But when we carted the old blue and white box upstairs to the same floor as the base station, the connection was constant.

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Available in a choice of white or black, with pink and yellow exchangeable caps for the base of the smartphone in the box.

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For the Roku user base, they consider the Roku set top box to be their primary choice for watching television.

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At the base of the cardboard backboard is a black plastic box with a pair of small orange switches on it.

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Could it introduce downloading to a broader base of older music fans, much the way early CD box sets by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen persuaded consumers in the mid-'80s to try the CD format?

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Robert Donovan, vice president of design at Griffin, was intrigued last year when he received an Inventables box holding, among other things, a tape dispenser with a small adhesive base.

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Out of the box, the system doesn't look so different a 3.5-pound base station that could pass for a slightly longer, curvier Wii.

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