Cablevision Boots Viewers After Upgrade

Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4200 Set-Tops Were Stuck in Reboot Cycle

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/15/2007 12:55:00 PM

Some Cablevision Systems subscribers in New York and New Jersey saw their TVs go dark for several hours last week after the operator upgraded software in certain models of Scientific Atlanta set-tops.

But Cablevision indicated that the problem -- which disrupted service the morning of March 7 and was resolved the same day -- was related to its particular network setup rather than to any glitch in the SA set-top code.

“Based on our understanding of this, the issue we experienced … would not have affected other operators,” Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella wrote in an e-mail.

SA director of public relations Sara Stutzenstein said the company, a unit of Cisco Systems, was not aware of other operators running into similar problems with set-top upgrades.

Maiella said the outage stemmed from “a scheduled upgrade of system software in certain set-top boxes,” adding, “we run a unique system here with DOCSIS [Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification] modems in every set-top box.” He declined to provide additional details.

The disruptions were almost entirely confined to subscribers on Long Island, N.Y., Maiella said, with some “limited impact” in systems in New Jersey’s Morris and Bergen counties.

Messages posted on Cablevision online discussion forums said the outages affected customers with either the HD or standard-definition models of SA’s Explorer 4200 set-top. The boxes became stuck in a reboot cycle after Cablevision pushed out the initial upgrade, according to posts on DSLReports.com and a Yahoo forum.

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