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.
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.
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.
One half, Motorola Mobility, got the cellphone and cable set-top box units and ex- Qualcomm exec Sanjay Jha as CEO.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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 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.
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.
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.
Generic cable boxes lack a view to the Web, and Web-centric set-tops from Apple and Google lack a view to cable.
Set-top boxes allow cable-TV subscribers to surf the Internet from their sofas.
Apple has been in talks with cable companies about a set-top box for watching television for years, only making some progress recently.
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.
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.
However, Cisco is also facing dramatic declines in orders from cable providers, especially in set-top box business.
FORBES: Cisco Stares Into Traditional Set-Top Box Black Hole But It Just Doesn't Matter
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.
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