Last year in Chicago, change was in the air. The NCTA had just unveiled INTX, the Internet & TV Expo, as the new brand for the Cable Show. The proposed Time Warner Cable-Comcast merger had flopped, but industry dealmakers were not done yet. Only a few weeks later, Charter announced its intention to acquire Time Warner Cable.

At this year’s event in Boston, attendees were more comfortable with saying and hearing the expression “In-Tex.” The Charter-Time Warner Cable merger was a done deal, having finally met with anti-trust regulatory approval in late April. In terms of overall technology and business, there were no big breakthroughs at the show. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts showed off a voice-enabled remote for the X1 video platform in his annual demo, cool but not revolutionary; and the tech sessions seemed more intense than disruptive, with two panels on network architecture, two on network virtualization, one on remote PHY and two more on wireless networking.

On a personal note, the show was relatively calm. Freed from trade-journal duties since 2010, I’ve been less obliged to be near the thick of things. While staying at a hotel with a well-trafficked bar still has its uses, there is a time for every season. This time, I opted against something near the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and instead stayed with an old college pal, now a consultant and investor affiliated with Harvard Business School.

Morning jogs and catch-up time over breakfast in suburban Boston still left plenty of time at INTX to connect with industry friends and colleagues, discover who has retired or moved or been promoted, walk the show floor, attend a few sessions and social events, and talk to former, existing and future clients about how best to communicate the value of their technology in a market that goes through cycles, but never sleeps.