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Got a set-top box fetish and a few billion dollars to blow on it? Then boy, does Motorola have a deal for you. “People familiar with the matter” tell The Wall Street Journal that the company is seeking a buyer for its home and networks mobility division, which makes set-top boxes and other kit for the cable and telecom industry.

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Cisco’s fall acquisition binge continues unabated. Late Monday, the company announced plans to buy the set-top box business of China’s DVN Holdings for up to $44.5 million. This after spending $3 billion on videoconferencing system maker Tandberg, wireless infrastructure outfit Starent Networks and software-as-a-service security vendor ScanSafe–all in quick succession.

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It has been about two years since Apple last released a major firmware update for its Apple TV platform, so the release of Apple TV 3.0 today will come as welcome news to those who own the device. 3.0 is largely as rumored: Adding support for both iTunes LP and iTunes Extras.

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There’s not much of a business yet in Apple TV, as Apple’s leadership often notes. But there may be soon, with the market for connected TVs evolving as it has been. In a research note issued this morning, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says the time is right for Apple to release the next iteration of Apple TV and to begin work on a full-fledged Internet-connected television set.

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The U.S. government broadband stimulus program couldn’t have come along at a better time. Leichtman Research Group said Monday that the country’s 19 largest cable and telephone providers added a net 634,000 broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2009. That’s 29 percent fewer than were added in the same period a year ago and the lowest number of net additions of any quarter in the last eight years.

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The econalypse has done great things for Netflix, sending recession-addled customers running to embrace its way-cheaper-than-cable DVD-by-mail and streaming-movie service. The online DVD-rental pioneer posted earnings that beat Wall Street estimates and announced that its subscriber base has grown to 10.6 million.

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Took ’em long enough. After weeks of rumor and speculation, Walt Disney Co. has finally taken a stake in Hulu, the video-streaming site operated by NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners. Financial terms and the structure of the deal weren’t disclosed, but sources say Disney’s stake in the venture will be 27 percent.

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A look back at the week during which approximately 40 percent of the posts were about Twitter. Or at least it seemed that way.

BoomTown got the ball rolling by making a visit to Twitter HQ bearing pies. During a video tour of the premises, Biz Stone discussed rock stars and booze, and spilled the secret of the strange green deer.

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Ironic, isn’t it, that Google, one of Net neutrality’s staunchest advocates, has been approaching major cable and phone companies with a proposal that appears to violate the very tenets of that principle? How could a company that has argued tirelessly that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, suddenly reverse course and seek preferential treatment for its own traffic?
Short answer: it didn’t.

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As predictable as day following night, litigation has followed the Federal Communications Commission’s sanctions against Comcast. In a long-expected action, Comcast sued the commission today claiming the FCC had no legal grounds on which to punish it for throttling file-sharing traffic on its network.

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Who would have thought that a search company that began as a Ph.D. research project back in 1996 would someday become of a behemoth of such bandwidth-consuming appetite that it would require its own high-bandwidth undersea communications cables? Earlier this year, Google revealed that it had joined a six-company consortium to build a new multi-terabit undersea cable linking the U.S. and Japan. And now it appears the company is planning at least two more.

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Well, it’s about time. On Aug. 1, four top members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters ordering 33 cable and Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, to explain in detail their privacy standards. Of particular concern to the Committee was “the growing trend of companies tailoring Internet advertising based on consumers’ Internet search, surfing or other use,” i.e., behavioral targeting.

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