxCast. Frox, in a move that vividly demonstrates the cost benefits to repackaging digital data, is also launching the FroxCast service when it ships the system. With a monthly charge similar to that of a cable company, the company will use satellite uplinks to provide a downloadable 40,000-title CD library containing the names of cuts on each title, cover art and other information; a movie library with a mini-rating system for thousands of movies; TV, cable and satellite schedules; sports reports and score updates every 20 minutes; and financial market information.

A little overwhelming. A couple pieces of equipment that are pretty key to the system–digital speakers and the 100-disc CD changer–are optional, but the company says it will provide them for less than $400 each. That’s what Vanchieri said, so hold him to it.

If you think this is all a bit too much, just wait a while. Vanchieri says the company has plans to enable adding keyboards, modems and other computerish equipment to the system. “I’d be insane to launch with it, though,” he says. “When the time is right, we will.”

- Denise Caruso