A couple of years ago, the trend in televisions was 3D, but that died down quickly. Now the current trend is the so-called "smart TV", either as a stand alone product or via a set-top box. Now there's a rumor that Amazon will jump into this market with a TV set-top box of its own.
Bloomberg reports, via unnamed sources, that the box will stream video from Amazon's Video on Demand and Instant Video services. It is supposed to be launching later this fall but the report did not hint at what the price of the box might be. Officially, Amazon has not revealed any such plans. However, the story claims that the box is being developed at Amazon's Lab126 division in Cupertino, California with team members that used to work at Cisco, ReplayTV, Vudu and TiVo.
Game consoles like Microsoft's Xbox 360 already have some set-top box features and rumors claim that the next version of the Xbox will work with a regular cable box to help control TV features. Companies like Apple, Sony and Roku are selling TV set-top boxes that stream Internet-based content and Intel has confirmed it is working on some kind of Internet-based cable TV hardware and software service for a launch later this year.
Source: Bloomberg | Image via Apple
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