1.
TiVo Inc.
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TiVo Inc. was an American corporation whose primary product was the marketing and subscription services for its TiVo branded digital video recorder. TiVo primarily operated in the United States, but also operated in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, on September 8,2016, TiVo Inc. was acquired by Rovi Corporation. The new entity known as TiVo Corporation. TiVo Inc. was incorporated on August 4,1997 as Teleworld, Inc. by Jim Barton and Mike Ramsay, veterans of Silicon Graphics, originally intending to create a home network device, they later developed the idea to record digitized video on a hard disk. Teleworld began the first public trials of the TiVo device and service in late 1998 in the San Francisco Bay area, Teleworld, Inc. renamed themselves to TiVo Inc. on July 21,1999. TiVo Inc. made its IPO on September 30,1999 and its first profitable quarter was the second quarter of 2005. The original TiVo device digitized and compressed analog video from any source, in late 2000, Philips Electronics introduced the DSR6000, the first DirecTV receiver with an integrated TiVo DVR. This new device, nicknamed the DirecTiVo, stored digital signals sent from DirecTV directly onto a hard disk, in early 2000, TiVo partnered with electronics manufacturer Thomson and broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting to deliver the TiVo service in the UK market. This partnership resulted in the Thomson PVR10UK, a stand-alone receiver released in October 2000, Sky+ is still the dominant DVR product in the UK with 5,005,000 customers using Sky+ HD service in 2013. In June 2005, veteran media executive Tom Rogers was named president, Rogers, a TiVo board member since 2003, took the reins from TiVo co-founder Mike Ramsay. In 2006, TiVo, Inc. won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation, TiVo was again awarded an Emmy in 2013 for Technical and Engineering Achievement for Personalized Recommendation Engines for Video Discovery. On April 29,2016, Rovi announced that it had acquired TiVo Inc. for $1.1 billion and it was further announced that the combined company would operate under the TiVo brand, and would hold over 6,000 pending and registered patents. Rovi indicated that it planned to discontinue in-house hardware production, and would focus primarily on licensing its technologies, on September 8,2016, the acquisition by Rovi Corporation was completed. On January 27,2004, TiVo announced the acquisition of Strangeberry Inc. an audience measurement company that measures advertising effectiveness. Renamed TiVo Research and Analytics, the service now matches television exposures from 1.5 million TV homes with actual purchase transactions to determine the effectiveness of TV advertising. On January 29,2014, TiVo announced the acquisition of Digitalsmiths, on November 3,2010 Virgin Media announced the launch of their first PVR running TiVo software, available in 500GB or 1TB configurations. By 2012, TiVo services had become a part of 18% of Virgins TV customer base, by the end of 2013, TiVo reached subscribers in nearly half of Virgin Media‘s 47.1 million homes. In September 2013, Vigin Media became the first pay-TV provider to provide Netflix streaming services, as of January 2014, TiVo reported having relationships with 18 of the top 25 U. S. operators
2.
Logo
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A logo is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations, and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition. There are purely graphic emblems, symbols, icons and logos, in the days of hot metal typesetting, a logotype was one word cast as a single piece of type. By extension, the term was used for a uniquely set. At the level of communication and in common usage, a companys logo is today often synonymous with its trademark or brand. The arts were expanding in purpose—from expression and decoration of an artistic, storytelling nature, to a differentiation of brands, consultancies and trades-groups in the commercial arts were growing and organizing, by 1890, the US had 700 lithographic printing firms employing more than 8,000 people. Artistic credit tended to be assigned to the company, as opposed to the individual artists who usually performed less important jobs. Playful children’s books, authoritative newspapers, and conversational periodicals developed their own visual and editorial styles for unique, as printing costs decreased, literacy rates increased, and visual styles changed, the Victorian decorative arts led to an expansion of typographic styles and methods of representing businesses. A renewal of interest in craftsmanship and quality also provided the artists and companies with a greater interest in credit, leading to the creation of unique logos and marks. By the 1950s, Modernism had shed its roots as an artistic movement in Europe to become an international, commercialized movement with adherents in the United States. Modernist-inspired logos proved successful in the era of mass visual communication ushered in by television, improvements in printing technology, the current era of logo design began in the 1870s with the first abstract logo, the Bass red triangle. As of 2014, many corporations, products, brands, services, agencies, as a result, only a few of the thousands of ideograms in circulation are recognizable without a name. Ideograms and symbols may be effective than written names, especially for logos translated into many alphabets in increasingly globalized markets. For instance, a written in Arabic script might have little resonance in most European markets. By contrast, ideograms keep the general nature of a product in both markets. In non-profit areas, the Red Cross exemplifies a well-known emblem that does not need an accompanying name, the red cross and red crescent are among the best-recognized symbols in the world. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and their Federation as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross include these symbols in their logos, branding can aim to facilitate cross-language marketing. Consumers and potential consumers can identify the Coca-Cola name written in different alphabets because of the standard color, the text was written in Spencerian Script, which was a popular writing style when the Coca Cola Logo was being designed. Since a logo is the visual entity signifying an organization, logo design is an important area of graphic design, a logo is the central element of a complex identification system that must be functionally extended to all communications of an organization
3.
Television set
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A television set, more commonly called a television, TV, TV set, television receiver, or telly, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers for the purpose of viewing television. Introduced in the late 1920s in mechanical form, television became a popular consumer product after World War II in electronic form. The addition of color to broadcast television after 1953 further increased the popularity of television sets in the 1960s, the ubiquitous television set became the display device for the first recorded media in the 1970s, such as Betamax, VHS and later DVD. It was also the display device for the first generation of home computers, in the 2010s flat panel television incorporating liquid-crystal displays, especially LED-backlit LCDs, largely replaced cathode ray tubes and other displays. Modern flat panel TVs are typically capable of display and can also play content from a USB device. Mechanical televisions were sold from 1928 to 1934 in the United Kingdom, United States. The Baird Televisor is considered the first mass-produced television, selling about a thousand units, the first commercially made electronic televisions with cathode ray tubes were manufactured by Telefunken in Germany in 1934, followed by other makers in France, Britain, and America. The cheapest model with a 12-inch screen was $445, an estimated 19,000 electronic televisions were manufactured in Britain, and about 1,600 in Germany, before World War II. About 7, 000–8,000 electronic sets were made in the U. S. before the War Production Board halted manufacture in April 1942, production resuming in August 1945. While only 0. 5% of U. S. households had a television in 1946,55. 7% had one in 1954, and 90% by 1962. In Britain, there were 15,000 television households in 1947,1.4 million in 1952, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, color television had come into wide use. In Britain, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV were regularly broadcasting in colour by 1969, during the first decade of the 21st century, CRT picture tube display technology was almost entirely supplanted worldwide by flat panel displays. By the early 2010s, LCD TVs, which increasingly used LED-backlit LCDs, television sets may employ one of several available display technologies. The production of plasma and CRT displays has been almost completely discontinued, the cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the beam onto the screen to create the images. The images may represent electrical waveforms, pictures, radar targets or others, the CRT uses an evacuated glass envelope which is large, deep, fairly heavy, and relatively fragile. As a matter of safety, the face is made of thick lead glass so as to be highly shatter-resistant and to block most X-ray emissions. In television sets and computer monitors, the front area of the tube is scanned repetitively and systematically in a fixed pattern called a raster
4.
Digital video recorder
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A digital video recorder is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to disk recording, portable media players and TV gateways with recording capability, and digital camcorders. Personal computers are connected to video capture devices and used as DVRs. Many DVRs are classified as electronic devices, such devices are sometimes referred to as personal video recorders. Consumer digital video recorders ReplayTV and TiVo were launched at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft also demonstrated a unit with DVR capability, but this did not become available until the end of 1999 for full DVR features in Dish Networks DISHplayer receivers. TiVo shipped their first units on March 31,1999, ReplayTV won the Best of Show award in the video category with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen as an early investor and board member, but TiVo was more successful commercially. Many DVRs use the MPEG format for compressing the digital video, video recording capabilities have become an essential part of the modern set-top box, as TV viewers have wanted to take control of their viewing experiences. Digital video recorders tied to a video service At the 1999 CES, which also included WebTV Networks internet TV. By the end of 1999 the Dishplayer had full DVR capabilities and within a year, in the UK, digital video recorders are often referred to as plus boxes. Freeview+ have been around in the UK since the late 2000s, british Sky Broadcasting markets a popular combined receiver and DVR as Sky+. TiVo launched a UK model in 2000, and is no longer supported, except for third party services, south African based Africa Satellite TV beamer Multichoice recently launched their DVR which is available on their DStv platform. Astro introduced their DVR system, called Astro MAX, which was the first PVR in Malaysia but was phased out two years after its introduction. In the case of television, there is no encoding necessary in the DVR since the signal is already a digitally encoded MPEG stream. The digital video recorder simply stores the digital stream directly to disk and it can, however, also force the manufacturer to implement non-skippable advertisements and automatically expiring recordings. The overall net effect on video recorders and related technology is unlikely to be substantial as standalone DVRs are currently readily available on the open market. In 2003 many Satellite and Cable providers introduced dual-tuner digital video recorders, in the UK, BSkyB introduced their first PVR Sky+ with dual tuner support in 2001. These machines have two independent tuners within the same receiver, kogan. com introduced a dual-tuner PVR in the Australian market allowing free-to-air television to be recorded on a removable hard drive. Some dual-tuner DVRs also have the ability to output to two television sets at the same time
5.
TiVo DVR
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TiVo digital video recorders encompass a number of digital video recorder models that TiVo, Inc. designed. Features may vary, but a feature is that all of the units listed here require TiVo service. TiVo units have been manufactured by various OEMs, including Philips, Sony, Pioneer, Toshiba, cisco Systems and Samsung joined forces with pay TV Provider Virgin Media to create the Virgin Media TiVo box. The OEMs license the software from TiVo Inc, to date, there have been six series of TiVo units produced, with the sixth series, the Bolt, released in October 2015. The Series1 was the original TiVo digital video recorder, Series1 TiVo systems are based on PowerPC processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips and IDE/ATA hard drives. Series1 TiVo units used one or two drives of 13–60 GB, although not supported by TiVo or equipment manufacturers, larger drives can be added. All standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, the TiVo unit can use a serial cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver. They have coax/RF, composite/RCA, and S-Video output, and the DVD systems also have component out, audio is RCA stereo, and the DVD systems also have digital optical out. CPU, IBM PowerPC 403GCX at 54 MHz RAM,16 MB Some TiVo systems are integrated with DirecTV receivers and these DirecTiVo recorders record the incoming satellite MPEG-2 digital stream directly to the hard disk without conversion. Because of this, and the fact that they have two tuners, DirecTiVos are able to record two programs at once, in addition, the lack of digital conversion allows recorded video to be of the same quality as live video. DirecTiVos have no MPEG encoder chip, and can only record DirecTV streams, CPU, IBM PowerPC 403GCX at 70-80 MHz RAM,32 MB TiVo has upgraded the data associated with all the shows and movies on TiVo DVRs to provide more accurate program information to subscribers. Unfortunately, Series1 DVRs cannot use this new guide data, Series1 DVRs will receive their final guide update on 9/15/2016 and will no longer be able to create any new recordings from the program guide after 9/29/2016. Customers will continue to be able to access any existing recordings on the DVR and will be able to create manual recordings, the Series2 was a complete redesign of the TiVo hardware. It includes USB ports, a new CPU, and more RAM, the availability of network connectivity has spread to the software side, where new features like TiVoToGo and Home Media Engine applications are now supported. Series2 TiVo systems are based on MIPS processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips, current Series2 units have drives of 40–250GB in size. Although not supported by TiVo or equipment manufacturers, larger drives can be added, all standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, and S-Video—for use with an external cable box or satellite receiver. The TiVo unit can use a cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver. They have coax/RF, composite/RCA, and S-Video output, and the DVD systems also have component out, audio is RCA stereo, and the DVD systems also have digital optical out
6.
Puerto Rico
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Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and briefly called Porto Rico, is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeast Caribbean Sea. It is an archipelago that includes the island of Puerto Rico and a number of smaller ones such as Mona, Culebra. The capital and most populous city is San Juan and its official languages are Spanish and English, though Spanish predominates. The islands population is approximately 3.4 million, Puerto Ricos rich history, tropical climate, diverse natural scenery, renowned traditional cuisine, and attractive tax incentives make it a popular destination for travelers from around the world. Four centuries of Spanish colonial government transformed the ethnic, cultural and physical landscapes primarily with waves of African captives, and Canarian. In the Spanish imperial imagination, Puerto Rico played a secondary, in 1898, following the Spanish–American War, the United States appropriated Puerto Rico together with most former Spanish colonies under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. Puerto Ricans are natural-born citizens of the United States, however, Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the United States Congress, which governs the territory with full jurisdiction under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. As a U. S. territory, American citizens residing on the island are disenfranchised at the level and may not vote for president. However, Congress approved a constitution, allowing U. S. citizens on the territory to elect a governor. A fifth referendum will be held in June 2017, with only Statehood, in early 2017, the Puerto Rican government-debt crisis posed serious problems for the government. The outstanding bond debt that had climbed to $70 billion or $12,000 per capita at a time with 12. 4% unemployment, the debt had been increasing during a decade long recession. Puerto Ricans often call the island Borinquen – a derivation of Borikén, its indigenous Taíno name, the terms boricua and borincano derive from Borikén and Borinquen respectively, and are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage. The island is also known in Spanish as la isla del encanto. Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, eventually traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, while San Juan became the name used for the main trading/shipping port and the capital city. The islands name was changed to Porto Rico by the United States after the Treaty of Paris of 1898, the anglicized name was used by the US government and private enterprises. The name was changed back to Puerto Rico by a joint resolution in Congress introduced by Félix Córdova Dávila in 1931, the ancient history of the archipelago known today as Puerto Rico is not well known. The scarce archaeological findings and early Spanish scholarly accounts from the colonial era constitute the basis of knowledge about them. The first comprehensive book on the history of Puerto Rico was written by Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra in 1786, the first settlers were the Ortoiroid people, an Archaic Period culture of Amerindian hunters and fishermen who migrated from the South American mainland
7.
Taiwan
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbours include China to the west, Japan to the northeast, Taiwan is the most populous state that is not a member of the United Nations, and the one with the largest economy. The island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, was inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before the 17th century. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty, following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROCs loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, in the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage, Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, the PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC, the PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible. There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, the former name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in use in English in the early 20th century. This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar. The modern word Taiwan is derived from this usage, which is seen in forms in Chinese historical records. Use of the current Chinese name was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture, through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as Taiwan. The official name of the state is the Republic of China and it was a member of the United Nations representing China until 1971, when it lost its seat to the Peoples Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as Taiwan. In some contexts, especially ones from the ROC government
8.
CableCARD
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The card is usually provided by the local cable operator, typically for a nominal monthly fee. Some technologies not only refer to the card, but also to a device that uses the card. Some CableCARD technologies can be used with devices that have no physical CableCARD, the CableCARD was the outcome of a U. S. It was believed that this would provide consumers with more choices, up to 2016, less than 2% of set-top boxes were purchased by consumers in the retail market since CableCARD was rolled out, indicating that CableCARD failed in its objective. Some argued that the CableCARD initiative actually cost Americans billions of dollars in fees, increased energy consumption. The portion of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which resulted in the creation of CableCARDs is known as Section 629, multichannel video programming refers to cable or satellite television. The thought was that consumers would benefit from wider choices due to competition between consumer electronics manufacturers unaffiliated with cable companies, the FCC was charged with working with the industry to carry out the directives of the 1996 law. The separable security device was referred to in FCC regulations as a Point of Deployment module, after many requests for delay from the cable industry, the first CableCARD devices became available from third party manufacturers in August 2004. As of November 1,2011, all US cable operators were required to allow self-installation of CableCARDs by consumers, a major concern was that cable operators were not motivated to provide efficient security access mechanisms to equipment competitors. This rule is referred to as the integration ban, and was unsuccessfully challenged in the courts. The deadline was shifted forward twice until it went into effect on July 1,2007, the ban on integrated security ended in December 2015. CableCARD is a term trademarked by CableLabs for the Point of Deployment module defined by standards including SCTE28, SCTE41, CEA-679, the cable tuner, QAM demodulator, and MPEG decoder are part of the host equipment. The card performs any conditional access and decryption functions, and provides a MPEG-2 transport stream to the host, the card also receives messages sent over the out-of-band signaling channel by the cable companys headend servers and forwards them to the host. CableCARDs may be used to both standard definition and high definition channels as long as they are not part of a switched video system. CableCARDs are not necessary for viewing unscrambled digital cable channels if the user has a QAM tuner—a feature in some televisions, CableCARD support is most common on higher end televisions that include a special slot for the CableCARD and a built-in cable tuner. The card acts like a key to unlock the channels and services to which the cable customer has subscribed. Televisions that support CableCARD should be labeled by the manufacturer as digital cable ready, Interactive features such as video on demand rely on the CableCARD Host device being an OpenCable Host Device and have nothing to do with the physical card. This makes the use of the phrase CableCARD2.0 as a requirement for video on demand misleading
9.
Corporation
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A corporation is a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity and recognized as such in law. Early incorporated entities were established by charter, most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration. Corporations chartered in regions where they are distinguished by whether they are allowed to be for profit or not are referred to as for profit and not-for-profit corporations, there is some overlap between stock/non-stock and for profit/not-for-profit in that not-for-profit corporations are always non-stock as well. A for profit corporation is almost always a stock corporation, registered corporations have legal personality and are owned by shareholders whose liability is limited to their investment. Shareholders do not typically actively manage a corporation, shareholders instead elect or appoint a board of directors to control the corporation in a fiduciary capacity, in American English, the word corporation is most often used to describe large business corporations. In British English and in the Commonwealth countries, the company is more widely used to describe the same sort of entity while the word corporation encompasses all incorporated entities. In American English, the company can include entities such as partnerships that would not be referred to as companies in British English as they are not a separate legal entity. Despite not being human beings, corporations, as far as the law is concerned, are legal persons. Corporations can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state, Corporations can be dissolved either by statutory operation, order of court, or voluntary action on the part of shareholders. Corporations can even be convicted of offenses, such as fraud. However, corporations are not considered living entities in the way humans are. While not a corporation, this new type of entity became very attractive as an alternative for corporations not needing to issue stock, in Germany, the organization was referred to as Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung or GmbH. In the last quarter of the 20th Century this new form of organization became available in the United States and other countries. Since the GmbH and LLC forms of organization are technically not corporations they will not be discussed in this article, the word corporation derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a body of people. By the time of Justinian, Roman law recognized a range of corporate entities under the names universitas and these included the state itself, municipalities, and such private associations as sponsors of a religious cult, burial clubs, political groups, and guilds of craftsmen or traders. Such bodies commonly had the right to own property and make contracts, to receive gifts and legacies, to sue and be sued, private associations were granted designated privileges and liberties by the emperor. Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of rights were found in ancient Rome. In medieval Europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope, the point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member, existing in perpetuity
10.
Blue moon
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A blue moon is an additional full moon that appears in a subdivision of a year, either the third of four full moons in a season, or a second full moon in a month of the common calendar. The term has referred to an extra moon, where a year which normally has 12 moons has 13 instead. The blue moon reference is applied to the moon in a season with four moons. This happens every two to three years, owing to the rarity of a blue moon, the term blue moon is used colloquially to mean a rare event, as in the phrase once in a blue moon. There are about 365.24 days in a tropical year, therefore, about 12.37 lunations occur in a tropical year. In the widely used Gregorian calendar, there are 12 months in a year, each calendar year contains roughly 11 days more than the number of days in 12 lunar cycles. The extra days accumulate, so two or three years, there is an extra full moon. The extra moon necessarily falls in one of the four seasons, in calculating the dates for Lent and Easter, Catholic clergy identified a Lenten moon. Historically, when the moons arrived too early, they called the moon a betrayer moon. Folklore named each of the 12 full moons in a year according to its time of year, the occasional 13th full moon that came too early for its season was called a blue moon, so the rest of the moons that year retained their customary seasonal names. The Maine Farmers Almanac called the full moon in a season that had four the blue moon. In modern use, when 13 full moons occur in a year, the frequency of a blue moon can be calculated as follows. It is the period of time it would take for an extra synodic orbit of the moon to occur in a year. Given that a year is approximately 365.2425 days and an orbit is 29.5309 days. For this to add up to another full month would take 1/0.368 years, thus it would take about 2.716 years, or 2 years,8 months and 18 days for another blue moon to occur. The suggestion has been made that the blue moon for intercalary month arose by folk etymology. The relevant passage reads, O churche men are wyly foxes Yf they say the mone is blewe / We must beleve that it is true / Admittynge their interpretacion. It is not clear from the context that refers to intercalation
11.
DirecTV
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DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider based in El Segundo, California and is a subsidiary of AT&T. Its satellite service, launched on June 17,1994, transmits digital television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America. Its primary competitors are Dish Network and cable television providers, DirecTV provides television and audio services to subscribers through satellite transmissions. Services include the equivalent of local television stations, broadcast television networks, subscription television services, satellite radio services. Subscribers have access to hundreds of channels, so its competitors are cable television service, most subscribers use reception antennas which are much smaller than the first generation antennas, which were typically a few yards across. Advances in antenna technology, including fractal antennas, have allowed a reduction in antenna size across all industries. Receiving equipment includes a dish, an integrated receiver/decoder and a DirecTV access card. Consumers who purchase DirecTV subscribe to various packages of DirecTV programming for which the subscriber pays a monthly fee, additional monthly fees may include a protection plan, DVR, additional receivers, HD channels, and other premium channel packages. A subscriber also can order pay-per-view and video on demand events, all programming distributed by DirecTV is delivered to its broadcast centers in Castle Rock, Colorado, and Los Angeles, where it is then digitized and compressed. The resulting signal is encrypted by DirecTV to prevent its unauthorized reception, DirecTV then transmits these signals to several satellites located in geostationary orbit. As of the quarter ended September 30,2012, DirecTV U. S. had 19.981 million subscribers, for the same period, DirecTV Latin America ended with 9.666 million subscribers and revenues of US$1.577 billion. In addition to serving residences, DirecTV offers service to bars, restaurants, hotels, dorms, the company also offered mobile service for cars, boats, and RVs as well as aircraft in cooperation with Connexion by Boeing. On November 30,2016, DirecTV Now, an internet streaming TV service was launched, in 1953, Howard Hughes created the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to which he transferred full ownership of Hughes Aircraft. Ostensibly created as a medical research foundation, HHMI was accused of being used by Hughes as a tax shelter. Following Hughes death in 1976, HHMI was incorporated in 1977, in 1984, the court appointed a new board for HHMI, which proceeded to sell off Hughes Aircraft to General Motors on December 20,1985, for an estimated $5.1 billion. General Motors then merged Hughes Aircraft with its subsidiary Delco Electronics to create Hughes Electronics Corporation, the new subsidiary was initially composed of four units, Delco Electronics Company, Hughes Aircraft Company, Hughes Space and Communications Company, and Hughes Network Systems. Stanley E. Hubbard founded United States Satellite Broadcasting in 1981 and was a proponent for the development of direct-broadcast satellite service in the United States. USSB was awarded five frequencies by the FCC, at the coveted 101 degree west satellite location, Hughes Communications, Inc. was also awarded 27 frequencies at the same 101-degree location
12.
Hard disk
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The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of storage, retaining stored data even when powered off. Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs became the dominant secondary storage device for computers by the early 1960s. Continuously improved, HDDs have maintained this position into the era of servers. More than 200 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation most current units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, as of 2016, HDD production is growing, although unit shipments and sales revenues are declining. While SSDs have higher cost per bit, SSDs are replacing HDDs where speed, power consumption, small size, the primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000, the two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3. 5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2. 5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA, SATA, Hard disk drives were introduced in 1956, as data storage for an IBM real-time transaction processing computer and were developed for use with general-purpose mainframe and minicomputers. The first IBM drive, the 350 RAMAC in 1956, was approximately the size of two medium-sized refrigerators and stored five million six-bit characters on a stack of 50 disks. In 1962 the IBM350 RAMAC disk storage unit was superseded by the IBM1301 disk storage unit, cylinder-mode read/write operations were supported, and the heads flew about 250 micro-inches above the platter surface. Motion of the head array depended upon a binary system of hydraulic actuators which assured repeatable positioning. The 1301 cabinet was about the size of three home refrigerators placed side by side, storing the equivalent of about 21 million eight-bit bytes, access time was about a quarter of a second. Also in 1962, IBM introduced the model 1311 disk drive, users could buy additional packs and interchange them as needed, much like reels of magnetic tape. Later models of removable pack drives, from IBM and others, became the norm in most computer installations, non-removable HDDs were called fixed disk drives. Some high-performance HDDs were manufactured with one head per track so that no time was lost physically moving the heads to a track, known as fixed-head or head-per-track disk drives they were very expensive and are no longer in production. In 1973, IBM introduced a new type of HDD code-named Winchester and its primary distinguishing feature was that the disk heads were not withdrawn completely from the stack of disk platters when the drive was powered down. Instead, the heads were allowed to land on an area of the disk surface upon spin-down
13.
Technicolor SA
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Technicolor SA, formerly Thomson SARL and Thomson Multimedia, is a French multinational corporation that provides services and products for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Technicolors headquarters are located in Issy-les-Moulineaux – France, other main office locations include Rennes, Los Angeles, Edegem, London, Bangalore, Chennai, and Indianapolis. On January 27,2010, the changed its name to Technicolor SA. Thomsons US subsidiary became Technicolor USA, Inc, Technicolor began as Thomson, named after the electrical engineer Elihu Thomson, who was born in Manchester, England, on March 26,1853. Thomson moved to Philadelphia, USA, at the age of 5, Thomson formed the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1879 with Edwin Houston. The company merged with the Edison General Electric Company to become the General Electric Company in 1892, in 1893, the Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston was formed in Paris, a sister company to GE in the United States. It was from this company, that the modern Thomson Group would evolve, in 1966, CFTH merged with Hotchkiss-Brandt to form Thomson-Houston-Hotchkiss-Brandt. In 1968 the electronics business of Thomson-Brandt merged with Compagnie Générale de Télégraphie Sans Fil to form Thomson-CSF, Thomson Brandt maintained a significant shareholding in this company. In 1982, both Thomson-Brandt and Thomson-CSF saw nationalization due to the efforts of François Mitterrand, Thomson-Brandt was subsequently renamed Thomson SA, and soon thereafter merged with Thomson-CSF. In 1988, Thomson Consumer Electronics was formed, and then renamed Thomson SA, in 1995, the French government split the consumer electronics from the defense businesses of Thomson Multimedia and Thomson-CSF prior to privatization in 1999. The company then went through a series of transactions, including with Marconi plc, in 2005, Thomson bought Cirpack and Inventel. In 2004, Thomson set up a joint venture with Chinas TCL, giving to TCL all manufacturing of RCA and Thomson television and DVD products, at the time, TCL was hailed as the first Chinese company to compete on the international stage with large international corporations. Thomson initially retained all marketing of TTEs products, but transferred that to TTE in 2005, in June 2005, the Videocon Group of India announced, that it would acquire the color picture tube manufacturing business from Thomson SA for €240 million. In early 2010, Thomson sold TV brand RCA to ON corporation, in December 2007, Thomson SA agreed to sell off its Audio/Video and Accessories businesses to Audiovox. On October 2007, Thomson SA agreed to sell its consumer electronics audio video business outside Europe including the rights to the RCA brand. Thomson then purchased the Moving Picture Company from ITV and the internet startup Singingfish, in 2004, Thomson increased its stake in the Bangalore, India based company Celstream Technologies, which specializes in product engineering. Cirpack, a manufacturer, was incorporated and acquired in April 2005. In July 2005, Thomson agreed to purchase PRN Corporation for $285 million, in December 2005, Thomson re-purchased the Broadcast & Multimedia part of Thales Group
14.
British Sky Broadcasting
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Sky UK Limited is a telecommunications company which serves the United Kingdom. Sky provides television and broadband services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers. It is the UKs largest pay-TV broadcaster with 11 million customers as of 2015 and it was the UKs most popular digital TV service until it was overtaken by Freeview in April 2007. Its corporate headquarters are based in Isleworth, formed in November 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, Sky became the UKs largest digital subscription television company. Following Skys 2014 acquisition of Sky Italia and a majority 90. 04% interest in Sky Deutschland in November 2014, the United Kingdom operations also changed the company name from British Sky Broadcasting Limited to Sky UK Limited, still trading as Sky. Sky UK Limited is an owned subsidiary of Sky plc, with its current company directors being Andrew Griffith. Griffith acts as the Chief Financial Officer and the Managing Director for the commercial businesses division, after the two companies merged, subscribers could get access to both channels, and later the sports channel Sky Sports also became encrypted. In the autumn of 1991, talks were held for the broadcast rights for Premier League for a five-year period, ITV were the current rights holders, and fought hard to retain the new rights. ITV had increased its offer from £18m to £34m per year to control of the rights. BSkyB joined forces with the BBC to make a counter bid, Murdoch described sport as a battering ram for pay-television, providing a strong customer base. A few weeks after the deal, ITV went to the High Court to get an injunction as it believed their bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken. ITV also asked the Office of Fair Trading to investigate since it believed Rupert Murdochs media empire via its newspapers had influenced the deal. A few days later neither action took effect, ITV believed BSkyB was telephoned and informed of its £262m bid, and Premier League advised BSkyB to increase its counter bid. BSkyB retained the rights paying £670m 1997–2001 deal, but was challenged by On Digital for the rights from 2001–2004, in May 2006, the Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports was awarded two of the six Premier League packages that the English FA offered to broadcasters. Sky picked up the four for £1. 3bn. In February 2015, Sky bid £4. 2bn for a package of 120 premier league games across the three seasons from 2016 and this represented an increase of 70% on the previous contract and was said to be £1bn more than the company had expected to pay. The move has been followed by staff cuts, increased subscription prices, in September 1993, BSkyB launched Sky Multichannels which was the present digital platforms analogue predecessor. Sky Multichannels was a package that gave access not only to Skys own channels
15.
Virgin Media
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Virgin Media PLC is a British company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are in Hook, Hampshire, United Kingdom, the company has been a subsidiary of Liberty Global plc, an international television and telecommunications company headquartered in London, since June 2013. Virgin Media previously had a listing on the NASDAQ Stock Market and was a constituent of the NASDAQ-100 index. It also had a listing on the London Stock Exchange. The company was formed in March 2006 by the merger of NTL and Telewest, in November 2006 the company signed a deal with Sir Richard Branson to license the Virgin brand for the combined business. All of the companys services were rebranded under the Virgin Media name in February 2007. At the same date it had around 3 million mobile telephony customers, Virgin Media competes primarily with Sky, BT Group, EE, O2, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Three. The companys origins lie in both Telewest and NTL, which merged in March 2006, Telewest began in 1984 in Croydon under the name Croydon Cable, and was acquired by United Cable of Denver in 1988. The company expanded during the 1990s and adopted the Telewest name in 1992 following the merger of its then-parent TCI and US West. It expanded into cable television access in 1999 by purchasing the remaining 50% stake in Cable London, one of the first cable TV companies in the UK, from NTL, adding 400,000 homes in north London. In April 2000 Telewest merged with Flextech, and in November extended its network with the acquisition of Eurobell. NTL was established by Barclay Knapp and George Blumenthal in 1993 as International CableTel, initially, Cabletel acquired local cable franchises covering Guildford, Northern Ireland and parts of Central Scotland and South Wales. In 1996 CableTel acquired National Transcommunications Limited, the privatised UK Independent Broadcasting Authority transmission network, in 1998 CableTel adopted NTL as its new name. NTL purchased the ISP Virgin. net in 2004, having originally operated it as a joint venture with Virgin Group since it launched in November 1996. It sold ADSL broadband services through BT landlines to those living outside areas served by NTLs cable network and also offered subscription-based, prior to acquiring Virgin. net, NTL offered a similar package called NTL Freedom. Telewest and NTL began discussions regarding a merger in late 2003, thanks to their geographically distinct areas, NTL and Telewest had co-operated previously, as in redirecting potential customers living outside their respective areas. On 3 October 2005, NTL announced a US$16 billion purchase of Telewest, to prevent this, Telewest instead acquired NTL. In December 2005 NTL, Telewest and mobile network operator Virgin Mobile UK announced that talks had taken place regarding a merger
16.
Blockbuster Inc.
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It achieved popularity in the 1980s, 1990s, and early-to-mid 2000s, at its peak in 2004, Blockbuster consisted of nearly 60,000 employees and over 8,000 stores. However, as a result of factors including competition from Netflix, Redbox. The company filed for protection in 2010, and, in 2011, it. While the Blockbuster brand has mostly retired, Dish still maintains some Blockbuster franchise agreements. Blockbuster was founded in 1985 by David Cook as an out of Cook Data Services. The companys main intention was to supply services to the oil and gas industries of the state of Texas. Cooks wife, Sandy, later suggested that he enter the video rental business, several months after her suggestion, Cook sold his oil and gas software to its managers and founded what would later be called Blockbuster Video. The first Blockbuster store opened October 19,1985, in Dallas, Texas, the innovation was derived from Cooks experience with managing huge databases. After the first few stores opened, Cook built a $6 million warehouse in Garland, Texas, in 1987, the company won a court case against Nintendo of America, Inc, which paved the way for the rental of video games. Scott Beck of Dallas approached John Melk, prior executive with Waste Management, Melk brought the idea to his friend and business associate, Wayne Huizenga, who agreed to buy the company after overcoming initial concerns about the video industry. Huizenga and Melk used similar techniques in growing Waste Management, and soon and they also bought every Blockbuster franchise they could acquire. Huizenga spent the late 1980s acquiring several of Blockbusters rivals, including Major Video, in 1990, Blockbuster bought mid-Atlantic rival Erols which had more than 250 stores. In 1992, Blockbuster acquired the Sound Warehouse and Music Plus music retail chains, in October 1993, Blockbuster acquired controlling interest in Spelling Entertainment Group, a media company run by television producer Aaron Spelling. They also owned a stake in Republic Pictures, that company merged with Spelling in April 1994. The company became a company and in 1993 proposed a merger with Viacom. After both companies stocks tumbled in 1994, Viacom purchased Blockbuster for $8.4 billion, the Blockbuster Block Party concept was test-marketed in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Indianapolis, Indiana in 1994. During the 1990s, Blockbuster expanded in the United Kingdom, purchasing that countrys Ritz Video chain, the stores were rebranded to Blockbuster, making it the number one rental chain in that country. In 1996, the Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation was renamed Blockbuster Entertainment Inc. the logo changed slightly, but retained the ITC Machine font
17.
Janet Jackson
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Janet Damita Jo Jackson is an American singer, songwriter, dancer and actress. After signing a contract with A&M Records in 1982, she became a pop icon following the release of her third studio album Control. Her collaborations with record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis incorporated elements of rhythm and blues, funk, disco, rap, and industrial beats, which led to crossover success in popular music. In 1991 Jackson signed the first of two record-breaking multimillion-dollar contracts with Virgin Records, establishing her as one of the highest paid artists in the industry. Her debut album under the label, Janet, saw her develop an image as a sex symbol as she began to explore sexuality in her work. That same year, she appeared in her first starring role in Poetic Justice. By the end of the 1990s, she was the second most successful recording artist of the decade, the release of her seventh studio album All for You coincided with a celebration of her impact on popular music as the inaugural MTV Icon. After parting ways with Virgin she released her studio album, Discipline, her first. In 2015 she partnered with BMG Rights Management to launch her own label, Rhythm Nation. Having sold over 100 million records, Jackson is one of the artists in the history of contemporary music. In 2016, Billboard placed her number seven on its list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, in December 2016, the magazine named her the second most successful dance artist of all-time. One of the worlds most awarded artists, her longevity, records and she has been cited as an inspiration among numerous performers. Janet Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, the youngest of ten children, to Katherine Esther, the Jacksons were lower-middle class and devout Jehovahs Witnesses, although Jackson would later refrain from organized religion. At a young age, her brothers began performing as The Jackson 5 in the Chicago-Gary area, in March 1969, the group signed a record deal with Motown, and soon had their first number-one hit. The family then moved to the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, Jackson had initially desired to become a horse racing jockey or entertainment lawyer, with plans to support herself through acting. Despite this, she was anticipated to pursue a career in entertainment, at age seven, Jackson performed at the Las Vegas Strip at the MGM Casino. A biography revealed her father, Joseph Jackson, was emotionally withdrawn and she began acting in the variety show The Jacksons in 1976. In 1977, she was selected to have a role as Penny Gordon Woods in the sitcom Good Times
18.
Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy
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The incident, sometimes referred to as Nipplegate, was widely discussed. Along with the rest of the show, it led to an immediate crackdown. The halftime show that year was produced by MTV and was themed around the networks Choose or Lose campaign due to the event occurring during an election year. Following the wardrobe incident, the National Football League announced that MTV, the exposure was broadcast to a total audience of 143.6 million viewers. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim claims that this incident was led to the creation of the video sharing website. The incident also made Janet Jackson the most searched term, event and image in history, as well as the most searched person. The incident also broke the record for most searched event over one day, Jackson was later listed in the 2007 edition of Guinness World Records as Most Searched in Internet History and the Most Searched for News Item. It became the most watched, recorded and replayed moment in TiVo history. The incident also coined the phrase wardrobe malfunction, which was added to the Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary. Powell also considered it unfair that Timberlake did not receive the same effect, in September 2003, the NFL announced that Jackson would be the headline performer of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show. Prior to the incident, Timberlake had attended Jacksons Rhythm Nation Tour as an adolescent, Timberlake said he was psyched and later described the experience as fulfilling. Following the tour, Timberlake and Jackson became good friends, with Jackson also praising Timberlake, Timberlake recreated Jacksons Thats the Way Love Goes video with N Sync and was inspired by Jacksons performing style. Timberlake had frequently mentioned admiring Jackson in many interviews during this time, when asked who he thought was the sexiest woman on the planet, Timberlake had said Ive thought Janet Jackson has nothing but sex appeal, so Id probably say her. Her name was the first that popped up in my head just because I love her voice, I mean, she sounds like an angel. The incident has been referred to as Nipplegate and the boob seen round the world in the media, Jacksons publicist stated the performance ending was only supposed to reveal Jacksons red lace bra, though the lace undergarment was accidentally removed along with the outer layer. On June 29,2012, the Supreme Court declined an FCC appeal, MTV stated, The tearing of Janet Jacksons costume was unrehearsed, unplanned, completely unintentional and was inconsistent with assurances we had about the content of the performance. MTV regrets this incident occurred and we apologize to anyone who was offended by it, the network also said, Our goal with the Super Bowl Halftime show was to produce an entertaining stage experience with a positive message about empowerment and voting. We are disappointed that this message has been overshadowed by the unfortunate incident, a statement from CBS read, We attended all rehearsals throughout the week and there was no indication that any such thing would happen
19.
Justin Timberlake
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Justin Randall Timberlake is an American singer-songwriter, actor and record producer. Born and raised in Tennessee, he appeared on the television shows Star Search, in the late 1990s, Timberlake rose to prominence as one of the two lead vocalists and youngest member of NSYNC, which eventually became one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. With his first two albums exceeding sales of 10 million copies worldwide, he was established as one of the most commercially successful singers of the decade, furthermore, he produced records and collaborated with other artists. For his live performances, including the concert tour for the albums, he began performing with his band The Tennessee Kids, composed by instrumentalists. Timberlake voiced the character in DreamWorks Animations Trolls, which soundtrack includes his fifth Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping single. Among numerous awards and accolades, Timberlake has won ten Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007 and 2013. His other ventures include record label Tennman Records, fashion label William Rast, Timberlake was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Lynn Harless and Charles Randall Timberlake, a Baptist church choir director. Timberlake grew up in Shelby Forest, a community between Memphis and Millington. He has two half-brothers, Jonathan and Stephen, from Charles second marriage to Lisa Perry and his half-sister Laura Katherine died shortly after birth on May 12,1997, and is mentioned in his acknowledgments in the album NSYNC as My Angel in Heaven. He was inspired to become a performer by Janet Jackson, saying She didnt just stand there and sing her song, fascinated by her energy, at the age of 11, Timberlake appeared on the television show Star Search, performing country music songs as Justin Randall. Timberlake then recruited Chasez to be in a singing group, organized by boy band manager Lou Pearlman. The boy band NSYNC formed in 1995, and began their career in 1996 in Europe, Timberlake and Chasez served as its two lead singers. In 1998, the rose to prominence in the United States with the release of their self-titled debut studio album. Their second album No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies in the first week, nSYNCs third album Celebrity was also financially successful. Upon the completion of the Celebrity Tour, the group went into hiatus in 2002, in late 1999, Timberlake appeared in the Disney Channel movie Model Behavior. He played Jason Sharpe, a model who falls in love with a waitress after mistaking her for another model and it was released on March 12,2000. The rise of his own stardom and the decline in the popularity of boy bands led to the dissolution of NSYNC. Band member Lance Bass was openly critical of Timberlakes actions in his memoir Out of Sync and his debut solo studio album Justified was released in November and debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 439,000 copies, fewer than previous N Sync releases
20.
CBS
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CBS is an American commercial broadcast television network that is a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major facilities and operations in New York City. CBS is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network, in reference to the iconic logo. It has also called the Tiffany Network, alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of William S. Paley. It can also refer to some of CBSs first demonstrations of color television, the network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc. a collection of 16 radio stations that was purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paleys guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, in 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971, CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which also controls the current Viacom. The television network has more than 240 owned-and-operated and affiliated stations throughout the United States. The origins of CBS date back to January 27,1927, Columbia Phonographic went on the air on September 18,1927, with a presentation by the Howard Barlow Orchestra from flagship station WOR in Newark, New Jersey, and fifteen affiliates. Operational costs were steep, particularly the payments to AT&T for use of its land lines, in early 1928 Judson sold the network to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy, owners of the networks Philadelphia affiliate WCAU, and their partner Jerome Louchenheim. With the record out of the picture, Paley quickly streamlined the corporate name to Columbia Broadcasting System. He believed in the power of advertising since his familys La Palina cigars had doubled their sales after young William convinced his elders to advertise on radio. By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchenheim share of CBS, during Louchenheims brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to A. H. Grebes Atlantic Broadcasting Company for a small Brooklyn station, WABC, which would become the networks flagship station. WABC was quickly upgraded, and the relocated to 860 kHz. The physical plant was relocated also – to Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan, by the turn of 1929, the network could boast to sponsors of having 47 affiliates. Paley moved right away to put his network on a financial footing. In the fall of 1928, he entered talks with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures. The deal came to fruition in September 1929, Paramount acquired 49% of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3.8 million at the time
21.
TiVo digital video recorders
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TiVo digital video recorders encompass a number of digital video recorder models that TiVo, Inc. designed. Features may vary, but a feature is that all of the units listed here require TiVo service. TiVo units have been manufactured by various OEMs, including Philips, Sony, Pioneer, Toshiba, cisco Systems and Samsung joined forces with pay TV Provider Virgin Media to create the Virgin Media TiVo box. The OEMs license the software from TiVo Inc, to date, there have been six series of TiVo units produced, with the sixth series, the Bolt, released in October 2015. The Series1 was the original TiVo digital video recorder, Series1 TiVo systems are based on PowerPC processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips and IDE/ATA hard drives. Series1 TiVo units used one or two drives of 13–60 GB, although not supported by TiVo or equipment manufacturers, larger drives can be added. All standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, the TiVo unit can use a serial cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver. They have coax/RF, composite/RCA, and S-Video output, and the DVD systems also have component out, audio is RCA stereo, and the DVD systems also have digital optical out. CPU, IBM PowerPC 403GCX at 54 MHz RAM,16 MB Some TiVo systems are integrated with DirecTV receivers and these DirecTiVo recorders record the incoming satellite MPEG-2 digital stream directly to the hard disk without conversion. Because of this, and the fact that they have two tuners, DirecTiVos are able to record two programs at once, in addition, the lack of digital conversion allows recorded video to be of the same quality as live video. DirecTiVos have no MPEG encoder chip, and can only record DirecTV streams, CPU, IBM PowerPC 403GCX at 70-80 MHz RAM,32 MB TiVo has upgraded the data associated with all the shows and movies on TiVo DVRs to provide more accurate program information to subscribers. Unfortunately, Series1 DVRs cannot use this new guide data, Series1 DVRs will receive their final guide update on 9/15/2016 and will no longer be able to create any new recordings from the program guide after 9/29/2016. Customers will continue to be able to access any existing recordings on the DVR and will be able to create manual recordings, the Series2 was a complete redesign of the TiVo hardware. It includes USB ports, a new CPU, and more RAM, the availability of network connectivity has spread to the software side, where new features like TiVoToGo and Home Media Engine applications are now supported. Series2 TiVo systems are based on MIPS processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips, current Series2 units have drives of 40–250GB in size. Although not supported by TiVo or equipment manufacturers, larger drives can be added, all standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, and S-Video—for use with an external cable box or satellite receiver. The TiVo unit can use a cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver. They have coax/RF, composite/RCA, and S-Video output, and the DVD systems also have component out, audio is RCA stereo, and the DVD systems also have digital optical out
22.
Videocassette recorder
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Use of a VCR to record a television program to play back at a more convenient time is commonly referred to as timeshifting. VCRs can also play back prerecorded tapes, in the 1980s and 1990s, prerecorded videotapes were widely available for purchase and rental, and blank tapes were sold to make recordings. These features began as simple mechanical counter-based single-event timers, but were replaced by more flexible multiple-event digital clock timers. In later models the multiple timer events could be programmed through a menu interface displayed on the playback TV screen and this feature allowed several programs to be recorded at different times without further user intervention, and became a major selling point. The history of the recorder follows the history of videotape recording in general. Ampex introduced the Quadruplex videotape professional broadcast standard format with its Ampex VRX-1000 in 1956 and it became the worlds first commercially successful videotape recorder using two-inch wide tape. Due to its price of US$50,000, the Ampex VRX-1000 could be afforded only by the television networks. In 1959 Toshiba announced a new method of recording known as helical scan, first implemented in reel-to-reel videotape recorders, the Telcan, produced by the UK Nottingham Electronic Valve Company in 1963, was the first home video recorder. It could be bought as a unit or in kit form for £60, however, there were several drawbacks, it was expensive, not easy to assemble, and could only record 20 minutes at a time. It recorded in black-and-white, the format available in the UK at the time. The half-inch tape Sony model CV-2000, first marketed in 1965, was their first VTR intended for home use, Ampex and RCA followed in 1965 with their own reel-to-reel monochrome VTRs priced under US$1,000 for the home consumer market. The EIAJ format was a standard format used by various manufacturers. EIAJ-2 used a cartridge that contained a supply reel, the reel was part of the recorder, and the tape had to be fully rewound before removing the cartridge. In 1972, videocassettes of movies became available for home use, Sony demonstrated a videocassette prototype in October 1969, then set it aside to work out an industry standard by March 1970 with seven fellow manufacturers. The result, the Sony U-matic system, introduced in Tokyo in September 1971, was the worlds first commercial videocassette format. Its cartridges, resembling larger versions of the later VHS cassettes, used 3/4-inch tape and had a playing time of 60 minutes. Sony also introduced two machines to use the new tapes, U-matic, with its ease of use, quickly made other consumer videotape systems obsolete in Japan and North America, where U-matic VCRs were widely used by television newsrooms schools and businesses. But the high cost - US$1,395 in 1971 for a combination TV/VCR, in 1970, Philips developed a home video cassette format specially made for a TV station in 1970 and available on the consumer market in 1972
23.
American Idol
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It began airing on Fox on June 11,2002, and ended on April 7,2016. It started off as an addition to the Idols format based on the British series Pop Idol, the concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by the viewers in America through telephones, Internet, and SMS text voting. American Idol employed a panel of judges who critiqued the contestants performances, the original judges were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, pop singer and choreographer Paula Abdul and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the final consisted of country singer Keith Urban, singer and actress Jennifer Lopez. The first season was hosted by radio personality Ryan Seacrest and comedian Brian Dunkleman, the success of American Idol has been described as unparalleled in broadcasting history. The series was said by a rival TV executive to be the most impactful show in the history of television. It became a springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. The series concluded after 15 seasons, American Idol was based on the British show Pop Idol created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition Popstars. Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain, Fuller was inspired by the idea from Popstars of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added elements, such as telephone voting by the viewing public. The show debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner—the executive producer and production leader—and Simon Cowell as one of the judges, it was quite successful with the viewing public. In 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the Pop Idol format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from the Fox television network. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Foxs parent company, was persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth. The show was renamed American Idol, The Search for a Superstar, Cowell was initially offered the job as showrunner but later turned down the offer, Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to Cowells surprise, it one of the biggest shows of the summer. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement of the contestants, thereby prompting viewers to vote, by 2004, it had become the most-watched show on U. S. television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons. However, after a few years of declining ratings, the network announced that the fifteenth season would be its last. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen, the show decided to continue with the three judges format until season eight
24.
America's Got Talent
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Americas Got Talent is an American reality television series on the NBC television network, and part of the global Got Talent franchise. It is a talent show that features singers, dancers, magicians, comedians, the show debuted in June 2006 for the summer television season. From season three onwards, the prize includes the one million dollars, payable in a financial annuity over 40 years, among its significant features is that it gives an opportunity to talented amateurs or unknown performers, with the results decided by an audience vote. The format is a one and has often been reworked for television in the United States. As such, the U. S. version became the first full series of the franchise, the original judging panel consisted of David Hasselhoff, Brandy Norwood, and Piers Morgan. Sharon Osbourne replaced Norwood in season two, and Howie Mandel replaced Hasselhoff in season five, Howard Stern replaced Morgan in season seven. Mel B replaced Osbourne in season eight, while Heidi Klum joined as a fourth judge, Simon Cowell replaced Stern for season eleven. Regis Philbin was the original host, followed by Jerry Springer for two seasons, followed by Nick Cannon for eight seasons, supermodel and host Tyra Banks is set to replace Cannon for the twelfth season. On August 2,2016, NBC renewed the series for a twelfth season, a book was released in 2013 titled, Inside AGT, The Untold Stories of Americas Got Talent. It describes the seasons, contestants, judges, and production techniques of the show, a fourth judge was added in season eight. Beginning in season ten, each of the AGT judges took it in turn to invite a guest judge to join the panel for one night. The guest judges had the ability to employ the golden buzzer to bypass the other judges, the first guest judge, Neil Patrick Harris, appeared at the invitation of Howard Stern in episode eight of season ten, which aired on July 14,2015. Michael Bublé appeared at the invitation of Heidi Klum in episode nine of season ten, marlon Wayans appeared at the invitation of Howie Mandel in episode ten of season ten, which aired on July 28,2015. Piers Morgan appeared at the invitation of Mel B in episode eleven of season ten, in season eleven, guest judges were invited to the judges cut week for the second year. The guest judges yet again had the ability to employ the golden buzzer to bypass the other judges and this round is held several months before the judges audition. Acts that have made it through the producers audition then audition in front of the judges, following the producers auditions, acts audition in front of four celebrity judges. These auditions are held in theaters in various cities nationally and are later televised, judges may individually register their disapproval of an act by pressing a red buzzer, which lights up their corresponding X above the stage. Any performer who receives Xs from all judges must stop performing and is immediately eliminated, since season three, large audiences have also been a factor in the judging process, as their reaction to an acts performance may swing or influence a judges vote
25.
Dancing with the Stars
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Currently the format has been licensed to over 42 territories. Versions have also produced in dozens of countries across the world. The dancers are then scored by a panel of judges, viewers are given a certain amount of time to place votes for their favourite dancers, either by telephone or online. The couple with the lowest combined score provided by the judges and this process continues until there are only two or three couples left, when they have competed for the last time one couple is declared the champion and wins a trophy. There have been a total of 377 winners of Dancing with the Stars around the world, country of origin Currently airing Upcoming or returning No longer airing The Chinese version is a co-production between mainland Chinas HBS and Hong Kongs TVB, under licence from the BBC. In mainland China it is aired on Hunan Television and in Hong Kong on TVB Jade, the Chinese title is difficult to translate, but could be rendered as Miracle Dancing or Miracles of Dance Moves. The official English title is Strictly Come Dancing, each broadcaster provides five male and five female dancers, for a total of twenty. Pairs were determined by audience SMS votes, the programme began airing in late 2007, in order to mark the anniversary of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to the Peoples Republic of China. The Indian version is called Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa and it was first broadcast in September 2006 on Sony Entertainment Television. A lot of people confuse Dancing With The Stars with Nach Baliye which airs on StarPlus, Nach Baliye and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa have similar content and presentation but there are minor differences in the concept. The celebrity dancers on Nach Baliye are real life couples, the dancers on Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa have one celebrity paired with a trained dancer/choreographer. A notice at the end of the show verifies that the Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa is indeed a version of Dancing With The Stars and it has the same title as the 1996 movie by the same name, but it has no relation to it beyond the shared name. This one ran from 8 April 2006, to 17 March 2007 on NTV-4, the show has aired on MBC TV since June 10,2011, and is hosted by Lee Deok-hwa, with co-host Lee So-ra in Season 1 while former contestant Kim Gyu-ri co-hosted the second season. The first season was won by Moon Hee-joon and his partner Ahn Hye-sang while the season was won by Choi Yeo-jin. The 3rd Season was won by pop-singer and dancer Fei and her partner Kim Soo Ro, nachley is the Pakistani version of Dancing with the Stars. The show is aired on ARY Digital and its theme is based around traditional Pakistani music, the first Peruvian reality show based on Dancing With The Stars was Baila con las estrellas, hosted by Rebeca Escribens and broadcast on Panamericana Televisión on Saturday afternoon. The show had 2 series, then it was cancelled and this show was hosted by Gisela Valcárcel and Giancarlo Chichizola and aired every Saturday night. The show was like Dancing With The Stars, but instead of professional dancers and they danced every week in order to win a prize, to achieve a personal/humanitarian goal or dream
26.
Television advertisement
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A television advertisement is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization, which conveys a message, typically to market a product or service. Advertisers and marketeers may refer to television commercials as TVCs, Advertising revenue provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately-owned television networks. As of 2016 the vast majority of television advertisements consist of advertising spots. Advertisements of this sort have promoted a variety of goods, services. The effects of television advertising upon the public have been the subject of philosophical discourse by such luminaries as Marshall McLuhan. In many countries, including the United States, television advertisements are considered indispensable for a political campaign. In other countries, such as France, political advertising on television is heavily restricted, while some countries, such as Norway, completely ban political advertisements. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 to $9.00, displayed a WNBT test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase Bulova Watch Time, appeared in the lower quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. The first TV ad broadcast in the UK went to air on ITV on September 22,1955, the first TV ad broadcast in Asia appeared on Nippon Television in Tokyo on August 28,1953, advertising Seikosha, it also displayed a clock with the current time. To accomplish the first step means different things in different parts of the world depending on the regulation in place, in the UK for example, clearance must be given by the body Clearcast. Another example is Venezuela where clearance is governed by a body called CNAC, the clearance provides guarantee to the broadcasters that the content of the advertisement meets legal guidelines. Because of this, special extended clearance sometimes applies to food, after the advent of cheap video software and consumer cameras, numerous individuals have offered video production services on the internet. Some of these ad jingles or catch-phrases may take on lives of their own, spawning gags that appear in films, television shows, magazines, comics, or literature. These long-lasting advertising elements may be said to have taken a place in the pop culture history of the demographic to whom they appeared. An example is the phrase, Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Variations of this dialogue and direct references to it appeared as long as two decades after the advertising campaign expired, another example is Wheres the Beef. which grew so popular it was used in the 1984 presidential election by Walter Mondale. Another popular catch-phrase is Ive fallen and I cant get up, Advertising agencies often use humor as a tool in their creative marketing campaigns
27.
Home network
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A home network or home area network is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Establishing this kind of network is necessary when there is need to distribute residential Internet access to all internet capable devices in the home. Due to the effect of IPv4 address exhaustion, most Internet service providers provide only a single WAN-facing IP address for each residential subscription, in homes these usually come in the form of a DSL modem or cable modem. A router manages network layer connectivity between a WAN and the HAN, most home networks feature a particular class of small, passively cooled, table-top device with an integrated wireless access point and 4 port Ethernet switch. These devices aim to make the installation, configuration, and management of a network as automated, user friendly. A network switch is used to allow devices on the network to talk to one another via Ethernet. While the needs of most home networks are satisfied with the built-in wireless and/or switching capabilities of their router, for example, When the routers switching capacity is exceeded. Most home routers expose only 4 to 6 Ethernet ports, most home networks rely on one wireless router combination device to fill this role. A home automation controller enables low-power wireless communications with simple, non-data-intensive devices such as light bulbs, a network bridge connecting two network interfaces to each other, often in order to grant a wired-only device, e. g. Xbox, access to a wireless network medium. Home networks can use either wired or wireless technologies to connect endpoints, wireless is the predominant option in homes due to the ease of installation, lack of unsightly cables, and network performance characteristics sufficient for residential activities. One of the most common ways of creating a network is by using wireless radio signal technology. Most wireless-capable residential devices operate at a frequency of 2.4 GHz under 802. 11b and 802. 11g or 5 GHz under 802. 11a, some home networking devices operate in both radio-band signals and fall within the 802. 11n or 802. 11ac standards. Wi-Fi is a marketing and compliance certification for IEEE802.11 technologies, the Wi-Fi Alliance has tested compliant products, and certifies them for interoperability. Low power, close range communication based on IEEE802.15 standards has a presence in homes. Bluetooth continues to be the technology of choice for most wireless accessories such as keyboards, mice, headsets and these connections are often established in a transient, ad-hoc manner and are not thought of as permanent residents of a home network. A low-rate version of the original WPAN protocol was used as the basis of ZigBee, ZigBee utilizes mesh networking to overcome the distance limitations associated with traditional WPAN in order to establish a single network of addressable devices spread across the entire building. Z-Wave is a standard also built on 802.15.4. Most wired network infrastructures found in homes utilize Category 5 or Category 6 twisted pair cabling with RJ45 compatible terminations and this medium provides physical connectivity between the Ethernet interfaces present on a large number of residential IP-aware devices
28.
Macintosh
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The Macintosh (/ˈmækᵻntɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh, is a series of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer on January 24,1984 and this was the companys first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. This first model was renamed to Macintosh 128k for uniqueness amongst a populous family of subsequently updated models which are also based on Apples same proprietary architecture. Since 1998, Apple has largely phased out the Macintosh name in favor of Mac, Macintosh systems still found success in education and desktop publishing and kept Apple as the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the 1990s, improvements in the rival Wintel platform, notably with the introduction of Windows 3.0, then Windows 95, gradually took market share from the more expensive Macintosh systems. The performance advantage of 68000-based Macintosh systems was eroded by Intels Pentium, even after a transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in 1994, the falling prices of commodity PC components and the release of Windows 95 saw the Macintosh user base decline. In 1998, after the return of Steve Jobs, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the all-in-one iMac G3, since their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup is entirely based on said processors and associated systems. Its current lineup comprises three desktops, and three laptops and its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently macOS version 10.12 Sierra, Macs are currently capable of running non-Apple operating systems such as Linux, OpenBSD, and Microsoft Windows with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software. Apple does not license macOS for use on computers, though it did license previous versions of the classic Mac OS through their Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. The Macintosh project was begun in 1979 by Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who envisioned an easy-to-use, in 1978 Apple began to organize the Apple Lisa project, aiming to build a next-generation machine similar to an advanced Apple III or the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC. In 1979, Steve Jobs learned of the work on graphical user interfaces taking place at Xerox PARC. He arranged a deal in which Xerox received Apple stock options in return for which Apple would license their designs, the basic layout of the Lisa was largely complete by 1982, at which point Jobs continual suggestions for improvements led to him being kicked off the project. At the same time that the Lisa was becoming a GUI machine in 1979, the design at that time was for a low-cost, easy-to-use machine for the average consumer. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979 and his initial team would eventually consist of himself, Howard, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, and Bud Tribble. Smiths design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen IC sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final products screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel monochrome display, burrels innovative design, combining the low production cost of an Apple II with the computing power of Lisas Motorola 68000 CPU, began to receive Jobs attentions
29.
BSkyB
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Sky UK Limited is a telecommunications company which serves the United Kingdom. Sky provides television and broadband services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers. It is the UKs largest pay-TV broadcaster with 11 million customers as of 2015 and it was the UKs most popular digital TV service until it was overtaken by Freeview in April 2007. Its corporate headquarters are based in Isleworth, formed in November 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, Sky became the UKs largest digital subscription television company. Following Skys 2014 acquisition of Sky Italia and a majority 90. 04% interest in Sky Deutschland in November 2014, the United Kingdom operations also changed the company name from British Sky Broadcasting Limited to Sky UK Limited, still trading as Sky. Sky UK Limited is an owned subsidiary of Sky plc, with its current company directors being Andrew Griffith. Griffith acts as the Chief Financial Officer and the Managing Director for the commercial businesses division, after the two companies merged, subscribers could get access to both channels, and later the sports channel Sky Sports also became encrypted. In the autumn of 1991, talks were held for the broadcast rights for Premier League for a five-year period, ITV were the current rights holders, and fought hard to retain the new rights. ITV had increased its offer from £18m to £34m per year to control of the rights. BSkyB joined forces with the BBC to make a counter bid, Murdoch described sport as a battering ram for pay-television, providing a strong customer base. A few weeks after the deal, ITV went to the High Court to get an injunction as it believed their bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken. ITV also asked the Office of Fair Trading to investigate since it believed Rupert Murdochs media empire via its newspapers had influenced the deal. A few days later neither action took effect, ITV believed BSkyB was telephoned and informed of its £262m bid, and Premier League advised BSkyB to increase its counter bid. BSkyB retained the rights paying £670m 1997–2001 deal, but was challenged by On Digital for the rights from 2001–2004, in May 2006, the Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports was awarded two of the six Premier League packages that the English FA offered to broadcasters. Sky picked up the four for £1. 3bn. In February 2015, Sky bid £4. 2bn for a package of 120 premier league games across the three seasons from 2016 and this represented an increase of 70% on the previous contract and was said to be £1bn more than the company had expected to pay. The move has been followed by staff cuts, increased subscription prices, in September 1993, BSkyB launched Sky Multichannels which was the present digital platforms analogue predecessor. Sky Multichannels was a package that gave access not only to Skys own channels
30.
Sky+
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Sky+, or Sky Plus, is a personal video recorder service for Sky in the UK. Launched in mid 2001, it allows the user to record, pause, the system performs these functions using an internal hard drive inside the Sky+ set top box. Its chief competitors in the UK market are the Freeview+, Freesat+, BT Vision, in the Republic of Ireland, Sky+ competes with Virgin Media Horizon TV and Saorview. As of 30 September 2009, there were 5.9 million customers with Sky+, the £10 per month subscription fee was discontinued for subscribers from 1 July 2007, but will continue for Freesat from Sky use. Combined digital satellite receiver/decoder and personal video recorder, twin digital satellite tuners – for connection to identical independent feeds from Astra 28. 2°E. Allows simultaneous recording/viewing or recording of 2 channels at once, the set-top box middleware is provided by OpenTV, but the EPG and all the software extensions that manage the PVR functions are produced by NDS under the name of XTV PVR. Sky+ has its own electronic programme guide made by Sky, from here, users can see what programmes are on in the next seven days. The current EPG software version is Sky+5.08.6, there have been various versions of Sky+, Sky+40 GB – First version of Sky+. An average of twenty hours recording time, the first generation of boxes were manufactured exclusively by Pace for the UK and Ireland market. The second generation of 40 GB boxes, were manufactured by both Amstrad and Pace, Sky+80 GB – Now officially and colloquially referred to as Sky+, this third generation of box are manufactured by Altech UEC, Pace, Amstrad and Thomson. Launched in September 2005 as standard Sky+ box, the box has an average of forty hours recording time, the box has a 160 GB hard drive installed, however half of this is reserved for use by the Sky Anytime TV service. The box is known internally at Sky as a PVR3 or Sky+ 80/80, Sky+160 GB – Referred to as Sky+160, this box was manufactured by Thomson, with the model number DSI6210, and was available only in the UK. Launched in the autumn of 2004 as Premium Sky+ box, it has an average of eighty hours recording time, the box has a 160 GB hard drive installed, and all 160 GB is available for user recordings. The Sky Anytime TV service is not available on this box, the Sky+160 box was discontinued during the first quarter of 2006. Sky+250 GB Sky+250 GB – Made by different companies, including Pace, Samsung, formerly with a smaller hard drive. Presumably upgraded with the numbers of HD channels. Sky+1 TB – The same as the smaller hard-drive HD box, similar in appearance however silver parts are replaced with black making a much slicker looking box. Sky+2 TB – The same as the smaller hard-drive HD box, similar in appearance however silver parts are replaced with black making a much slicker looking box
31.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
32.
Freesat
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Freesat is a free-to-air digital satellite television joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc, serving the United Kingdom. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008, Freesats main competitors are Freeview and Freesat from Sky. On digital terrestrial, the channels have always been available free-to-air with the appropriate equipment, in 2007 Freeview was available to only 73% of the population. After analogue TV services were replaced in the digital switchover, this increased to 98. 5% for the public service channels, to provide more widespread coverage and a larger number of channels, a digital satellite alternative was felt necessary. The use of encryption meant that anyone wishing to view the channels had to purchase equipment from Sky, similarly, to use the Videoguard encryption, the broadcasters needed to pay a fee to NDS Group. In May 2003 the BBC moved most of its channels from the Astra 2A satellite to Astra 2D and this move allowed the BBC to stop encrypting its broadcasts while continuing to meet its rights obligations. It dropped the two months later. Two months later, ITV, whose channels had already been located on the Astra 2D satellite since launching on the Sky platform some years earlier, also made their channels free-to-air. On 18 November 2008, Channel 5 commenced broadcasting a single channel via Freesat, eventually adding its ancillary services 5USA, viva moved from free-to-view to free-to-air on satellite on 19 March 2013, before launching on Freesat on 2 April 2013. On 2 April 2013, all seven of Box Televisions channels left Skys subscription package, with six becoming free-to-air on satellite, on 15 April four of the channels – The Box, TV, Kiss TV and Smash Hits – were added to the Freesat EPG. This was followed by Heat and Magic on 29 April, the Freesat project aims to provide a managed service with an Electronic Programme Guide and interactive features similar to the Freeview service launched three years earlier. Unlike Freeview, however, these features are available on approved receivers manufactured under licence from Freesat. The initial plan was to launch the service in early 2006 and this was postponed to Autumn 2007 as approval from the BBC Trust was only received in April 2007. However, the service was delayed and was officially launched on 6 May 2008. The service launched officially on 6 May 2008, from the launch, Freesat advertised all national television channels from the BBC and ITV as being available on the platform, as well as all national BBC radio networks. Channel 4 also managed to make most of its channels free-to-air in preparation for the launch. In addition some channels from other such as Chello Zone, CSC Media Group, Al Jazeera English, Zee Live, Zee News RIA Novosti. BBC HD was the only channel available on Freesat from launch day
33.
Freeview (UK)
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Freeview is the United Kingdoms digital terrestrial television platform. It is operated by DTV Services Ltd, a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and transmitter operator Arqiva, the service provides consumer access via an aerial to the six DTT multiplexes covering the United Kingdom. In April 2014 it had some 60 DVB-T TV channels,26 digital radio channels,10 HD channels, six services,11 streamed channels. A number of new HD channels launched in 2014, from a new group of multiplexes awarded to Arqiva, the new HD channels were launched in selected areas on 10 December 2013 with a further roll-out during 2014. DTV Services delivery of television and radio is labelled Freeview. Reception of Freeview requires a Freeview tuner, either in a separate box or built into the TV set. Since 2008 all new TV sets sold in the United Kingdom have a built-in Freeview tuner, Freeview HD requires a HDTV-capable tuner. Digital video recorders with a built-in Freeview tuner are labelled Freeview+, depending on model, DVRs and HDTV sets with a Freeview tuner may offer standard Freeview or Freeview HD. DMOL, a company owned by the operators of the six DTT multiplexes is responsible for platform management and policy, including the electronic programme guide. The founding members of DTV Services, who trade as Freeview, were the BBC, Crown Castle UK, on 11 October 2006, ITV plc and Channel 4 became equal shareholders. Since then, the Freeview model has been copied in Australia, with the launch of Freeview other channels were broadcast free-to-air, such as, Sky Travel, UK History, Sky News, Sky Sports News, The Hits and TMF were available from the start. BBC Four and the interactive BBC streams were moved to multiplex B, under the initial plans, the two multiplexes operated by Crown Castle would carry eight channels altogether. The seventh stream became shared by UK Bright Ideas and Ftn which launched in February 2003, the eighth stream was left unused until April 2004 when the shopping channel Ideal World launched on Freeview. There are now 14 streams carried by the two multiplexes, with Multiplex C carrying 6 streams, and Multiplex D carrying 8 and it has recently been announced that more streams are now available on the multiplexes, and that bidding is under way. The Freeview service underwent an upgrade on 30 September 2009. The changes, meant to ensure reception of Channel 5. The Freeview website crashed and the centre was inundated as a result of the problems. The change involved an update to the NIT, which some receivers could not accommodate, many thousands of people could not receive some channels
34.
Tiscali TV (UK)
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TalkTalk TV is a UK-based consumer television and video on demand service, operated by the TalkTalk Group. In its current form, it was launched on 3 September 2012 in a partnership with YouView and its offering is delivered over a BT phone line, using ADSL or VDSL to provide a triple-play package of IPTV, video on demand, telephony and broadband internet access. There are now 2 options available – Plus TV or Essentials TV, the only difference is the Essentials Box cannot record and only has the capability of pausing and rewinding for up to 30 Minutes, compared to the standard 2 Hours on the Plus Box. The YouView box is a Smart Freeview+HD box which means BBC1 to 4 News and CBBC, humax have a silver 1TB model which can be bought in retail stores and can be used with or without a TalkTalk subscription. Currently both Huawei boxes do not have Wifi built in, and therefore an ethernet cable must be used for internet content and boosts. The service, originally known as Homechoice, was launched in September 2000 in the London area, in 2003, as Homechoice, it expanded its video services to include, via its IPTV platform, the majority of live channels that are available on the Freeview platform. Homechoice was purchased by Tiscali UK in August 2006, and became known as Tiscali TV, on 30 June 2009, a deal for The Carphone Warehouse to purchase all the assets of Tiscali UK for its TalkTalk division was approved by the European Union. As a result of Tiscali UKs acquisition, Tiscali TV was rebranded as TalkTalk TV as of 14 July 2009, TalkTalk TV however struggled to compete against BSkyB, Virgin Media and BTs television services. By the time Tiscali UK was taken over, there were just 50,000 TV subscribers, by the start of 2011, TalkTalk discontinued its existing TV service and removed it from their official site. TalkTalk formally launched its new YouView-based TV service in September 2012, a free YouView box will be provided to TalkTalk Plus customers taking out a fixed term contract and allow access to the content previously available from TalkTalk TV. Content that TalkTalk provides is available from the TalkTalk Player application within the YouView menu, BT, similarly to TalkTalk, offer a TV service together with YouView. Despite being launched in September 2012, TalkTalk did not start to heavily promote its TV service until early 2013, by May 2013, TalkTalk Plus TV became Britains fastest growing TV service. As of 1 September 2014, customers with a second YouView box will not be able to watch Boost channels, the boxes will be describes as Primary and Secondary boxes, where TV boosts are only available on the Primary Box. There is currently no multi-room package, YouView launched a Netflix player for new and existing Netflix customers. This is now on retail boxes and will launch on TalkTalk early 2015, TalkTalk announces the axe of six Discovery network channels from the Entertainment boosts on 30 June 2016. TalkTalk strikes a deal to offer original series and content from Maker Studios, TalkTalk Plus TV is delivered by IPTV signals using a YouView set-top box. These boxes also allow access to terrestrial television signals using an additional aerial to watch Freeview channels. Originally all its channels and content were available on the TalkTalk Player without any EPG channel numbers, on 7 August 2013, the channels became available on the YouView EPG with channel numbering ranging from 401 to 599
35.
TiVo DVRs
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TiVo digital video recorders encompass a number of digital video recorder models that TiVo, Inc. designed. Features may vary, but a feature is that all of the units listed here require TiVo service. TiVo units have been manufactured by various OEMs, including Philips, Sony, Pioneer, Toshiba, cisco Systems and Samsung joined forces with pay TV Provider Virgin Media to create the Virgin Media TiVo box. The OEMs license the software from TiVo Inc, to date, there have been six series of TiVo units produced, with the sixth series, the Bolt, released in October 2015. The Series1 was the original TiVo digital video recorder, Series1 TiVo systems are based on PowerPC processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips and IDE/ATA hard drives. Series1 TiVo units used one or two drives of 13–60 GB, although not supported by TiVo or equipment manufacturers, larger drives can be added. All standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, the TiVo unit can use a serial cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver. They have coax/RF, composite/RCA, and S-Video output, and the DVD systems also have component out, audio is RCA stereo, and the DVD systems also have digital optical out. CPU, IBM PowerPC 403GCX at 54 MHz RAM,16 MB Some TiVo systems are integrated with DirecTV receivers and these DirecTiVo recorders record the incoming satellite MPEG-2 digital stream directly to the hard disk without conversion. Because of this, and the fact that they have two tuners, DirecTiVos are able to record two programs at once, in addition, the lack of digital conversion allows recorded video to be of the same quality as live video. DirecTiVos have no MPEG encoder chip, and can only record DirecTV streams, CPU, IBM PowerPC 403GCX at 70-80 MHz RAM,32 MB TiVo has upgraded the data associated with all the shows and movies on TiVo DVRs to provide more accurate program information to subscribers. Unfortunately, Series1 DVRs cannot use this new guide data, Series1 DVRs will receive their final guide update on 9/15/2016 and will no longer be able to create any new recordings from the program guide after 9/29/2016. Customers will continue to be able to access any existing recordings on the DVR and will be able to create manual recordings, the Series2 was a complete redesign of the TiVo hardware. It includes USB ports, a new CPU, and more RAM, the availability of network connectivity has spread to the software side, where new features like TiVoToGo and Home Media Engine applications are now supported. Series2 TiVo systems are based on MIPS processors connected to MPEG-2 encoder/decoder chips, current Series2 units have drives of 40–250GB in size. Although not supported by TiVo or equipment manufacturers, larger drives can be added, all standalone TiVo systems have coax/RF-in and an internal cable-ready tuner, analog video input—composite/RCA, and S-Video—for use with an external cable box or satellite receiver. The TiVo unit can use a cable or IR blasters to control the external receiver. They have coax/RF, composite/RCA, and S-Video output, and the DVD systems also have component out, audio is RCA stereo, and the DVD systems also have digital optical out
36.
Linux
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Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution. The defining component of Linux is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17,1991 by Linus Torvalds, the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to describe the operating system, which has led to some controversy. Linux was originally developed for computers based on the Intel x86 architecture. Because of the dominance of Android on smartphones, Linux has the largest installed base of all operating systems. Linux is also the operating system on servers and other big iron systems such as mainframe computers. It is used by around 2. 3% of desktop computers, the Chromebook, which runs on Chrome OS, dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20% of the sub-$300 notebook sales in the US. Linux also runs on embedded systems – devices whose operating system is built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes TiVo and similar DVR devices, network routers, facility automation controls, televisions, many smartphones and tablet computers run Android and other Linux derivatives. The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free, the underlying source code may be used, modified and distributed—commercially or non-commercially—by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License. Typically, Linux is packaged in a known as a Linux distribution for both desktop and server use. Distributions intended to run on servers may omit all graphical environments from the standard install, because Linux is freely redistributable, anyone may create a distribution for any intended use. The Unix operating system was conceived and implemented in 1969 at AT&Ts Bell Laboratories in the United States by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, first released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language, as was common practice at the time. Later, in a key pioneering approach in 1973, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie, the availability of a high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. Due to an earlier antitrust case forbidding it from entering the computer business, as a result, Unix grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of Bell Labs, freed of the legal obligation requiring free licensing, the GNU Project, started in 1983 by Richard Stallman, has the goal of creating a complete Unix-compatible software system composed entirely of free software. Later, in 1985, Stallman started the Free Software Foundation, by the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers, daemons, and the kernel were stalled and incomplete. Linus Torvalds has stated that if the GNU kernel had been available at the time, although not released until 1992 due to legal complications, development of 386BSD, from which NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Torvalds has also stated that if 386BSD had been available at the time, although the complete source code of MINIX was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000
37.
Philips
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Koninklijke Philips N. V. is a Dutch technology company headquartered in Amsterdam with primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare and lighting. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891, by Gerard Philips and it is one of the largest electronics companies in the world and employs around 105,000 people across more than 60 countries. Philips is organized into three divisions, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, Philips Healthcare and Philips Lighting. As of 2012, Philips was the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world measured by applicable revenues, Philips said it would seek damages for breach of contract in the US$200-million sale. In April 2016, the International Court of Arbitration ruled in favour of Philips, Philips has a primary listing on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. It has a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The Philips Company was founded in 1891, by Gerard Philips and this first factory has been adapted and is used as a museum. In 1895, after a difficult first few years and near bankruptcy, though he had earned a degree in engineering, Anton started work as a sales representative, soon, however, he began to contribute many important business ideas. After Gerard and Anton Philips changed their business by founding the Philips corporation. In the 1920s, the company started to other products. In 1939, they introduced their electric razor, the Philishave, the Chapel is a radio with built-in loudspeaker, which was designed during the early 1930s. On 11 March 1927, Philips went on the air with shortwave radio station PCJJ which was joined in 1929 by sister station PHOHI, PHOHI broadcast in Dutch to the Dutch East Indies while PCJJ broadcast in English, Spanish and German to the rest of the world. The international program on Sundays commenced in 1928, with host Eddie Startz hosting the Happy Station show, broadcasts from the Netherlands were interrupted by the German invasion in May 1940. The Germans commandeered the transmitters in Huizen to use for pro-Nazi broadcasts, some originating from Germany, Philips Radio was absorbed shortly after liberation when its two shortwave stations were nationalised in 1947 and renamed Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the Dutch International Service. Some PCJ programs, such as Happy Station, continued on the new station, by the late 1940s, the Type 10 was ready to be handed over to Philips subsidiary Johan de Witt in Dordrecht to be produced and incorporated into a generator set as originally planned. The result, rated at 180/200 W electrical output from a bore, approximately 150 of these sets were eventually produced. However, they filed a number of patents and amassed a wealth of information. The first Philips shaver was introduced in the 1930s, and was simply called “The Philishave”, in the USA, it was called the “Norelco”, which remains a part of their product line today
38.
Sony
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Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony was ranked 116th on the 2015 list of Fortune Global 500 and these make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Financial Holdings and others. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year and as of 2013, the companys current slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make. believe, like. no. other, Sony has a weak tie to the SMFG keiretsu, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu. Sony began in the wake of World War II, in 1946, Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in a department store building in Tokyo. The company had $530 in capital and a total of eight employees, in the following year he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業. The company built Japans first tape recorder, called the Type-G, in 1958 the company changed its name to Sony. When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK, the company occasionally used the acronym Totsuko in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was Tokyo Teletech until Akio Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name, the name Sony was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the other was sonny, a common slang term used in 1950s America to call a boy. In the 1950s Japan sonny boys, was a word into Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955, at the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition, TTKs principal bank at the time and they pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Banks chairman gave their approval, according to Schiffer, Sonys TR-63 radio cracked open the U. S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics
39.
Cisco
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Through its numerous acquired subsidiaries, such as OpenDNS, WebEx, and Jasper, Cisco specializes into specific tech markets, such as Internet of Things, domain security, and energy management. Cisco is the largest networking company in the world, the stock was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 8,2009, and is also included in the S&P500 Index, the Russell 1000 Index, NASDAQ-100 Index and the Russell 1000 Growth Stock Index. By the time the company went public in 1990, when it was listed on the NASDAQ, Cisco was the most valuable company in the world by 2000, with a more than $500 billion market capitalization. Despite founding Cisco in 1984, Bosack, along with Kirk Lougheed, continued to work at Stanford on Ciscos first product and it consisted of exact replicas of Stanfords Blue Box router and a stolen copy of the Universitys multiple-protocol router software. The software was written some years earlier at Stanford medical school by research engineer William Yeager. Bosack and Lougheed adapted it into what became the foundation for Cisco IOS, in 1987, Stanford licensed the router software and two computer boards to Cisco. In addition to Bosack, Lerner and Lougheed, Greg Satz, a programmer, and Richard Troiano, the companys first CEO was Bill Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO, the name Cisco was derived from the city name San Francisco, which is why the companys engineers insisted on using the lower case cisco in its early years. The logo is intended to depict the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, on February 16,1990, Cisco Systems went public and was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. On August 28,1990, Lerner was fired, upon hearing the news, her husband Bosack resigned in protest. The couple walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was committed to their own charity, although Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell dedicated network nodes, it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols. Classical, CPU-based architecture of early Cisco devices coupled with flexibility of operating system IOS allowed for keeping up with evolving technology needs by means of frequent software upgrades, some popular models of that time managed to stay in production for almost a decade virtually unchanged—a rarity in high-tech industry. This philosophy dominated the companys product lines throughout the 1990s, in 1995, John Morgridge was succeeded by John Chambers. The phenomenal growth of the Internet in mid-to-late 1990s quickly changed the telecom landspe, as the Internet Protocol became widely adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. In late March 2000, at the height of the bubble, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world. In July 2014, with a cap of about US$129 billion. One of them, Juniper Networks, shipped their first product in 1999, Cisco answered the challenge with homegrown ASICs and fast processing cards for GSR routers and Catalyst 6500 switches. In 2004, Cisco also started migration to new high-end hardware CRS-1, as part of a massive rebranding campaign in 2006, Cisco Systems adopted the shortened name Cisco and created The Human Network advertising campaign
40.
Hughes Electronics
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DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider based in El Segundo, California and is a subsidiary of AT&T. Its satellite service, launched on June 17,1994, transmits digital television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America. Its primary competitors are Dish Network and cable television providers, DirecTV provides television and audio services to subscribers through satellite transmissions. Services include the equivalent of local television stations, broadcast television networks, subscription television services, satellite radio services. Subscribers have access to hundreds of channels, so its competitors are cable television service, most subscribers use reception antennas which are much smaller than the first generation antennas, which were typically a few yards across. Advances in antenna technology, including fractal antennas, have allowed a reduction in antenna size across all industries. Receiving equipment includes a dish, an integrated receiver/decoder and a DirecTV access card. Consumers who purchase DirecTV subscribe to various packages of DirecTV programming for which the subscriber pays a monthly fee, additional monthly fees may include a protection plan, DVR, additional receivers, HD channels, and other premium channel packages. A subscriber also can order pay-per-view and video on demand events, all programming distributed by DirecTV is delivered to its broadcast centers in Castle Rock, Colorado, and Los Angeles, where it is then digitized and compressed. The resulting signal is encrypted by DirecTV to prevent its unauthorized reception, DirecTV then transmits these signals to several satellites located in geostationary orbit. As of the quarter ended September 30,2012, DirecTV U. S. had 19.981 million subscribers, for the same period, DirecTV Latin America ended with 9.666 million subscribers and revenues of US$1.577 billion. In addition to serving residences, DirecTV offers service to bars, restaurants, hotels, dorms, the company also offered mobile service for cars, boats, and RVs as well as aircraft in cooperation with Connexion by Boeing. On November 30,2016, DirecTV Now, an internet streaming TV service was launched, in 1953, Howard Hughes created the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to which he transferred full ownership of Hughes Aircraft. Ostensibly created as a medical research foundation, HHMI was accused of being used by Hughes as a tax shelter. Following Hughes death in 1976, HHMI was incorporated in 1977, in 1984, the court appointed a new board for HHMI, which proceeded to sell off Hughes Aircraft to General Motors on December 20,1985, for an estimated $5.1 billion. General Motors then merged Hughes Aircraft with its subsidiary Delco Electronics to create Hughes Electronics Corporation, the new subsidiary was initially composed of four units, Delco Electronics Company, Hughes Aircraft Company, Hughes Space and Communications Company, and Hughes Network Systems. Stanley E. Hubbard founded United States Satellite Broadcasting in 1981 and was a proponent for the development of direct-broadcast satellite service in the United States. USSB was awarded five frequencies by the FCC, at the coveted 101 degree west satellite location, Hughes Communications, Inc. was also awarded 27 frequencies at the same 101-degree location
41.
Pioneer (company)
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Pioneer Corporation commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation that specializes in digital entertainment products, based in Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop, the company works with optical disc and display technology and software products and is also a manufacturer. In March 2010, Pioneer stopped producing televisions, announced on 12 February 2009, on June 25,2009, Sharp Corporation agreed to form a joint venture on their optical business to be called Pioneer Digital Design and Manufacturing Corporation. 1937, Pioneer’s founder, Nozomu Matsumoto develops the A-8 dynamic speaker, January 1938, Fukuin Shokai Denki Seisakusho is founded in Tokyo. May 1947, Fukuin Denki is incorporated, december 1953, Hi-Fi Speaker PE-8 introduced. June 1961, Company name changed to Pioneer Electronic Corporation, October 1961, Shares are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Second Section. June 1962, Introduces the world’s first separate stereo system, March 1966, Establishes sales companies in Europe and the U. S. February 1968, Shares are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section. April 1968, Shares are listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange, February 1969, Shares are listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. U. S. GAAP consolidated financial reporting starts November 1975, december 1976, Shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. December 1977, Introduces the world’s first two-way addressable CATV system in the U. S.1978, Introduces SX-1980 receiver, February 1979, Introduces the industry-use Laserdisc player. June 1980, Introduces VP-1000 LD player for use in the U. S. October 1981. October 1982, Introduces the LD Karaoke system for business use, september 1984, Introduces the world’s first LD combination player compatible with CDs and LDs. October 1984, Releases the world’s first car CD player, december 1985, Introduces the 40-inch projection monitor. June 1990, Introduces the world’s first CD-based GPS automotive navigation system, June 1992, Pioneer Corporation established its regional subsidiary in Southeast Asia, Pioneer Electronics AsiaCentre Pte. Ltd. October 1992, Introduces the world’s first 4x CD-ROM changer, June 1996, Tokorozawa Plant earns ISO14001 certification. Pioneer inaugurates and launches Pioneer Karaoke Channel, an Astro satellite television channel for music video, december 1996, Introduces DVD/CD player and the world’s first DVD/LD/CD compatible player for home use. May 1997, Starts supplying digital satellite broadcast set-top boxes in Europe, June 1997, Introduces the world’s first DVD-based GPS automotive navigation system. October 1997, Introduces the world’s first DVD-R drive, November 1997, Introduces the world’s first OEL-equipped car audio product
42.
Toshiba
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Toshiba Corporation, commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Toshiba was founded in 1938 as Tokyo Shibaura Electric K. K. through the merger of Shibaura Seisaku-sho, the company name was officially changed to Toshiba Corporation in 1978. Toshiba is organized into four groupings, the Digital Products Group, the Electronic Devices Group, the Home Appliances Group and the Social Infrastructure Group. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where it is a constituent of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX indices, the Osaka Securities Exchange, Toshiba is the seventh largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world. Toshiba was founded in 1939 by the merger of Shibaura Seisakusho, Shibaura Seisakusho had been founded as Tanaka Seisakusho by Tanaka Hisashige in July 1875 as Japans first manufacturer of telegraph equipment. In 1904, it was renamed Shibaura Seisakusho, Tokyo Denki was founded as Hakunetsusha in 1890 and had been Japans first producer of incandescent electric lamps. It later diversified into the manufacture of consumer products and in 1899 had been renamed Tokyo Denki. The merger of Shibaura and Tokyo Denki created a new company called Tokyo Shibaura Denki and it was soon nicknamed Toshiba, but it was not until 1978 that the company was officially renamed Toshiba Corporation. The group expanded rapidly, driven by a combination of growth and by acquisitions, buying heavy engineering. In 1977, Toshiba acquired the Brazilian company Semp, subsequently forming Semp Toshiba through the combination of the two companies South American operations, the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal involved a subsidiary of Toshiba and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania said What Toshiba and Kongsberg did was ransom the security of the United States for $517 million, the contract ended in 2008, ending seven years of OEM production with Orion. In December 2004, Toshiba quietly announced it would discontinue manufacturing traditional in-house cathode ray tube televisions, in 2006, Toshiba terminated production of in-house plasma TVs. To ensure its competitiveness in the flat-panel digital television and display market. Before World War II, Toshiba was a member of the Mitsui Group zaibatsu, today Toshiba is a member of the Mitsui keiretsu, and still has preferential arrangements with Mitsui Bank and the other members of the keiretsu. Membership in a keiretsu has traditionally meant loyalty, both corporate and private, to members of the keiretsu or allied keiretsu. This loyalty can extend as far as the beer the employees consume, in July 2005, BNFL confirmed it planned to sell Westinghouse Electric Company, then estimated to be worth $1.8 billion. In late 2007, Toshiba took over from Discover Card as the sponsor of the top-most screen of One Times Square in New York City and it displays the iconic 60-second New Years countdown on its screen, as well as messages, greetings, and advertisements for the company. In January 2009, Toshiba acquired the HDD business of Fujitsu, Toshiba announced on 16 May 2011, that it had agreed to acquire all of the shares of the Swiss-based advanced-power-meter maker Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion
43.
PowerPC
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PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC was the cornerstone of AIMs PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform initiatives in the 1990s and it has since become niche in personal computers, but remain popular as embedded and high-performance processors. Its use in game consoles and embedded applications provided an array of uses. In addition, PowerPC CPUs are still used in AmigaOne and third party AmigaOS4 personal computers, the history of RISC began with IBMs 801 research project, on which John Cocke was the lead developer, where he developed the concepts of RISC in 1975–78. 801-based microprocessors were used in a number of IBM embedded products, the RT was a rapid design implementing the RISC architecture. The result was the POWER instruction set architecture, introduced with the RISC System/6000 in early 1990, the original POWER microprocessor, one of the first superscalar RISC implementations, was a high performance, multi-chip design. IBM soon realized that a microprocessor was needed in order to scale its RS/6000 line from lower-end to high-end machines. Work on a one-chip POWER microprocessor, designated the RSC began, in early 1991, IBM realized its design could potentially become a high-volume microprocessor used across the industry. IBM approached Apple with the goal of collaborating on the development of a family of single-chip microprocessors based on the POWER architecture and this three-way collaboration became known as AIM alliance, for Apple, IBM, Motorola. In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of an alliance among these three companies. The PowerPC chip was one of joint ventures involving the three, in their efforts to counter the growing Microsoft-Intel dominance of personal computing. For Motorola, POWER looked like an unbelievable deal and it allowed them to sell a widely tested and powerful RISC CPU for little design cash on their own part. It also maintained ties with an important customer, Apple, and seemed to offer the possibility of adding IBM too, at this point Motorola already had its own RISC design in the form of the 88000 which was doing poorly in the market. Motorola was doing well with their 68000 family and the majority of the funding was focused on this, the 88000 effort was somewhat starved for resources. However, the 88000 was already in production, Data General was shipping 88000 machines, the 88000 had also achieved a number of embedded design wins in telecom applications. The result of various requirements was the PowerPC specification. The differences between the earlier POWER instruction set and PowerPC is outlined in Appendix E of the manual for PowerPC ISA v.2.02, when the first PowerPC products reached the market, they were met with enthusiasm. In addition to Apple, both IBM and the Motorola Computer Group offered systems built around the processors, Microsoft released Windows NT3.51 for the architecture, which was used in Motorolas PowerPC servers, and Sun Microsystems offered a version of its Solaris OS
