Cablesoft was an early attempt to define an
interactive television standard. The partners in the new company were
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
,
Tele-Communications and
Time Warner
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
. In fact, much of the effort appeared to be on Microsoft's part, and the two
cable companies
This is a list of cable television providers by country.
Andorra
* Mútua Elèctrica(Cable Mútua), Sant Julià de Lória)
Argentina
* Cablevisión
*DirecTV
*
*
*Gigared
*Telered
Australia
*Foxtel
*Fetch TV
Austria
*BKF
*LIWEST
*Salzburg AG ...
were essentially launch partners.
The Cablesoft effort was first announced in the May 1994 and at the time consisted primarily of the
Microsoft Media Server (
codenamed ''Tiger'' during development) and a custom version of the
Windows NT
Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems sc ...
operating system known as NTAS, which was essentially a series of fine-tuning efforts to drive
ATM switches. The basic model appeared to be to use a PC-like
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
that would communicate with PC's running NTAS at the cable company's
head ends, using Tiger to cue up and deliver content.
Cablesoft was succeeded by
MSN TV in 1997.
Note
An apparently unrelated company, CableSoft, also delivered on-demand content starting around 1995. The company was headquartered in
Burlington, Massachusetts
Burlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 26,377 at the 2020 census.
History
It is believed that Burlington takes its name from the English town of Bridlington, Yorkshire, but this has never b ...
.
References
Turning packaged goods into recurring revenues
{{US-telecom-company-stub
Uncompleted Microsoft initiatives