Malone still wants the Pegasus box.........................................
multichannel.com
MediaOne Believes in Analog: Buys S-A Boxes
By LESLIE ELLIS
MediaOne will buy up to 1.5 million advanced-analog set-tops from Scientific-Atlanta Inc., building on an earlier order for 500,000 units that the MSO already deployed.
Despite last week's news of an industrywide MSO consortium's "long-term consideration" to buy 15 million digital set-tops from S-A's rival, General Instrument Corp. (which officially changed its name back from NextLevel Systems Inc. last week), MediaOne and others warned not to dismiss the value of lower-cost, advanced-analog set-tops running on bandwidth-expanded plant.
"We believe that a 750-megahertz upgrade with an 80- to 90-channel analog tier is compelling enough to compete with direct-broadcast [satellite]," said David Fellows, chief technology officer for U S West Media Group, MediaOne's parent, during a recent interview.
MediaOne committed to buy 565,000 of S-A's 8600x terminals, with an option to purchase an additional 500,000. By July 1996, when the new contract "took effect retroactively," S-A had already shipped nearly 500,000 units, executives said.
The contract "replaces and expands" a previous contract for the 8600x set-tops, signed in 1995, when MediaOne was known as Continental Cablevision Inc. The new deal also makes S-A the exclusive supplier of advanced-analog set-tops to MediaOne's Atlanta system.
Steve Necessary, vice president and general manager of S-A's Analog Video Systems division, said the order "shows the strong continued growth in the advanced-analog category."
On the digital side, S-A is not expected to be left out of the consortium buy. At an OpenCable press briefing and subsequent luncheon at the recent Western Show in Anaheim, Calif., Tele-Communications Inc. chairman and CEO John Malone said he expects to buy some of S-A's "Explorer" set-tops, but he did not discuss quantities. |
