Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Follow the instructions in this guide to install the set-top, to become familiar with the buttons on the front panel, and to access your cable services. Then, enjoy the features of the set-top and change the way you watch TV. Important: If the M-Card module is removed, the set-top will not operate correctly.
5.5 Million Video-Optimized Wireless Set-top Boxes Shipped… and Climbing!
This past January proved to be somewhat of a milestone for Cisco as we surpassed 4 million shipments of our Video-Optimized Wireless Set-top Boxes (VoWs). The momentum clearly seems to be continuing for these flexible and versatile set-tops in the home as, come May, we will have shipped over 5.5 million units. Hardly surprising really. […]
You Heard It Here First: Cox’s Contour Hits 1 Million Set-Tops
A little less than a year ago, Cox took the wraps off a beauty of a next-new version of personalized television, branded “Contour.” It’s a continuation of its service extensions earlier this year into screens “beyond the TV,” such as iPads, tablets, laptops, and smartphones. Until Contour, the app was called “Cox TV Connect,” and […]
4 Million Video-Optimized Wireless Set-top Boxes Shipped: Who Else Can Say That?
By Joe Chow, VP and GM, Connected Devices Business Unit, Cisco A milestone is a foot, and we’d like to commemorate it with this brief blog to promote our latest set-top box triumph. The milestone: Four million! That’s the number of video-optimized wireless set-top boxes now enhancing how consumers watch television, thanks to the notably […]
Cleaner, Greener Set-top Boxes Under a Landmark Voluntary Agreement
By Joe Chow, VP & GM, Cisco Connected Devices BU The Set-top box sits at the heart of our home entertainment centers, providing hours of enjoyment for the best of what’s on television. Over the past few years, it has become clear that we can do better when it comes to reducing set-top-box energy consumption. […]
Cisco Set Top Boxes
Cisco Committed to CPE as Part of Overall Video Strategy
By Joe Chow, Vice President and General Manager, Connected Devices Business Unit Following Cisco’s 2Q FY ’13 earnings call last week, we received questions about our commitment to certain elements of our set-top box business. Comments were made that Cisco is walking away from low-margin deals. I would like to clear up any confusion surrounding […]
[Vincent Deconinck] gave a fresh lease of life to an old set top box by adding a few Euro’s worth of hardware and some software smarts. The device in question is an old VOOcorder – a Cisco set-top box provided by VOO, his cable service provider in Belgium.
The VOOcorder doesn’t have any WiFi hardware or browser / app based interfaces. It’s a simple device controlled either via an IR remote or front panel buttons. [Vincent] added an ESP8266 and hooked it up to the IR receiver on the set-top box. He also set it up as an SPI slave to the front panel VFD display controller and connected it to the debug serial interface of the VOOcorder as well. The software, on the other hand, required a lot more work consisting of code running on the ESP itself, several HTML pages and JavaScript code for the browser front end, and a few scripts running in the background.
The result was bidirectional interactivity from within a browser, allowing him to send commands and receive status information as well as providing a user-friendly search interface. Further, his browser interface was integrated with information from the service providers website letting him do scheduling and recording of programs. The stuff that interested us is how he sniffed out the IR signals, figured out the SPI protocol used by the front panel controller, and implemented SPI-slave mode for the ESP8266. [Vincent] was surprised that such a cheap device could handle three distinct web servers while parsing two message streams without a hitch.
Cisco Set Top Box Crackers Brands
It’s a great hack showing us how to use super cheap electronics to upgrade and modernize old hardware. Check out the two videos after the break – showing a demo of the hack in action, and a walk through of the hardware modifications.