I was thinking way earlier than that. My grandparents had a Scientific Atlanta box connected to their giant piece-of-furtniture Hughs and Mathis TV. This was late 80s, early 90s, long before digital TV, or cable having more than 30 or 40 channels.
Yep. I worked at SA from the mid-90's through the mid '10's. They left the satellite business and focused (mostly) on cable systems. Was a lot of fun as digital settops rolled out, then DVR, then HDTV. As others have noted, the Cisco acquisition in 2006 did not, uh, work out too well. I believe Cisco had visions of video control "in the network", but that was never going to work for extant cable systems, and we couldn't get an IPTV solution going for lots of reasons. Loved my time at SA but it was oil and water with Cisco.