a mac inside my boxtop digital cable decoder?!?!?

[chaos86]

ok so I just moved into the georgia state dorms which (finally) have consolidated their internet, tv, and phone services to one company called purdigital. this is nice because now i get digital cable and way faster internet.

anyway, i plugged in the box top cable decoder thing today and it went through a startup routine and part of it was a strangely familiar blue screen with a black with white border mouse pointer in the middle of the screen.

http://thecreativechaos.com/otherstuff/recording.mp4
(1.3mb, its h264 and you have to download the file and drop any extra file extensions safari adds, I think i uploaded it using the wrong format or something)

it seems to me that this indicates that its a dumbed down mac in there.
fyi: its about 10 in x 5 in x 1 in. it has lots of ports on the back:
2 USB
digital and analogue audio outs
vga out
s-video out
composite video out
cable/antenna in
cable out
WAN ethernet
LAN ethernet
and SMP phone line (i dont know what thats for)

sadly im on a powerbook and dont have a wired mouse or keyboard to plug in to see if it does anything or to use some open firmware keystokes.



any speculation from the rumor mongering masses?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I can't view that MP4 file from here (don't have access to QT7 on a Windows XP machine), but, judging by your description, you may very well be right. It's an interesting development, to say the least, if it's true.

EDIT: Now that I'm back at my Mac and am able to watch the .mp4, it does seem Mac-like.

 

[joecool85]

I just downloaded it and played it fine...anyway, I don't think its a mac inside there...could be wrong. But to me it would make sense that its just an OS that happens to have a blue screen on the background.

 

[jcgerm]

I think it's just the OS that the thing is running. Blue isn't that uncommon of a color, and black cursors aren't uncommon either.

 

[dsharits]

I think it's just the OS that the thing is running. Blue isn't that uncommon of a color, and black cursors aren't uncommon either.

It is funny that the cursor is exactly like the Mac cursor. A lot of other cursors have a longer tail on the arrow. Probably just a coincidence.

 

[iindigo]

I'm surprised nobody else noticed this, but the only font used on the entire screen minus the main logo is Lucida Grande, Mac OS X's primary and default font. Coincidence? I think not.

Edit: The font used in the background is none other than Apple Myriad, used in Apple's marketing materials. The "Loading System" text is Lucida Grande.

 

[dsharits]

I'm surprised nobody else noticed this, but the only font used on the entire screen minus the main logo is Lucida Grande, Mac OS X's primary and default font. Coincidence? I think not.

Hmm, interesting. I didn't notice that before.

 

[im_to_hyper]

Could it be that the OS for this cable box is some sort of Unix derivative (mainly Linux) and is it possible that the program was created using a Mac or something?

Also, is there any way you can open the box to see what sort of chipset it uses?

 

[kant]

edit: sorry. wrong thread.

 

[cbiffle]

Mac mouse pointers are initially in the upper-left of the screen on boot.

The black-with-white-border mouse pointer is also frequently used by the X Window System, the graphical layer atop most Unices (Linux included). Coincidentally, X also starts its mousepointer in the dead center of the screen, like Windows.

Considering that Linux is very popular in set-top boxen, I think chances are high that this is a Linux box. Mac parts would be quite an expenditure for what is essentially a TiVo.

The fact that the text is Lucida Grande tells you one thing: the graphics design was done on a Mac. (Those images are probably stored in flash as e.g. JPEGs and simply displayed.)

Chances are good that you can do some neat Linuxy stuff with that box, but I think it's unlikely to be a Mac. :-\

 

[chaos86]

one thing i forgot to mention before-- in the re-encoding of the video file (i got it through my eyetv) the colors changed a bit. that plain blue screen is the mac os x blue.

 

[im_to_hyper]

one thing i forgot to mention before-- in the re-encoding of the video file (i got it through my eyetv) the colors changed a bit. that plain blue screen is the mac os x blue.

I believe that Mandrake Linux (or whatever its being called now, Mandriva or something) has the Mac OS X blue background upon being installed, if my memory serves. It also has a black cursor.

As I mentioned before, open the case. If it has some sort of Motorola or IBM processor/chipset then its probably a Mac.

I highly doubt that, because if Apple had liscensed some form of its OS to a cable box company, word would have gotten out. Linux is very common on these types of things, as mentioned before, and I believe even TiVo uses Linux on its boxes.

 

[Daveway]

I went to a hotel that had internet access on the tv and it was very similar to this. Except this system was Windows based. I don't think windows was in the box though.