The old-fashioned cable television set-top box — long the hub of living-room entertainment for most people — is about to become less relevant.
Scientific-Atlanta Inc., a maker of cable television set-top boxes, said yesterday that it would purchase a communications equipment maker, BarcoNet N.V., for about $154 million to add to its presence in Europe and Asia.
With almost $90 million in revenue over its last four quarters, Liberate is a leading independent developer of software for cable television set-top boxes that allow viewers to use two-way services.
Liberate Technologies, which makes software to run cable television set-top boxes, will cut its work force to about 150 by December as part of a plan to sell its OSS division.
Conexant Systems, which makes semiconductors for high-speed modems and cable television set-top boxes, has agreed to buy GlobespanVirata for $969.5 million to add sales of chips for home computer networks.
SCIENTIFIC-ATLANTA INC., Norcross, Ga., the No. 2 maker of cable television set-top boxes in the United States, said it had sold 1.83 million shares, or 30percentt of its stake, in Bookham Technology P.L.C., England, which makes chips used in fiber-optic networks and to speed Internet access.
For this study, a year of episodes from two programs were observed, one from network television set in the world of work, and one from cable television set in home life and leisure.
Considering all the electronics in the typical household today, cable boxes, television sets, DVD players, keeping track of remote controls can get inconvenient, and downright annoying.
They have satellite dishes and a string of cable television lines set up in Kaktovik, a complex of small wooden and corrugated-steel homes and other buildings that hugs the shore of an ice floe-laden sea.
That scaled-down operating system is being installed into devices such as handheld personal computers, Palm PCs, dashboard PCs and soon cable boxes, digital television sets and Web TV boxes.
