The Wall Street Journal (subscription only, so no link) reports this morning:
Cisco Systems announced a deal to buy Scientific-Atlanta for $6.9 billion, reflecting Cisco’s ambitions to become the leading equipment supplier as lines blur between the Internet, TV and phone industries.
Scientific-Atlanta is one of the leading makers of cable TV set-top boxes. When I lived in Arizona, I owned a Scientific-Atlanta 8300 HD DVR, which I wrote about several times (most notably in TiVo versus MCE versus my cable company). This move puts Cisco on a collision course with Microsoft and whoever winds up buying TiVo in the next six months.