Convergence between the television and the home computer — a holy grail of the digital age — has largely eluded the industry, but the living-room screen is now emerging as a key battleground for software and Internet companies.
Paul Allen’s spotty investing history just got a littler spottier, with a deal to sell set-top-box maker Digeo to cable-equipment provider Arris Group for $20 million.
The Microsoft co-founder is the primary shareholder in Digeo, a closely held Kirkland, Wash., maker of digital video recorders that has struggled with sales of its products and laid off about half of its staff last year.
3D technology is coming one step closer to home with the development of a new set-top box system that will allow consumers to browse through and access 3D offerings from their cable or satellite TV company.
The U.S. Supreme Court today cleared the way for Cablevision to offer a network DVR service, allowing consumers to record copies of television programming “in the cloud,” rather than on set-top boxes. Without comment, the court refused to review a Court of Appeals ruling that rejected claims by film studios and television networks that the network DVR approach would infringe copyrights.
Sure, most of us can get pretty fired up over the thought of a monthly 250GB bandwidth cap, but what about the companies that provide online video services? After all, as Om Malik pointed out, the cap isn’t about excessive bandwidth usage as much as it is about stymieing online video sources like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.
Netflix (NFLX) today unveiled a new set-top box to be produced by privately held Roku Inc. that will allow subscribers to stream an unlimited number of movies and television shows directly to televisions. The device costs $99. The video content is free to anyone with a Netflix subscription of $8.99 a month or more. Most of the video content will consist of older material, rather than new releases.
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