Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Pay TV Empire strikes back

January 10, 2011
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Connected TVs What’s the opposite of “over-the-top”? Whatever the correct term, it was on display at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, where pay-TV operators and their allied solutions providers unveiled a host of initiatives and technologies designed to help cable and satellite companies wrest control over IP-delivered video from interlopers like Google TV, Yahoo, Boxee and Apple TV.

The most striking announcements came from cable providers themselves. In separate presentations, Sony and Samsung each announced deals with Time Warner Cable in which Time Warner subscribers will be able to receive cable service directly through certain Sony and Samsung Internet-enabled HDTV sets without need of a set-top box. Samsung unveiled a similar deal with Comcast. Read more »

Connected TVs approaching their Michael Dell moment?

January 4, 2011
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Connected TVs As the curtain goes up on the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, TV set makers could be tempted to throw up their hands. The proliferating number of embedded software platforms, app stores and chip-sets for connected TVs and set-top boxes, to say nothing of web-based content services like Netflix, Hulu and CinemaNow looking for real estate on connected devices, figuring out what sets to build has become a lot more complicated than deciding on LCD or plasma screens.

More fraught, too, as those set makers who had thrown their lot in with Google TV discovered just last month, when Google asked them not to display their Google TV-enabled sets at CES and to delay their commercial rollout until Google could fix some “software problems” with the format. Read more »