Cisco Webs Up Its UI

10/29/2009

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9:55 AM -- DENVER -- SCTE Cable-Tec Expo -- If you haven't guessed it by now, IPTV is no longer a four-letter letter word among cable folks.

Judging from the central themes and discussions here, MSOs are getting ready to adopt IP video in a big way to take advantage of the technology's interactive and cross-platform properties. (See Comcast Forges 'Excalibur' for IPTV and SCTE Expo: MSOs Prep IPTV Push .)

You can't swing a cat here without hitting some sort of IPTV product that's being marketed to MSOs, or even optimized to hook into the legacy cable environment.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)'s got all pieces of the IP video food chain on display here, including a new Web-centric interactive program guide for IPTV set-top boxes, called "Blue," which would be capable, for example, of integrating Facebook and Twitter feeds and other Web apps.



There are no deployments for Blue yet, but a Cisco official said the company thinks it will likely get traction with telcos first, since, you know, they're the ones actually doing IPTV right now.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Cable Digital News