Cable’s Magic Bullet May Hurt Cisco And Motorola

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 21, 6:05AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

The cable industry is sick of having dozens of different set-top boxes, DVRs, remotes, and a laundry list of other devices that are not compatible from cable system to cable system.

So, the cable guys are doing something about it. The have created a new platform called Open Cable Application Platform that works the way that the Microsoft OS does for computers, according to the WSJ. Comcast (CMCSA) and Cox Cable plan to start moving the system into the market shortly.

If the system gets wide adoption, programming software will not have to be designed for a large number of disparate systems. One design will work on all.

One up-shot of the new technology is that companies like Panasonic, Samsung and LG are designing TVs with the new system built in. That means the set-top box will not be necessary. And, that may not be good for Cisco (CSCO) which bought set-top company Scientific Atlanta or Motorola (MOT) which also builds set-tops.

The new technology will not keep content companies and their tech partners from delivering video over the internet to get around the cable infrastructure, but it may take a bite out of their plans.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.