Rockford's Omnifi Awarded TechTV's Best of CES in Mobile Audio Category

Rockford Corporation announced today that their new wireless digital media transfer system, Omnifi™, was a CES 2003 showstopper. After winning the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) 2003 Best of Innovations award in the Mobile Electronics category, it followed up with TechTV's Best of CES in the Auto, Marine, and RV category.

TechTV's Best of CES focuses on the best new products that are exhibited at CES 2003. TechTV describes award recipients as "the products ... most likely to be coveted by consumers in the coming year." Only twelve products out of the thousands of products on display at the show are awarded this prize.

"We are extremely pleased with the reception and overwhelming popularity Omnifi received at the 2003 CES from dealers, reps, and the media," exclaims Gary Suttle, Rockford's president and chief executive officer. "It was very rewarding to see that all of the hard work put into this product by the teams at Rockford and SimpleDevices has been acknowledged. We couldn't be happier."

With software from SimpleDevices, Inc. and hardware from Rockford Fosgate, Omnifi eliminates the need to burn CDs to listen to digital music in the car, and gives consumers the ability to download and transfer music and programs from the Internet to the PC hard drive to the consumer's car and home stereo/theater systems.

"Omnifi was distinctive at the show because it allows the consumer to deliver a wide-range of Internet-based digital media from the PC to their automobile and/or home stereo/theater, making this product the most powerful and flexible digital wireless entertainment platform on the market today," explains Craig Janik, CTO of SimpleDevices.

"SimpleDevice's SimpleWare™ and SimpleCenter™ software leverages industry standards, such as 802.11 and Universal Plug and Play (UpnP), to extend home networking technology beyond the PC or home gateway to a wide variety of digital device applications. No other company currently offers wireless transfer capability this simple and effective."

Omnifi is a family of connected devices based on the SimpleWare software suite. In the Omnifi system, these software applications give consumers the ability to manage their media in one simple, yet powerful media player application, SimpleCenter and then wirelessly deliver it to Omnifi devices that connect to the stereo or are installed in the car.

SimpleWare is the only connected device software on the market that enables the delivery of local and Internet-based music, radio streams, information updates and other types of media files to a variety of products. The Omnifi system allows consumers to manage all of their media in one location, and then access it at their stereo or in their automobile.

The Omnifi mobile system consists of a remote-mounted, drop resistant, 20-Gigabyte storage unit, an ARM7 microprocessor, and an easy-to-use 1-DIN front mounted controller.

The Omnifi home audio/home theater product consists of a stand-alone receiver capable of streaming media dispatched from the personal computer and an optional wireless access point that allows 802.11B wireless transmission and receipt of the media.

Omnifi should be available in April 2003 at a suggested retail price of $599 (US).

Rockford Fosgate Web Site

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