8 Mar
1999
8 Mar
'99
12:39 p.m.
On 8 Mar 1999, Eric Smith wrote:
A CD32 IS a set-top box, I think, by today's current definition. Said term
wasn't around when the CD32 was. But this WAS there era, was it not, of the
CD-Interactive? That also might qualify. Also Apple's abortive "Pippen"
would qualify as a proto-set-top device (and something I wouldn't mind
having.)
I always thought of a "set-top" box as having several qualities: It was
coming out of the stereo-system/VCR/video game consumer orientation. Which
means, among other things, that the remote control comes first and the
keyboard is an option. You as user are some distance from the device, not
seated in front stabbing at buttons. (Commodores and Apples get disqualified
for this reason.)
Second, there's some sense of not "turning it on and watching it boot"
which
has come to pervade computers.
Why wouldn't you count CD32? If they do a new
set-top, and it fails, and
OK, let's say we made up a chronological list of every set-top box ever
made. Now, we scratch off the CD-32. What other famous ones are left and
what number from first was the CD-32? I think this may be more impervious
to your semantic games :)
Anyway, I guess it depends on how you define set-top (two can play
this...). Isn't a C-64 or Apple ][ a set-top box? Is a Sega Genesis a
set-top? What exactly must a set-top be able to do that these three can't?
--Max Eskin (max82(a)surfree.com)