For example, there are industry standards for measuring energy usage in TVs and cable set-top boxes.
Remember those rumors that the networking giant was shopping around its Scientific Atlanta cable set-top box business?
FORBES: Cisco Agrees To Buy Cable Gear Maker NDS For $5 Billion
One half, Motorola Mobility, got the cellphone and cable set-top box units and ex- Qualcomm exec Sanjay Jha as CEO.
Only now are recording abilities beginning to show up in cable set-top boxes.
If it's something in the living room, like your cable set-top box or stereo, Microsoft could be in trouble.
Write it down: this may have been the day that the cable set-top box business came down with a terminal disease.
FORBES: Did Microsoft Just Kill The Cable Set-Top Box Business?
Cable set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta may be guilty of the most bizarre power button behavior for its digital video recorder distributed by TimeWarner Cable.
What remains is the cable set top business formerly known as General Instrument and Police and First Responder Interconnect systems plus some network business.
The tool is to radio what cable set-top technology is to television, said David Frerichs, Sonicbox's co-founder, chief technical officer and vice president of marketing.
On Thursday July 1st it'll have been five years since the FCC mandate went into affect requiring all cable set-top boxes to have a 1394 port.
ENGADGET: FCC waives 1394 requirement in lieu of an IP interface HD
Cisco and Motorola, along with other companies that make cable set-top boxes, are worried the FCC will include new video-streaming standards in the broadband plan, says Arbogast.
It is swallowing Motorola Mobility whole, including the handset business, which has lately focused mostly on selling Android phones, and one of the two major U.S. players in cable set-top boxes.
In fact, Ballmer is working to persuade the big pay-TV players--Comcast and Verizon are already Xbox partners--to allow their customers the choice of an Xbox over a cable set-top.
In the future, Microsoft could also license Kinect software to TVs and cable set-top box makers just like Google embeds its Android software in TVs to come out with Google TV.
FORBES: Microsoft Accelerates 'Net-TV Convergence With Kinect, Stock Heads To $32
Digital video has moved beyond DVDs and cable set-top boxes to big cinema screens, small screens like the new iPod's and over the Web in the form of Internet-downloaded movies and TV shows.
Kevin Hause, who tracks interactive business for IDC, thinks that it is too soon to say whether Sun will be able to dominate the cable set-top box market, as cable operators are hedging their bets on various operating systems.
Neither company's effort has done anything to shake the shared stronghold of Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) and Scientific Atlantic (nyse: SFA - news - people ) on the cable set-top box industry.
Sources close to Mr Hunt tell me he is powerless to block the takeover on those grounds, because Business Secretary Vince Cable set the terms of the investigation of the takeover as being exclusively about whether the deal would harm plurality or choice in the media.
Bill Gates has a long history of making investments in cable companies with the hopes that it will secure Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people) software a significant role in the technology used for high-speed Internet access and for cable set-top boxes that deliver interactive TV.
The cable network set the standard for high quality original programming and its mobile service, HBO to Go is proving to be a bulwark against people cutting the cable cord.
Unlike the first model, which required you to hook the scale to your computer with a micro-USB cable and set it from there, this version can be set up from a smartphone.
ENGADGET: Withings WS-30 WiFi bathroom scale hands-on Hands-on
Yes, there was more on display, but we've decided to spare you the sight of every walkie-talkie, cable modem, set-top box and cellphone in Moto's lineup.
And about 40% more will be able to view the digital signal through a digital cable or satellite set-top box on an analog TV they already own.
But without a digital TV tuner, or a cable or satellite set-top box that can convert a digital signal, consumers won't get any TV at all by 2009.
Apple has been in talks with cable companies about a set-top box for watching television for years, only making some progress recently.
The old cable box decrypts its set of data and discards the Passage bits, while a Passage-enabled box decrypts only the Passage-encoded video.
If you want to record The Sopranos, you have to set the cable box to HBO and tell the MX when to start and stop.
For connected TVs, they are going to introduce new TVs with Time Warner Cable (TWX) that will allow viewing all cable content without a set-top box.
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