According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products… → Read More
Motion control, ever since you were introduced in a relatively usable and broadly accessible form with the Wii Remote, the public has had a bit of a crush on you. Recently, that crush has turned into a full-fledged infatuation, and now Orange is bringing motion control to its Livebox Play TV service in France via Movia’s gesture-based tech and a motion-sensitive remote. → Read More
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday announced an upgrade to its Energy Star requirements for televisions, and cable and satellite boxes. According to a press statement from the agency: Effective in September 2011, these products must be 40 percent more efficient than conventional models in order to win the Energy Star label. Energy Star expects to update 20-some other… → Read More
If you’re bewildered by all the fancy-pants streamers and IPTV units out there, and have decided to just chill with your original flavor FiOS set-top box, get ready for a few nice little upgrades. Verizon is rolling out some features this winter and you’re going to like ‘em. → Read More
Panasonic Japan announced a total of three new Blu-ray-based set-top boxes today [JP], the first devices in the industry featuring a digital CATV tuner. All of the models (TZ-BDW900M/pictured, TZ-BDW900F and TZ-BDW900P) have a 500GB HDD on board, too. → Read More
Remember this useful little set-top box from Netgear? Well, it’s available. That’s pretty much all there is to this post. It’s a nice little net-connected box that’ll stream all the usual stuff, upconvert whatever signal suits your fancy to 1080p, and it has a couple unique features that require you to buy more than one of the things. Personally I’d go for a more… → Read More
Along with the Netgear Internet TV player announced today, Netgear also unveiled a more practical set-top box, the Digital Entertainer Elite (EVA9150). Click on if you’re interested. → Read More
I’m no expert in these little home media boxes, but I suspect they are excellent investments for those of you with too much money. Certainly the abilities of a Vista Media Center type setup are enviable, but for $2000 you could have put another 10 inches on that screen and built a media box yourself. But I digress (and am probably wrong). This FUZEbox has up to 2TB of space, does DVR and… → Read More
I had forgotten how impressive this little thing is. To be honest, I don’t see any reason to go with any other media box, AppleTV included. This thing costs less than two Benjamins and supports more formats and hardware out of the box than other media things can even dream of. If I owned a TV I’d definitely have one of these. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that it’s getting… → Read More
This startup has an ambitious plan: to unify and replace all your TV-related services and combine them into one box. Satellite TV? Check. Cable? Check. On-Demand Video? Check. Sezmi is working with some of the major distributors and content providers to create a one-stop box for all the stuff that comes separately these days. The idea is that the separate services will still be there in the… → Read More
When new home owner Josh Goldman reviewed Vudu in September, it could only be used to watch movies. That’s no longer the case, with the set top box now able to pull in a dozen TV shows, including “Family Guy,” “Arrested Development” [ed. yes~!~!~!] and “The Shield.” It’s $2 per episode, so it’s right in line with iTunes pricing, but still… → Read More
When TV goes totally digital in 2009, Grandma is going to be stuck with TVs that don’t get any of her stories. The remedy is this little DTT900 box, which will sell for about $60. This is a $20 premium over the $40 coupon households can request from the federal government and that gets you a digital-to-analog converter, remote, and build-in V-CHIP and close captioning, ensuring she… → Read More
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