So Long SARA?

Based on a pamphlet and letter that came in the mail from Rogers today, it sounds like our cable provider will soon be either replacing or upgrading the Scientific Atlanta Resident Application (SARA) that's been a mainstay on our SA8000 box for years. It's a little unclear from the material we received whether Rogers is simply putting a new set of screens in front of SARA or replacing it completely. The letter states that you can still access "your original channel listings in the Interactive Program Guide" by pressing the Guide button a second time, but does that mean that SARA is still there, or just its functionality? I wouldn't shed a tear at the loss of SARA, if it's actually going away. But most of my issues with it pertain to the recording side of the box, which unfortunately fall under a separate application. It remains to be seen if any of them will be improved by this change.

One of the new features that they're touting with this mid-January release is a set of mosaic-style offerings on which they'll combine (at the head-end) six Picture-In-Picture-sized channels on a related theme ("Kids", "News", "Sports") into a single broadcast channel. Vicki scoffed at the execution (specifically that there's nothing there for women) but of course I think both the news and sports option might be interesting.

Anyway, as I said to Vicki while I read the material, "This is by far the most interesting thing Rogers has sent us in years."

[Update later that same day: Further examination of the screen shots in the flyer lead me to believe it's simply a new front-end to SARA, not a replacement... but I can't be sure just yet, since they might have opted to model the new UI after SARA.]