And it introduced another aimed at set top boxes that blend the Internet with television.
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Set top boxes for satellite and cable also use a hardware module to authenticate devices and bind them to subscribers.
There used to be a thriving industry for counterfeit set top boxes.
Boxee TV uses a Broadcom chip (BRCM) which is cheaper than the Intel (INTC) chip used in many set top boxes.
The company is also in over 30% of digital TV and set top boxes and an increasing presence in automotive and data storage.
The announcement parallels a move Apple made in 2010 from Intel processors to its own ARM-based A4 smartphone processor for its line of Apple TV set top boxes.
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The rationale, according to National Cable and Television Association spokesman Brian Dietz, is that neither customers nor cable companies should have to pay for new set top boxes to maintain service.
Rather, it'll be be those traditional and not-so-traditional CE players offering set top boxes with big disks and HD video on demand that form the roots of your demise.
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With nearly 23 million U.S. subscribers, plans to expand internationally, and deals with all the major TV manufacturers and set top boxes to embed Netflix in the digital dashboards of internet enabled devices, Netflix appeared unstoppable.
Consumer electronics (CE) vendors and service providers are seeking standards-based Wi-Fi home networking solutions for HD video distribution to enable consumers to easily stream video content between CE devices, set top boxes (STBs) and personal computers (PC).
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This, in the end, may be the reason Google is letting go (and could also signal that Cisco will soon sell its own TV set top box unit) as Asian competitors may be turning set top boxes into commodities.
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As for who do I think will take third, Blackberry needs to move beyond the smartphone market and Microsoft has positions in a number of other markets autos, set top boxes, gaming consoles that make it a formidable player.
What we do know now is, in the long-run, web traffic will matter less and less as services such as Twitter mature into companies that use the Internet to connect computers, set top boxes, phones, and other devices through specialized applications, rather than the boring old Web browser.
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While startups such as Roku and Boxee offering compact, Internet-friendly set top boxes have opened up their platforms to a wide array of developers, Apple still keeps AppleTV on a tight leash, even as the number of developers and apps for its iPad and iPhone continue to swell.
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These devices provide direct attached storage that can be used to save user content, such as in a backup, to move content from place to place faster than a network allows or even for expanding the useful storage capacity for some common household devices such as some set top boxes or DVRs.
About 13 million digital set-top boxes will be sold in North and South America this year.
Worldwide, sales of digital set-top boxes are expected to nearly triple in four years, to 96 million.
Cable companies, racing to keep up, are installing a TiVo-like disk into their set-top boxes.
Dragon TV is Nuance's voice and language understanding platform for set-top boxes and connected TV devices.
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Narayen notes that Adobe works happily with some 70 makers of phones, tablets and set-top boxes.
Over the next five years, sales of digital set-top boxes are expected to explode.
The other major factor pushing the sales of digital set-top boxes is good old government regulation.
For example, there are industry standards for measuring energy usage in TVs and cable set-top boxes.
The same could eventually happen to set-top boxes, like Roku, if Smart TV takes over.
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Set-top boxes will be on display from industry leaders such as General Instrument and Scientific-Atlanta.
Some programmable logic designs have been stripped down for cost-sensitive applications such as digital set-top boxes.
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He is staying plenty busy pressing Microsoft beyond PCs into television set-top boxes, games, cell phones.
CNN.com, say, showing on their web-enabled set-top boxes, the channel can be distributed in new ways.
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