Cisco kills off Scientific Atlanta brand name

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 08 January 2008 06:30

Opinion and Analysis

These include a new Media Center Extender with DVD player (DMA2200) and Media Center Extender (DMA2100). The DMA2200 and DMA2100 provide support for popular video and audio codecs such as Xvid, along with continued support for Windows Media Video HD files and support the ability to send protected HD content to additional rooms, including recorded TV from over-the-air ATSC or cable card tuners along with movies and music available from providers. Support is also included for features such as news feeds, public radio broadcasts, up-to-date sports reports, and subscription music.

The new products incorporate dual band Wireless-N technology to enable consumers to use the less-crowded 5GHz wireless spectrum to separate the network streams that contain their entertainment content from those that contain traditional data content. The DMA2200 and DMA2100 are available now in the at around $US350 and $US300 respectively. They will be available in APAC in the first quarter of 2008.

Linksys also announced The WRT310N Wireless-N Gigabit Router; WRT160N Wireless-N Broadband Router; WUSB600N Dual-Band Wireless-N USB Notebook Adapter; WEC600N Dual-Band Wireless-N ExpressCard Adapter and WGA600N Dual-Band Wireless-N Gaming Adapter and Linksys EasyLink Advisor, an enhanced network setup and management tool that simplifies the process of setting up home networking devices and helps ensure that all devices and connections are secure.

All are or will be on sale soon in the US, and prices have been announced. No date for APAC availability has been given.

All these new products are designed to exploit the rapid merging of the home entertainment and home computing/networking markets. Chambers said six months ago that the brand recognition enjoyed by Linksys in the US was little advantage elsewhere. Cisco/Linksys aims to secure a leading position globally in the growing integrated home technology market so it would seem that any move to kill the brand and replace it with Cisco would be best made soon, or not at all.