Tethered to a large helium-filled balloon, the 23-pound Sword, as it's known, was able to climb up and down the long cable while workers kept the balloon steady with guide ropes.
In one corner of the room, a plastic headset and goggles hung droopily from a long black cable.
Matias has kept the overall design the same as the Tactile Pro in both cases, though: a look similar to Apple's old Pro keyboard with no frills beyond three USB 2.0 ports, only the basics in terms of extra keys, two legs underneath to prop it up and a 6-foot-long USB cable (no wireless option here).
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Just think about how long it took cable companies to get customers to bundle services.
Advertisers have long relied on cable TV to provide access to their target audience.
For the immediate future, the fortunes of Mr Freston's company will rest largely on the health of its long-established cable networks.
The Mets, at the peak of their popularity in the mid-1980s, made the mistake of locking into a long-term cable agreement that cut them off from the escalating rights fees of the 1990s.
How long did Time Warner Cable subscribers have to wait to receive The NFL Network?
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Call me nostalgic, but I enjoy the reruns of long ago so my cable and DVD collection works for me.
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But on Jan. 11 of that year, television in America turned a technological corner when eight stations on the East Coast and seven Midwestern stations were linked via the first long-distance coaxial cable.
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The ruling looks like a clear victory for subscribers of cable services, long frustrated by awkward set-top box technology and perpetually rising subscription fees.
Say, for instance, HBO, a channel cable-cutter have long wished they could subscribe to online.
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Thanks to technology--primarily the Internet--the traditional differences between local and long-distance phone services, cable TV, satellite TV, radio and television are being obliterated.
Sky One viewers see the hour-long special first while viewers without cable or satellite will have to wait a few months more until it pops up in the terrestrial run on Channel 4.
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But unlike the last build-out, when companies buried thousands of miles of long-haul fiber-optic cable under the sea and across continents, today's construction is focused more on connecting local homes and businesses with faster Internet pipes.
For one, it's a battery hog (that, or the battery's too small), lasting about three hours in my tests before going back to the cradle or having to run plugged in (the power cable's reasonably long at eight feet).
My guess is that if it is done right, collaborative filtering of content can expose the long tail better than the current cable bundle, at which point Apple (or some other company) would really have something to talk to the cable companies about.
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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.
All of this raises the question: How long until the broadcast networks turn into cable networks?
But consider: No major cable operator has signed a long-term contract for Gemstar's TV GuideInteractive the company's main growth engine since it was launched last year.
Two weeks ago Time Warner Cable introduced an app that lets customers watch cable on their iPads as long as they in their homes.
"We've had people out who have put a satellite dish up and run a cable to it 500 yards long all to no avail, " he said.
While 60 million households is respectable distribution for a second-tier cable network, Current has long suffered from poor channel placement, low visibility and a diffuse brand identity.
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Sprint is currently the No. 3 cellular provider in the country, behind Cingular and Verizon , and the cable partnership could go a long way toward helping it catch up.
The FCC let it be known last week in a Memorandum Opinion and Order that a single standard wasn't actually required, as long as the IP interface on the cable box used an industry standard -- the Commission did bless the DLNA Premium Video Profile as a suitable example.
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The question is how long this broadband limitation will protect Hollywood and cable alike.
So most American homes have long had the option of television delivered by cable.
Further complicating matters is the demand for low "latency, " the networking term for how long it takes information to travel across the cable.
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