Cisco is killing the Scientific Atlanta brand

When Cisco first acquired Scientific Atlanta back in 2006, we wondered how long it would take before the brand was dropped and it appears that CES 2008 is the time. In an attempt to make the Cisco brand as well known in the consumer market as it is in the information technology field; according to Ken Wirt, Cisco's vice president of consumer marketing, when Cisco announces it's new set-top boxes at CES, all the new gear will proudly carry the Cisco name. Hopefully, with the new brand will come better products, as most people unlucky enough to experience Scientific Atlanta's SARA software will tell you, it's in contention for the worst home media experience around.

[Antonio @ Feb 28th 2008 10:39AM]

I like what was said on TWiT recently: The Scientific Atlanta box is proof that we should have competition. It should not even be allowed to exist.

[Jesse S @ Jan 5th 2008 8:46PM]

Cablevision uses SA, and I must say, they are so freaking slow. It's unbearable to search for something to watch on them.

The guide also barely works.

[NuffSkillz @ Jan 5th 2008 9:47PM]

I couldn't agree more. Those sa boxes for cablevision are terrible

[JP @ Jan 5th 2008 8:57PM]

They're planning to do a similar thing with the Linksys brand right? (or at least make Cisco a byline if I remember rightly).

Personally I think it removes some of the gravitas that Cisco's brand has. At the moment I think industrial strength internet routers not craptacular media boxes and $50 routers.

[nickdawg @ Jan 5th 2008 10:04PM]

You complain about SARA. Be lucky you're not Time Warner customers. All of the new 8300HDC OCAP boxes come with Time Warner's Navigator software. Navigator is an in-house software developed by Time Warner and it is absolute GARBAGE! Full of bugs; anything from freeze ups and reboots to shows not recorded and deleted because of errors. Spend an hour with Navigator and you'd be begging to get SARA back!

Question for Cablevision customers: On your SA boxes, what software is used? SARA, Passport or did they also go "in house"?

[vb @ Jan 6th 2008 9:27AM]

SARA

[Russell @ Jan 5th 2008 10:21PM]

The boxes themselves are not bad but that software on them is another story it sucks has nothing to slow it down but it's slow.

Hope Cisco does them good.

[Teddy @ Jan 5th 2008 10:34PM]

nickdawg,

I have Time-Warner and when I first got upgraded to HD in October, they gave me the just-released SA 4250HDC. It came with 'Mystro' which I believe was renamed 'Navigator'. Anyway, I had to reboot about 5 or 6 times in a six-week period. It would freeze, respond slowly to my commands, the guide would lose data every few days, etc. After the sixth reboot, I lost a few channels which didn't come back after another reboot. It was replaced with a SA 3250HD last month. It's almost 4 weeks since I got it and not even one reboot. The only thing I miss on the 4250 are the higher resolution guide and the black borders on the SD channels. The borders are gray on the 3250.

[Russell @ Jan 5th 2008 11:15PM]

You need to press Menu menu or Settings twiceand there are settings to change border color.

[Teddy @ Jan 5th 2008 11:56PM]

On the 3250 ? There is no option to change the borders on SD channels from gray to black.

[grambo @ Jan 6th 2008 10:54PM]

Yeah, it's under the option "Set: Tv Borders"

If you set it to Dark, the borders become black. The lighter borders are usually better if you're trying to prevent burn-in on a plasma.

[John McDole @ Jan 6th 2008 12:04AM]

Settop boxes are usually a bunch of hacked together pieces of software that continue to grow and convolute over time.

Atlanta is home to a number of STB software companies. The SARA engineers shouldn't have a problem finding jobs :)

[Steven J. Ackerman @ Jan 6th 2008 12:19PM]

This is great as 'Scientific Atlanta' is an oxymoron. So is 'Scientific Games' - also based in Atlanta...

[michael @ Jan 6th 2008 8:15PM]

OH MY GOD, IT TOOK THEM LONG ENOUGH... THOSE CABLE BOXES COST US SOO MUCH MONEY (in cancelling and creating and upgrading service contracts) I WANTED TO THROW THEM AT AN HD-DVD PLAYER!!!

[Ward @ Jan 7th 2008 2:28AM]

Were I Cisco, I wouldn't want *my* name on those crappy boxes.

[fatlion @ Jan 7th 2008 1:22PM]

I was a developer for many parts of some of the different variations of settop boxes, including the latest incarnations of DVR-types you see today. I couldn't agree more how poor the final cuts of these releases are in the hands of a paying customer. Most of the software base is very old with way too many engineers tweeking the code to get certain bugs to go away.

Now with the mandates from the gov't forcing OCAP upon the unsuspecting public, it will cause even more grief with the inclusion of Java-vm and other middleware plaguing the performance. Unfortunately, putting the Cisco logo on the front of the box isn't going to change much internally - there wasn't much of a desire to improve the internals.