More than one year after it launched on set-tops manufactured by Philips
Consumer Electronics Co., AOL Time Warner Inc.'s 'AOLTV' has landed a deal that
could instantly put in into millions of cable set-tops.
On the eve of Scientific-Atlanta Inc.'s third-quarter earnings release,
America Online Inc. said it will work to deploy AOLTV on the S-A 'Explorer 2000'
series of set-tops.
Time Warner Cable has more than 2.8 million digital subscribers, and nearly
all of them have S-A boxes. AOLTV would enable subscribers to utilize popular
AOL communications applications like electronic mail, instant messaging, 'Buddy
List' and 'Buddy Chat.'
Heretofore, consumers had to buy separate set-top boxes and subscribe to the
AOLTV service. Including AOLTV with current S-A boxes -- which would allow AOL
to download its application, just like video-on-demand -- could greatly expand
the reach of the paid service.
