HORSHAM, PA – In October of 1996, the first General Instrument DCT 1000 was shipped to its first customer.
This month, Motorola, which bought GI (which was once Jerrold) announced it has shipped its 50-millionth DCT.
"In 1996, the very first digital cable networks were built, and with them came the promise of a new world of home entertainment: Digital television with crystal-clear stereo sound and high-definition picture quality, thousands of movies and shows available on-demand, interactive on-screen applications such as program guides, and more – all delivered to a digital cable receiver in the living room," says the press release.
“From the start, it was evident the digital cable network would be a disruptive technology, which is why we dedicated our very best minds to innovate around the set-top and the network. They responded by getting the world’s first commercial digital cable set-top into the field,” said John Burke, Motorola corporate vice-president and responsible for the company’s digital video portfolio. “Ten years later, we’re still using the fundamentals learned by that team to help the cable industry enable new types of entertainment experiences for their customers – inside and outside of their homes.”
The DCT 1000 set-top included an internal tuner that could receive the then-standard analog video signals traveling through a cable network, and a second tuner which could descramble the newer, video signals. The DCT-1000 also supported QAM-64 (quadrature amplitude modulation), the standard at the time for network transmission.
Today, Motorola has deployed over 2,060 digital video headends worldwide. Within the total of 50 million, Motorola has delivered over eight million high-definition capable receivers and over five million digital video recorders to cable operators worldwide.
Some stats to help you visualize:
* 50 million Motorola set-tops stacked one on top of the other would reach a height of over 11 million feet, almost 400 times that of Mount Everest
* 50 million Motorola set-tops placed end-to-end in a straight line would cover the distance from London to Sydney, Australia.
