Sky, the UK-based media company owned by Rupert Murdock, has been very active in a wide variety of new entertainment-oriented technologies. Next year Sky will launch a new set top box for their satellite television service that is high-definition and will have a network port to allow it to be linked to a broadband connection.

This is a trend that I think we will see more and more. That is, set top boxes incorporating the features of similar devices such as connection to some main-stream media provider (cable or satellite); high-definition; ever increasing digital video recording (DVR) capability like TiVo; broadband connection like Akimbo; and some layer of interactivity (ITV).

And why not? TiVo (or any other similar box) after all was always a simple computer with a large hard drive specifically engineered and programmed to make the television experience better. Microsoft sees the home PC as the heart of the home network, but it is not unreasonable to believe that the set top box itself could eventually assume that role.

I don't think the majority of people want to become network-savvy technicians just to watch television. So, a set top box with an intelligent UI should be able to get television shows and information from a variety of sources, make it easy to access, and (most importantly) display that content on a high-quality television set.