The Motorola MTR700 and the Cisco STA1520, which we knew were slated for Wave 60 certification testing at the end of June, have both passed, as reported by Multichannel News. With both major vendors’ Tuning Adapters certified, cable MSOs should be able to soon begin offering them to customers soon to support Switched Digital Video (SDV). This is a little bit behind schedule, the Tuning Resolver (as the Tuning Adapter was then known) was expected in 2Q08. But even coming in a few months late it has been an impressively quick development cycle for the cable industry. It is known that Motorola started working on their unit last July, and they were revealed to the public last August. So it has been just about a year from the start of work to certification, which is really not a lot of time to develop, test, and certify a new product.

As recently revealed, the new 9.4 TiVo update includes Tuning Adapter support, so TiVo users will be ready for the TAs as soon as the cable MSOs make them available. As Bright House, Cox, Time Warner, and others all implementing SDV, the TAs will be increasingly important. Pricing for customers is not yet known, except for Cox which announced plans to provide the TAs to their customers free of charge.

Following up on his report on the Motorola MTR700, Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD has posted photos of the corresponding Cisco/Scientific Atlanta STA1520 Tuning Adapter. While Motorola’s TA was part of a working demo, the Cisco box is just a static display, not connected to anything. While it has the same connections, the Cisco box is physically much larger than the Motorola TA. And while Motorola indicated that their TA could be available to cable MSOs in July, Cisco is only saying 3Q2008.

Still, progress is being made. Be patient a little while longer all you folks with SDV issues.

Following quickly after Motorola unveiled their MTR700 Tuning Resolver, Cisco has unveiled their tuning resolver as well, the STA1520, which looks like their RTG100 cable box. (Remember, Cisco purchased Scientific Atlanta, and they’re starting to use their own branding on products that formerly would’ve has the SA branding.) Cisco is calling it a ‘tuning adapter’ instead of tuning resolver, which I also noticed the NCTA reps doing during today’s conference call, perhaps that’s the new industry term? I wish they’d just pick a name and stick with it, I don’t think ‘tuning adapter’ is any better than ‘tuning resolver’, and at least the latter has been used for a while.

Like Motorola’s MTR700, Cisco’s STA1520 will be demo’d at the upcoming Cable Show, and it will be part of the Wave 60 certification process with CableLabs, so it too could be available by early July.

Via Light Reading’s Cable Digital News.

According to Multichannel News, Cisco is retiring the Scientific Atlanta brand in favor of their own. At CES next week they will be unveiling their new line of STBs, which will carry the Cisco brand in place SciAtl. Cisco acquired SciAtl in 2006 for $6.9 billion, but, until now, hasn’t changed the consumer branded on their products. Existing SciAtl product lines will retain the SciAtl branding, but all new products will be branded as Cisco gear. So the SciAtl brand will fade with time as the older product lines are refreshed. Cisco has dropped a press release about what they’ll be exhibiting at CES.

Picked up via Network World.

SearchNetworking.com has an article about Cisco’s movies into the IP video market which contains a couple of TiVo mentions:

Second, the Scientific Atlanta deal helped Cisco find an ally in TiVo, the digital video recording company. “The combination of Scientific Atlanta technology and market girth and the user-friendly TiVo graphical user interface provides software and usability expertise,” Sizemore said.

And:

According to Sizemore, the Scientific Atlanta buy can vault Cisco into the interactive advertising market by enabling IP on set-top boxes. That method can give Cisco the ability to leverage its enterprise expertise to create a two-way marketing and sales engine directly into the living room, using a familiar and friendly interface from TiVo.

This is interesting because my impression is that TiVo and Cisco/Scientific Atlanta aren’t really partnered, but rather Comcast is funding development of the TiVo OCAP software to run on the SciAtl cable boxes. I’m sure that, as part of that effort, TiVo is working with SciAtl engineers on platform specifics, but this article makes it sound like a much closer relationship. It makes me wonder if the author, or at least the person he’s quoting, is reading too much into things, or if he knows more than has been public.