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.
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.
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.
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
Since those systems were designed, the Internet has taken off, and the cable companies now deploying digital set-top boxes are looking for Internet-compatible systems.
The FCC has mandated that cable companies must start selling their set-top boxes at retail in 2000 and stop leasing them altogether by 2005.
Today, cable systems have to provide costly set-top boxes equipped with high-capacity hard drives to every new customer that signs up for DVR service.
Set-top boxes allow cable-TV subscribers to surf the Internet from their sofas.
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.
In broadband, demands on tuners are increasing as cable TV operators expand their services and as set-top boxes add more complex features.
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
Ending a multiyear battle between Hollywood studios and telecommunications giants, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that cable operators could allow subscribers to store recorded shows on cable systems' massive central databases instead of in set-top boxes.
Cable firm NTL already offers a broadband service via its set-top boxes.
Cable companies are beginning to build similar features into their set-top boxes.
Many of the set-top boxes supplied by NTL have a cable modem inside that could do the same job.
In addition to the traditional Motorola set-top business, the company offers Google TV, a software platform offered through OEMs via both televisions and after-market set-top boxes, to integrate content from cable and the open Internet.
You know how people have been telling TiVo how the only way they're going to survive would be to convince some a cable company to license their digital video recorder software for use on set-top boxes?
At the moment, for example, set-top boxes for televisions need separate circuits to handle cable and satellite feeds.
Cable companies, racing to keep up, are installing a TiVo-like disk into their set-top boxes.
Wolk goes so far as to suggest that cable providers will focus on making tablets their main hardware presence in the living room instead of leaning on set-top boxes.
ENGADGET: The state of the second screen: Will TV companion apps proliferate or dwindle?
Other cable companies like Time Warner Cable are said to be interested in RDK hardware, which could spur the development of new and better set-top boxes -- we can hope, can't we?
ENGADGET: Humax's take on an IP-connected TV box for Comcast passes through the FCC
It promised the cable companies that the future would be theirs if they allowed Microsoft to build the operating system that went inside the set-top boxes.
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