Gallery: The History of the Set-Top Box: From Bunny Ears to Apple TV
01set-top
Roku has a new set-top box that makes it even easier to veg out in front of the boob tube. It’s gonna be awesome. The box, announced Tuesday, includes an updated UI, faster processor and a remote with a headphone jack for private listening that doubles as a motion controller. It expands Roku’s set-top box features that already include 750 channels of video content. [Roku 3](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/roku-3/) is the latest in a long line of set-top boxes that date to the days when TVs had but 13 channels you could see only after fiddling with a pair of rabbit ears wrapped in foil. (Ask your grandparents. They’ll tell you all about those dark days.) Now we have set-top boxes -- most of which actually sit under your ultra-thin HDTV -- that let you watch DVDs, stream video and play games, often from a single gadget. Ain’t progress wonderful? Here’s a look back at the set-top boxes that have allowed us to kill time with ever greater efficiency. *Image: Sebastian Pfuetze/Getty*
02bunny-ears-box
Bunny Ear Boosters ------------------ You can argue an antenna isn’t a box. You make good point, random snarky commenter. But your parents (actually, their parents) would argue they couldn’t watch *The Honeymooners* without one sitting on top of the TV. The first commercially successful TV, the RCA 630TS, launched in 1946. A signal-boosting antenna was, of course, sold separately. It cost $435, and you pretty much had to have one if you lived beyond the optimal range of the TV station. Otherwise Ralph Kramden was nothing but white noise. The boosters looked more like radios than anything you’d associate with a television. They connected to your TV with a pair of terminals clamped down with screws. Even the best of them usually were augmented with coat hangers, aluminum foil and a Christmas tree ornament. No one questioned why this improved reception. We just knew it did. *Photo: Mark Nelson/[tv-box.com](http://tv-boxes.com)*
03UHFconverter
UHF Converter ------------- In the beginning, televisions had just 13 channels. Strange, but true. This created problems in larger markets like New York, where the number of stations quickly exceeded that. If you wanted to tune in, you had to buy a UHF converter. These gadgets, which sat atop our televisions with the antenna booster, also looked and worked like radios. Viewers (or, more likely, their kids, who were often told to “change the channel,” making them the first remote controls) would select the channel with one knob and fine tune it with another until you could finally see Ed Sullivan’s ugly mug and Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips clearly. Uncle Sam decided in 1964 that our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness included being able to watch these stations without forking out more money and the FCC required all television sets to include UHF receivers. *Photo: Mark Nelson/[tv-box.com](http://tv-boxes.com)*
04pong
Videogame Consoles ------------------ Yes, the Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console when it came along in 1972. But the $55 Atari Pong console is the set-top game console we all remember. It seemed so futuristic when it appears in 1975 as Sears’ Tele-Games. Simply screw the cable leads to the antenna terminal on the back of your Curtiss-Mathes and enjoy hours of black and white, tennis-like action. From such humble beginnings a revolution was born. Pong begat the Atari 2600, which begat NES which.... well, you get the picture. *Photo: [Evan-Amos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TeleGames-Atari-Pong.jpg )/Wikimedia Commons*
05cable-box
Cable Box --------- John Walson never set out to revolutionize how you watch TV. He just wanted to watch stations from Philadelphia. Walson is generally credited with inventing cable television when, in 1948, he bolted an antenna to a utility pole, ran the signal through a booster and strung it all together with coaxial cable. At long last, the TVs in his electronics store in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, had bright, clear pictures. He began charging locals $2 a month so they could see bright, clear pictures on their TVs. That business model led to the cable tv subscription model we all know and hate. Premium channels came along in 1975 with the launch of HBO, and Ted Turner launched the first basic cable superstation the following year. These days we have hundreds of channels to choose from, at least a third of which are some variation on ESPN. Thanks, John. *Photo: [Jennifer Snyder](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/dcsproduction/2962445561/)/Flickr*
06vcr
VCR --- Back in the 1970s, you were the coolest of early adopters if you had a top-loading VCR sitting on top of your TV. JVC introduced the technology in 1971, allowing people to watch exceedingly expensive movies (*The Sound of Music* could put a $70 dent in your bank account) in the comfort of your own home or pay exceedingly expensive late fees to that snotty kid behind the counter at the video store. Sony, which actually made cool products back then, came along with its proprietary Betamax in 1977, sparking the format wars of the 1970s. Although Betamax was better in every way -- smaller, more durable, with vastly superior image quality -- VHS carried the day with its open format. Everyone could build a VHS machine, even Sony. The VCR was a huge success, and by 1998 53 percent of American homes had one. Most of them were flashing “12:00,” too. *Photo: [Marcin Wichary](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2202513113/)/Flickr*
07web-tv-still
WebTV ----- Long before Apple TV, Roku and Google TV promised to make the biggest screen in our homes a portal to the Internet, Web TV made the biggest screen in our homes a portal to the Internet. WebTV looked a lot like today’s cable box and DVRs when it appeared in 1996. But the web browsing was painful, even with the keyboard. Perhaps that’s why it was slow to catch on. Still, it grew steadily even after Microsoft bought it in 1997 and had 800,000 users by 1999. Microsoft has long stopped selling WebTV, which it rebranded MSN TV, but it lives on. That means someone’s still using it. If you have any idea who, drop us a line. Preferably from your WebTV account.
08dvd
DVD --- DVD was hailed as the digital medium that would at long last make movies look amazing. At least until the next digital medium would make movies look amazing. It did, too. Watching a DVD after years of VHS was like seeing a master’s painting after years spent viewing crude drawings. They weren’t as good as LaserDiscs, but then, LaserDiscs were big, they were expensive and you had to flip the damn things over in the middle of the movie. Ten years after WHO introduced the first DVD player, 80 percent of American homes had one. But it’s reign as the must-have set-top box has ended as Netflix and streaming video have converged with DVD players bundled into gaming consoles and Blu-ray players. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired* [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/about/#faq13)
09tivo-redux
TiVo (DVR) ---------- When TiVo came along in 1999, it dragged the idea of the VCR into the new millennium, making it easier than ever to record your favorite shows while introducing us to the joy of skipping annoying ads for products we don’t care about. The DVR -- digital video recorder -- is essentially a big ol’ hard drive onto which you record *Game of Thrones* and *Girls*. It’s dead simple to use, and by 2011 44 percent of U.S. homes had one, even if wasn’t actually a TiVo. Pretty much every cable and satellite box ships with a DVR these days. No matter. The act of recording a show is still referred to as TiVoing. That term has permeated popular culture, along with the phrase “wardrobe malfunction,” which of course refers to Justin Timberlake famously exposing Janet Jackson’s nipple during Super Bowl in 2004. TiVo saw an 180 percent spike in viewership as people watched it over and over and over again. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired* [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/about/#faq13)
10blu-ray
Blu-ray ------- Everyone hailed DVDs as the medium that would at long last make movies look amazing. And they did, until Blu-ray came along to blow our minds and put another box on our entertainment centers. With 1080p video output, the next generation of optical media-based video looks glorious on all those brand new HDTVs. The medium was created by a consortium that included MIT and the electronics industry’s usual suspects of Sony, Philips, et al. The optical media made quick work of HD DVD, which was backed by Toshiba and NEC. The PlayStation 3’s inclusion of a Blu-Ray player helped turn the tide. Unfortunately, Blu-ray disc sales haven’t been as robust as DVD. Instead, people using the players as a portal to Netflix and other streaming services while reserving actual playback for their most favorite movies. Usually movies with lots of explosions. People love explosions. *Photo: [Diego Correa](http://www.flickr.com/photos/pitzyper/2930196202/ )/Flickr*
11dta-converter
DTA adapter ----------- The transition from analog to digital TV broadcasts in 2009 created a huge problem: Millions of CRT televisions in living rooms and rec rooms nationwide would suddenly become useless. The old-school TVs couldn’t receive digital signals without a cable or satellite subscription. Another black box to the rescue. A Digital-to-Analog adapter would grab all those zeros and ones and convert them into an analog signal. This was of such vital national urgency that the government provided $40 vouchers to help people buy one. Uncle Sam budgeted $1.5 billion for the transition, with $990 million of that being used to subsidize the purchase of DTAs. By the end of 2009, Americans had redeemed 33,962,696 vouchers.
12Roku 3
Set-Top Streamers ----------------- Tiny set-top streamers have replaced the DVD and Blu-ray player. The Roku 3 has a streamlined UI that the company hopes will make it easier to search and launch video content from over 750 available channels. Plus, the private listening remote will means you won’t wake up the kids while watching Girls. Boxes from Roku, Google, Apple and Western Digital have open the digital video floodgates. Videos from streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Redbox are available within seconds on your HDTV. Plus all the cat videos you can shake a stick at from YouTube are available for the whole family to enjoy. Oh Maru, we still love you. Waiting in the wings is the Intel streamer. By combining the over-the-top features from current streaming boxes and an over-IP pay-TV model, the unnamed Intel box is going for more than an all-in-one solution. Intel says that its looking to create smarter bundles of channels. If those bundles catch on, it could pave the way for a la carte pay-TV. Eventually you could end up paying for only 13 channels instead of hundreds. Which, ironically, is exactly where we started. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired* [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/about/#faq13)
