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Cisco Moving On Set-Top Boxes
nevermindme writes "Cisco has agreed to plunk down a whopping $6.9bn for Scientific-Atlanta, hoping to take a major share of the set-top-box market and push video efforts. The networking giant will pay $43 per share in cash for Scientific-Atlanta ($5.3bn) and swallow $1.6bn in debt. With the buy, Cisco acquires one of the more dominant set-top-box makers. In addition, it pushes well beyond the data center to touch consumers where they live."
What does Cisco bring to the table that nobody else does or can?
Maybe I'm a short-sighted idiot, but I thought Cisco did networking products. I guess if I saw them getting involved in the set-top box market, it would be in designing hardware to setup a background infrastructure for other set-top box makers.
So will I be able to buy a Set-top box with a DVR, cable modem, Wifi and Router capabilities?
Nice.
I think you will see that they are not swallowing 1.6B in debt, but swallowing 1.6B in cash. ;-) RTFA
Ever hear of Linksys? Cisco bought them a while back. Lots of people have their stuff. Probably not as many as have cable, but it's still a substantial number of households.
Personally I think it's about time the Internet, Phone, TV, music, and movies all become condensed into one distribution system.
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the purchase price of $43 per share, or 5.3B, other than the fact that the transaction will essentially be a 6.9B red mark on Cisco's balence sheet (minus SA's revenues).
Cisco is trying to do too much crap. All sorts of acquisitions over they years that are all over the product map. They're trying to be everything to everybody and the house is going to fall down. There's already backlash from people (customers and potential customers) that think they're too arrogant and disorganized.
Here is MSNBC coverage . Somewhat more info on the Cisco viewpoints.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I've been a Time Warner digital cable subscriber for a while and my last few cable boxes have all been Scientific Atlanta. Maybe there's a preexisting contract of some kind they can use to get their foot in the door in the services-via-settop market? Otherwise, why bother ...
This story is almost 24 hours old... Cisco most certainly wants to integrate itself into every part of digital data transmission. Since there are alot of people watching "digital tv" it is a sensible purchase.
? coid=52&ipid=821
Look at what else Cisco has done. They have a voip phone that integrates with Skype
http://www1.linksys.com/international/product.asp
If you get vonage, you often get a Cisco ATA box to turn your analog phone into a digital signal...
It is a great strategy for Cisco. They want to sell both parts of the package, the core routers for the Internet. DSL and cable modem concentrators for the central office. DSL and cable modems.
I wonder if they will keep the company name or roll them into Linksys as a consumer product. I also wonder how microsoft will react. They want to get a version of their OS on cable boxes.
Time will tell
I agree with the fact that Cisco is looking toward the conversion of data systems. Right now companies are offering cable TV, internet, and phone all through coax. In about 10 years from now, I predict that television entertainment will still exist, but it will evolve into something that cable carriers will stream into homes using their network connection to your home via coaxial connections, or via fiber. It makes perfect sense for Cisco to go into this market. it secures another market for them in the future, they can offer some of the equipment to make such the switch. And besides, who goes out to the store to buy a cable box? They're often provided by the cable companies themselves to be compatible (and expandable) with their existing infrastructure.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
[Disclaimer: I am an S-A employee] Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola are the main players in the Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) infrastructure that the entire cable industry, and thus all of cable-based broadband Internet runs on. With the telcos getting into this market (SBC and Verizon), there is going to be a huge shift in the cable TV industry over the next few years. Cisco and S-A together will have the capability to merge cable (which consists of IPTV, Video on demand, DVR's, real-time video compression and content management), VoIP, and traditional Internet together in a way that no other vendor will be positioned to do. The HFC networks are already IP-based and interactive services will leverage this even more going forward.
The affordable desktop boxes will be intentionally crippled, and you'll have to pay big bucks for an enterprise-class desktop box that can tune in all the channels.
That would suck.
It'd give cable companies the perfect means of making sure they bill you for every PC you put on your network.
I'd like to keep my network seperate from theirs as much as possible, thank you very much.
The wording on the story is exactly the wording from TFA. Cisco is swallowing $1.6B in debt from Scientific Atlanta.
Commander cisco of the starship enterprise. Seriously though, with this foray into cable/set top tv , commander cisco will attack the alien share price starship!
HA! HA! Ho Ho Heee Hee
In addition, it pushes well beyond the data center to touch consumers where they live.
Quite frankly I don't need Cisco touching me and would appreciate it if they didn't touch my wife either.
I'm also kind of concerned that I might need a CCNA, you know, a Can't Configure Network Access certification, just to install a frigging cable box. CCNA holders have a high incidence of primma donnas amongst them and I can't see them deigning to be cable monkeys or accepting the sh*tty pay that the customer support techs do just to send commands to a box all day. I mean, not as though they want to do it now.
Disclaimer: I am not a CCNA holder and send commands to Cisco boxes all day but am willing to deal with almost sh*tty pay for many reasons among which would be that no one made me go out and get a CCNA first. At least it isn't cable work any more.
#ifconfig vid0 filterset allow porn vod
You know...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Like this?
I get my broadband, TV, phone and movies on demand from these guys through one cable going into my house. That's 4Mb (soon to be 10Mb) broadband, 2 phonelines and 70+ TV channels. Ok, so I don't get music through it, but I can receive radio channels (not digital, I have a DABS radio for that) too.
They've recently started a service called Teleport that essentially gives you TV on demand - not just recent TV shows, but whole series across multiple channels, just in case you missed an episode. Absolutely awesome and I get the whole lot through one bill each month.
http://malfeasance.50megs.com/
These big companies, they're just like juvenile delinquents.
He actually voted no: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll608.xml
Chew on that angle
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Coming soon from Cisco: a combination PVR, wireless access point and home router/firewall, complete with Cisco's legendary support: security patches will be made available only for cold hard cash, regardless of what was paid upfront. (See your support contract for details, some restrictions apply. Must be legal drinking age.)
-g
I know that Scientific Atlanta manufactures Cablemodems, but with Cisco, via Linksys, already providing that... Does this mean that A) The modems will stop sucking or B) be replaced with linksys branded products?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
- Cisco buys SA (Scientific Atlanta)h tml)s )v 04/11-30sigmadesignspr.mspx)p 05/09-08SigmaIBCPR.mspx)s /SBC04_IPTV.mspx)0 0&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=21772)
v -broadcasting-microsoft-cx_dl_0909autofacescan06.h tml?partner=yahootix
- Cisco recently bought danish company Kiss Technology - now part of the linksys division (Some of you might remember them as the first company coming out with a Mpeg4/Divx set top DVD player)
(http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2005/corp_072205.
- Kiss has a long standing relationship with chip maker Sigma Designs, Inc.
(http://www.google.com/search?q=Kiss+Sigma+Design
- Sigma and Microsoft are working together to enable Windows Media CE product, including Kiss products
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/no
- Sigma is working with Microsoft on their MSTV IPTV platform.
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/se
- SBC plans to release IPTV service using the MSTV platform.
(http://www.microsoft.com/tv/content/PressRelease
SBC will use Motorola and SA set top boxes for this (service.http://www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=48
Obviously Cisco wants to be a player in the IPTV space.
This article is interresting also, cisco was not named, so they must have realized that their were getting out of the loop. Not anymore with the SA acquisition: http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2005/09/09/t
The issue is really only in part what Cisco can bring to the market. Scientific Atlanta is very close to being the first set top box manufacturer to release an MPEG4 HDTV set top box. Of late, the big craze is the "Triple Play" service provider model. Cable companies are selling phone and data services. Phone companies are migrating to GPON and providing TV content and data services. The big challenge for all these triple play providers has been that the bandwidth required to transport 160 channels of service is incredibly expensive. In MPEG2, it takes roughly 4Mbps of bandwidth per channel of standard analogue programming, and almost 20Mbps for HD programming. Assuming a provider is offering 160 channels, say 145 channels of standard and 15 channels of HD, you can see that this would take 880Mbps of transport! MPEG4 will reduce bandwidth requirements by more than half. Reports are in the range of 1.2Mbps for standard and between 6 and 8Mbps for HD content. Purchasing SA is a great way for Cisco to get a little deeper into the home, more-so than just buying Linksys. One issue they'll undoubtedly run into soon though, is that Cisco has been a huge proponent of EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Networks). Many other providers are pushing GPON, which generally utilizes the network layer a little more than EPON, but offers faster deployment of services and more granularity of traffic control, shaping, and security. I was a little surprized at the timing of this purchase, but not at surprized that it happened. They're trying to get deeper into our homes, and cozying up to the utility companies by being the provider who can help reduce bandwidth requirements for these services.
...it pushes well beyond the data center to touch consumers where they live.
Now tell me, was it a good touch, or a bad touch?
Cisco is dominant in the CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System - i.e. cable router) space with their uBR 10K product. By aquiring a settop company that essentially implements non-standard/proprietary PHY and MAC layer protocols, Cisco will be able to move their direction to open CableLabs based standards such as the DSG (DOCSIS Settop Gateway) specification. By doing this, Cisco will sell even more CMTS' since SA PVRs and digital settops will now speak the DOCSIS protocol and be able to be provisioned onto the uBR platform. MSO's will be able to leverage their existing broadband hi-speed assets to video / VOD / SVOD making them happy campers also. In addition, when the DOCSIS 3.0 M-CMTS (Modular CMTS) specification finishes cooking, vendors in the CMTS and M-QAM space will be fighting it out for products, and this aquisition moves Cisco one step closed to a video endpoint M-QAM integration.
Cicso makes nice products. SA on the other hand... I can't only speak of the boxes used in my area, but they are amazingly uninspired.
I jumped on the first DVR available to me via the cable company, an SA Explorer 8000. In a word, it was terrible. Sluggish menus, features that didn't work, and ugly menus that looks like 1991 graphics. Compared to my friend's Tivo, well there really wasn't anything to compare. If Tivo was a 10, the Explorer 8000 is a 3.
I now have the Explorer 8300HD. I would have gotten a Tivo, but the silly company doesn't offer HD for cable. In the Explorer 8300HD SA has added HDMI which is nice. The box is much more responsive, but it has the same boring, acient looking interface. Although the box supports HD modes for video, the on screen menu is always 4:3.
On the one hand I am surprised that Cisco would buy SA. In buying Linksys they picked up a company with nice products. In SA well, unless they have some great stuff I am unaware of, the boxes I have used suck compared to anything else in the same space.
On the other hand, I can only hope that Cisco brings some improvements to SA and leads them to produce some better products.
Cisco paid 6.9 billion dollars and took on 1.6 billion dollars in CASH for a total deal worth 5.3 billion dollars. Why /. links to a site like The Register that can't even do rudimentary fact-checking is beyond me. Maybe it's because slashdot only wants to link to sites with comparable shitty editorial standards.
Maybe YOU should do some rudimentary fact-checking before calling somebody out.
Contrary to what seems like the opinion here seems to be, I think this makes perfect sense. Set-top boxes are really only a portion of the SA business. The rest is in cable networking components.
From network components to cable set-top does seem like a little bit of a jump, where buying up a company that makes cable networking equipment in general is right up Cisco's alley.
I used to work for the division of Philips that made commercial cable equipment (no longer in business.) A modern cable system is really a modern day addressable network.
My thinking is "wall-street" folks come in contact with the set-top boxes, so that's what they percieve the SA business to be all about.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Scientific Atlanta is probably the dominant brand of equipment in almost every cable TV headend in the country. They make all kinds of stuff for cable TV networks.
As cable TV moves away from analog to digital, it will be nice to have Cisco handling the data side of things inside SA equipment. I expect to see some nice products, and it will probably accelerate the adoption of digital cable in smaller markets that haven't upgraded yet.
I just love how a print publication like The Wall Street Journal can beat Slashdot at tech news.
I believe the article is wrong.. SFA has $1.6b in cash, not debt. CSCO will be paying $6.9b, but the effective price will be $5.3b since they will be acquiring the cash on SFA's balance sheet.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=SFA
Scientific Atlanta has to have the absolute worst cable boxes I have ever experienced. I have never had an electronic device of any sort overheat and malfunction as much as my cable boxes from them have done.
You'll note that I said "boxes"; the reason is that I've gone through about 4 or 5 before finally giving up and accepting that my cable was going to be nearly useless until I move again. The worst of the worst have been the HD DVR ones. Behind those were the regular DVR boxes, and coming in at nearly operable were the regular HD and regular digital cable boxes.
I have never had a program I recorded not skip and get pixelated for the first few minutes, and I've had quite a few be nearly unwatchable for the entire program. Forget about it if you actually want to watch a show while one is recording; neither the one you are watching nor the one recording will be watchable at all. This is the case whether or not the channels are actual HD channels.
I can't even listen to the music channels on these boxes, although this might be my local Time Warner Cable operator's fault.
I've never had these problems from another cable provider or another box manufacturer.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Sagem is already making something like this in France, with an ISP called FREE.
You get 20 mbps, digital cable, Internet, phone, router functionality, Wi-Fi coverage, along with Ethernet and USB ports... VoD is almost here. The box is called a Freebox.
They added a few months ago something cool: you can stream media from your computer to the set-top box, which is plugged into a TV.
And you get all this digital goodness for something like $35 a month (30).
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
As quoted here:
Or here.
I'm more worried about the fact that it a huge central point of failure.. device breaks, you're really shit out of luck! Wait a week for the incompetent cable co. technician to come out for a replacement while you can't watch TV, play back videos, get on the internet, or access your home network.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
cisco doesn't want to be Western Electic. Or Ma Bell, for that matter. Cisco wants to sell as much hardware as possible, as many times as possible. This is why all of their enterprise VoIP products have loads 'o designed obsolence built in. First they run Callmanager on a Windows server. Then they jump the gun and build their own PoE specification (which is now obsolete and incompatible, but they have an installed base). Around the same time they decided to change their mind on QoS about three times (first any switch was ok, then you had to have a switch with Layer 2 CoS, now all your edge switches are "recommended" to be layer-3 switches supporting IP Precence. I take two things from this: cisco is so disorganized and unprepared for the telephony market it's hilarious, and second that they are con artists of epic porportions. I've been working with cisco gear for about 10 years, and it amazes me how they're constantly making their customers buy (essentially) the same thing over and over (at an obscene price premium nonetheless). On the other hand, I've got a Western Electric 302 from the late 40s that still works today. I'll bet any takers here $50 BILLION that you'll be lucky to see any 7960's or ATA186's in use 10 years from now, much less 60. cisco is totally not minding the store, which is one of the reasons I'm using Procurve for my clients now. The same features, about a third of the price. I'm not throwing away money on cisco so I can subsidize their inferior products and insane direction. Join the fray, brothers..STOP BUYING cISCO!!! (and the "c" is supposed to be lower-case, damnit! No self-respecting cisco guy uses the capital C!)
Is Cisco paying too much?
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
All your IP packets belong to us.
It actually makes a bit of sense... now your set top box can tie in with your home router/WAP.
With the buy, Cisco acquires one of the more dominant set-top-box makers.
One of the more dominant providers? I thought SA was the set top provider.
I've never seen any other box (however, I've only lived on the East Coast).
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
You know I am just trying to wrap my brain around your wawwwwwwwwwwwwy out in left field comment.
I see no mentioning of Cisco wanting to touch you or your wife.
Do you personally have something against Cisco? Did their IOS insult your to your very core? Did a CCNA give your sister the crabs?
Cisco is know for making high quality equipment, I have been sending commands to them since 95, but I do not have it out for CCNAs or cisco.
You know I could almost agree with you about paper CCNAS, MCSES, RHCIm A+, etc. But the good will rise, and the bad will sink. And some people who actually have on the job skills realized a little book learning never hurt them.
There are plenty of people who in this industry who rage against certs and degrees who are great at what they do, and there are plenty of them who totally suck ass.
As someone who beleives that life is an everlong quest of learning. Take a cert test with no preperation. Grab your results, see what you did wrong, then grab a book. And if you know all there is out about getting Cisco, then getting a cert to get that pay raise should be no problem.
Disclaimer. I am not a CCNA, but hold a degree in CS, several certs, and still reading books, testing, learning, failing. But I learned a long time ago I could change what affected my life. And is meaning taking the CCNA exam would release me of shitty pay, well you could me call me certified.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Sometimes I wonder why I'm still in this bass ackwards country. Okay, most of the time really...
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
With cable card threatening to obsolete cable boxes I would bet that Cisco's primary interest is in the head end, not the set-top box.
I agree this is a good fit. This is Cisco's attempt to get into the fiber to the premise deployment for the local exchange carriers without a partner. Cisco already had voice and data covered so they need a way to take care of video.
Disclaimer: I work for what could be considered a Cisco competitor in the voice gateway market. I don't know if this will make things more difficult for employer or not. We cover features and services Cisco does not and vice versa.
My ancient 3Com Sharkfin modem died a while back, so I sent it back to my ISP to get it replaced.
The Scientfic-Atlanta cable modem they replaced it with is absolute shit. The user interface is completely crippled. Half the time it just refuses to work, and half the time it has inane "restrictions" that mean I can't even tell what my modem is doing. And, worst of all, it requires IE . It just fails in any other browser -- I see a broken GIF image, when what's actually being sent is some tortured piece of proprietary M$ HTML.
Now, I'm no mortal enemy of Microsoft; their products may often be crap, and they may have horribly unscrupulous business practices, but, really, they're not all that bad. But having to boot my dual-boot laptop into my pirated version of Windows XP just to see if my cable modem has crashed yet is insane.
There are only two reasons I even put up with the damn thing: it's fast, and I know that if I send it back, I'll just get another one. Make no mistake about it though, the day it starts giving me any sort of trouble, I'm not waiting to replace it like I did with the Sharkfin. If need be, I'll rip it open myself and put a few hundred volts across some of its more crucial ICs. The clueless techs will have no idea.
Fuck you, Scientific-Altanta.
(Yes, that's how they misspelled their own name on the config page.)
He actually didn't vote since he's a senator and this was a house bill.