Naturally, there's perks if you do live in an Onkyo universe -- any link using its Remote Interactive cable can both wake the stereo through AirPlay as well as control the dock from a traditional remote.
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As digital cable and interactive TV become more prevalent, they are requiring cable companies to develop more advanced technology, and Gates and company are competing mightily for that business.
The Internet, and the prospect of demand for interactive services, gives the cable companies an advantage over both satellite television and the telecoms companies.
So the news that Cablevision, an American cable company, was rolling out interactive advertisements to all its customers on October 6th was greeted with some scepticism.
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The U.S. market may one day open up for Narayan if the cable industry settles on a standard for interactive TV, which regulators have said must happen by 2005.
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.
Those fast lines and digital connections allow cable vendors to offer bandwidth-intensive, interactive services that satellite vendors like Echostar Communications (nasdaq: DISH - news - people ) and DirecTV can't.
The cable companies' superior technology allows them to offer interactive content and video-on-demand as well as a regular phone service and high-speed internet access.
Then came premium networks, and tiers of service, and pay-per-view, and internet access... and today, cable operators are selling everything from phone service to interactive gaming.
Videotron is a leader in new technologies with its interactive Digital TV service and its broadband network, which supports high-speed cable Internet access, analog and digital cable television, and other services.
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Digital cable offers customers far more channels to watch than standard cable--typically in the hundreds-- and gives them an interactive on-screen program schedule.
He figures that when General Motors one day launches a sport utility vehicle with interactive ads, it won't have to wade through rival technical standards for cable, DirecTV and the broadcast networks.
Interactive digital television has yet to arrive in India, so the first customers for the Internet over cable will be users of its 3m-4m computers.
And, ominously, a cadre of four of its biggest cable customers, sick of Gemstar's near-monopoly, have developed a competing interactive guide that was painstakingly designed to avoid infringing Gemstar's patent portfolio.
Set-top box manufacturers and satellite-TV providers are fighting Gemstar to keep their own guides, and now four large U.S. cable companies are mobilizing to launch a service that will go head on with Gemstar's interactive guide.
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.
The shop was so jammed with reporters and photographers that he could barely squeeze past the displays of cell phones, pagers and interactive televisions that represent Rogers Communications' ambitions to remain a player in Canada's heated convergence of wireless, cable and content.
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