Ambiguities in The Definition
With the advent of flat-panel televisions, set-top boxes are now deeper in profile than the tops of most modern TV sets. Because of this, set-top boxes are often placed beneath televisions, and the term set-top box has become something of a misnomer, possibly helping the adoption of the term digibox. Additionally, newer set-top boxes that sit at the edge of IP-based distribution networks are often called net-top boxes or NTBs, to differentiate between IP and RF inputs. The Roku LT is around the size of a pack of cards and delivers Smart TV to conventional sets.
The distinction between external tuner or demodulator boxes (traditionally considered to be "set-top boxes") and storage devices (such as VCR, DVD, or disc-based PVR units) is also blurred by the increasing deployment of satellite and cable tuner boxes with hard discs, network or USB interfaces built-in.
Devices with the capabilities of computer terminals, such as the WebTV thin client, also fall into the grey area that could invite the term "NTB".
Read more about this topic: Set-top Box
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“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)