The Wall Street Journal has anonymous sources saying the company will unveil an Internet-connected set-top box that combines live, on-demand and recorded TV to compete with the likes of Apple and Google.

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The battle for the online TV market has gathered pace this year after BT joined forces with other big names in the industry such as BBC to develop YouView, an internet connected set-top box.

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That means he doesn't put much stock in all the hype at the Consumer Electronics Show around the almighty trend of convergence: systems that can shuttle your movies, songs and photos from the Internet to the set-top box to the PC and back without calling an IT specialist.

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Details are a little hazy at the moment, but apparently Dean Takahashi over at San Jose Mercury News posted and then quickly pulled a post from his blog about how Robbie Bach and Bill Gates were going to announce that the Xbox 360 will soon be able to double as a set-top box for Internet Protocol Television.

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Whatever the form of connection, television makers are doing away with a set-top box for dialling into the Internet.

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It also means offering broadband Internet service accessible via a personal digital assistant, game console, cell phone or set-top box.

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The industry believes that the Internet will give consumers one more reason to pay for a digital pipeline and a clever set-top box.

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"Two years ago, there were grand plans to have a very expensive set-top box in which everything was converged - the telephone, the internet and the TV, " said Mickey Kalifa, UK general manager of OpenTV, which makes the software sitting inside many set-top boxes.

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