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Before reading this, I didn't even know Apple had ever made a setop box before the more recent Apple TV.
by janandonly 3y ago
Before reading this, I didn't even know Apple had ever made a setop box before the more recent Apple TV.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoThe original Apple TV ran a modified OS X 10.4. Have one in my basement. :)
- mikeryan 3y agoJust because this is my wheelhouse and I’ve been in it a long time I’m going to get pedantic. An STB and OTT box are different - different video delivery mechanisms of IP vs. QAM. This line got blurred however in the early to mid 2000s with IP based services. The hard part of getting a box deployed outside of the Motorola and Scientific Atlantic boxes that ruled the early days of cable was a lack of standards of back office systems. So you couldn’t just build a box you had to have a whole stack for device provisioning etc. I worked for a company Comcast bought in the early 2000s when they were buying up smaller regional systems and it was a mess trying to get everything aligned. It probably took 15 to 20 years until they finally ironed it all out. To be fair to Comcast they did a good enough job that they now license their X1 platform to other operators (Cox, Shaw, Quebecor)
- duskwuff 3y agoNot quite the same, but there was also the Macintosh TV [1] - an all-in-one desktop Mac with a TV tuner - and the Pippin console [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin