Motorola: Here’s an Idea: Let’s Sell Off Our Most Profitable Division
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.
Cisco’s New Corporate Motto: Shop Till You Drop
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.
Monday, October 5, 2009
$11,115 Toshiba TV Can Time-Shift Owners into Bankruptcy

Toshiba has seen the future of television: A 55-inch, liquid-crystal display jacked into a three-terabyte set-top box capable of displaying eight high-definition broadcasts at once. What is this TV among TVs, this holy grail of couch potatoans called? The Cell Regza 55X1. And it costs $11,115.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Mind if I Pay These Late Fees With a Few of My Blockbuster Shares?
Blockbuster in a Monday filing told the Securities and Exchange Commission what anyone who’s observed its fast-declining fortunes has known for some time now: The company isn’t sure it can stay in business much longer. In a PricewaterhouseCoopers assessment included as part of its latest 10-K, Blockbuster acknowledged that its financial situation raises “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
TiVo Time-Shifts DirecTV Partnership
So TiVo’s on-again, off-again relationship with DirecTV? It’s on again. After ditching the TiVo platform in Feb. 2007 for a competing personal video recorder made by sister company NDS Group, DirecTV has circled back to embrace the PVR pioneer’s platform once again.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Microsoft Announces Live Mess
Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie has finally published the sequel to “The Internet Services Disruption,” the 2005 potboiler of a memo that charted Microsoft’s (MSFT) better-late-than-never software-as-a-service strategy. It’s called, intriguingly, “Services Strategy Update April 2008” and it describes in numbing detail Live Mesh, Microsoft’s ambitiously late entry into a rapidly growing cloud-computing market.
Live [...]
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Forward-Looking Statements: Netflix Set-Top Box May Be Total Vaporware
It appears there may be a bit of a boxing match shaping up between Apple and Netflix. Amid reports that Apple has inked a video-on-demand deal with Twentieth Century Fox, Netflix has announced plans to develop a set-top box that will give consumers the ability to stream movies directly from the Internet to HDTVs. The [...]
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About John
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
alt.misc
- Godzilla’s Food, Exercise, and Dream Diary
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183. - Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
- The Golden Age of Video
Best video mashup ever.
- I’m not dead yet
A Facebook Memorial
- Pulp Fiction Audio Mix
Wow.
- A world without the Internet
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
- Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction
Excellent.
- Dead Fly Art
Flughumor!
- Happy Birthday Monty Python …
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
- ‘You are being shagged by a rare parrot’
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.




