Cisco joining connected TV party with updated cable boxes at CES

The battle for the connected living room is about to heat up in a big way: the Wall Street Journal reports that Cisco will announce a new series of connected cable boxes here at CES tomorrow, as part of a larger announcement that combines online video with recorded and live television. You scoff now, but keep in mind that Cisco owns Scientific Atlanta, which makes an absolutely huge number of cable boxes for providers like Time Warner and Comcast — and if Big Cable embraces connected TV by distributing integrated Cisco hardware, well, we’d say upstarts like Apple and Google might just go home with their tails between their legs. On the other hand, the WSJ says “cable operators will be able to customize the software interface and decide on pricing” for Cisco’s new boxes, so it’s possible America’s favorite corporations will completely bungle everything at the first opportunity. We’ll be there live tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens. Cisco joining connected TV party with updated cable boxes at CES originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Posted by on January 5, 2011. Filed under News, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry