For its latest television set-top box, the Explorer 2000, Scientific-Atlanta Inc has come up with a terminal that operates over hybrid fiber optic and coaxial systems and supports broadcast digital video, Internet and World Wide Web access, interactive viewing guides, pay-per-view, near-video-on-demand, and video-on-demand. It uses the PowerPC RISC – the variant used is not disclosed – and PowerTV Inc’s operating system and Eagle mutimedia co-processor, a single-chip graphics and audio system designed specifically for PAL displays and their NTSC poor relations. The television raster uses interlaced scanning, doing two full scans of the screen for each frame and the Eagle chip compensates for this to support complex applications such as Web browsing. A unified memory architecture enables the RISC processor, graphics engine and the MPEG-2 processor to share available memory dynamically to minimize cost. But the key feature of the Explorer 2000 is that it is designed to handle both analog and digital transmissions. It also includes ScientificAtlanta’s PowerKEY digital conditional access system, which uses public key technologies from RSA Data Security Inc, and Cylink Corp to curtail theft of service, falsified or denied orders, and vandalism of software and databases can be curtailed. Sensitive information can also be encrypted and decrypted, and message content can be authenticated. The Explorer 2000 set-top box includes a built-in reverse path transmitter that can communicate back to the head-end in real time for two-way digital services. The path can be activated at any time, so network operators can accommodate Internet access and future switched digital interactive services with modular plug-in upgrades to the network infrastructure rather than to the set-top box; the entire signaling system and reverse path are compliant with the global DAVIC standard, the Atlanta company says. And, simultaneously, Scientific-Atlanta was able to reveal an order from Time Warner Inc’s Time Warner Cable unit for up to 550,000 Explorer 2000s with options for further boxes, for its Pegasus digital cable system. It is not due out till the second half 1997.
