It may be that people will have to unplug both their refrigerators and their cable boxes.
It has four new cable boxes capable of automatically recording shows, displaying high-definition video and playing DVDs.
Set-top cable boxes consume about as much energy as a refrigerator over the course of a year.
FORBES: Energy Waste Rebounds: Top 10 Energy Pigs in the Plug
This is an old hat for Satellite STB, but not for cable boxes.
This change will not affect the ability of any TV to work with cable boxes, satellite boxes, DVDs, VCRs or game consoles.
Most cable boxes like Motorola and Scientific Atlanta are less than intuitive, so be prepared to download the manual for the STB.
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Generic cable boxes lack a view to the Web, and Web-centric set-tops from Apple and Google lack a view to cable.
StoneRidge stems from an agreement that Charter Communications, a cable company, had with two vendors, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta, which supplied Charter with cable boxes.
Microsoft's scaled-down OS, Windows CE, is already appearing in cable boxes, and Microsoft is positioning it to create other appliances with attitude -- let's call them active appliances.
Designed for easy setup and use, PLAYBAR connects to the TV with a single optical cable, playing everything that is connected to it, including cable boxes, Blu-ray players and game consoles.
This is further corroborated by an exec with a "top US MSO" who confirmed specifically that talks are underway with Google on how the TV platform could be integrated with cable boxes.
ENGADGET: Shocker: Google hoping to lure more cable providers to cool Google TV side of the room
It connects to TVs, game consoles and cable boxes via Toslink cable and wires into home networks via Gigabit Ethernet or wireless connectivity can be had for those who own a Sonos Bridge.
Sun Microsystems' write-once-run-anywhere programming language is expected to grow from an installed base of 3.8 million digital cable boxes in 1998 to 12 million boxes by year 2001, according to International Data Corp. (IDC), a Framingham, Mass.
The TX-NR807 also includes Onkyo's new Bi-Directional Preprogrammed RI Remote Control which will impress anyone who has ever been frustrated by the trial-and-error manual data inputs and paper listings usually needed to program associated TV's, disc players, cable boxes, and other components.
ENGADGET: Onkyo TX-NR807 and TX-SR707 receivers keep the updates rolling
StoneRidge stems from an agreement that Charter Communications (nasdaq: CHTR - news - people ), a cable company, had with two vendors, Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) and Scientific-Atlanta, which supplied Charter with cable boxes.
Unauthorized cable TV decoder boxes are a good example, he added.
When loaded on a tablet or smartphone, TV Discovery can act as a universal remote control, slinging commands to cable and satellite boxes, Blu-Ray players, home stereos and more.
For example, there are industry standards for measuring energy usage in TVs and cable set-top boxes.
Only now are recording abilities beginning to show up in cable set-top boxes.
Set-top boxes allow cable-TV subscribers to surf the Internet from their sofas.
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.
Traditionally, service providers used devices like set-top boxes with cable cards that allowed them to ensure only paying subscribers were receiving the content and that it was protected.
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.
Consumers can always buy cable or terrestrial digital boxes.
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.
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.
Clumsy tech and weak content (I'll get to that later) is why home media streaming hasn't taken off as much as we would all like and why most of us, myself included, still have old-fashioned set-top boxes from the cable company.
The living room TV experience can now be extended to a second or third TV and even remotely to a TV outside of your home using SlingPlayer on a NeoTV, without having to lease additional set-top boxes from your cable or satellite service provider.
ENGADGET: SlingPlayer, TuneIn and other channels added to Netgear's NeoTV lineup
Set top boxes for satellite and cable also use a hardware module to authenticate devices and bind them to subscribers.
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