I just can't take it anymore... I happen to know tmrent and he does not work for a direct competitor of CCUR. That is SEAC, nCube, etc. His company has done contract manufacturing for the company (Sarnoff Real Time Corp) which provided DIVA's servers and which DIVA purchased last year.TM's company also developed VOD applications for US government groups based on the SRTC system. Those efforts were curtailed after DIVA purchased the Sarnoff group and obtained exclusive rights to the system and VOD application. DIVA, at the present time is not CCUR's competitor because they are not selling servers - they are a VOD service operator. If Mediahawk offered cost advantages over their captive Sarnoff solution they would get the biz. DIVA may very well become CCUR's competitor if they decided to unbundle their server and sell directly to large cablecos, however that has nothing to do with present absurd allegations that TM violated SEC rules by smearing CCUR.
Reading through GB's "brief" history of TM I found it interesting that virtually every sinister thing he is accused of saying has a plausible explaination - even the claim to be "retired" - although that is stretching it a bit because the TM I know is a workaholic, albeit I do have the impression that he doesn't need the money...
Back to the historical TM - everything he said starting in 1997 (ancient history) was basically correct at that time. A few minor facts are off but not by extremes. He may have missed the upper bound on the number of streams Mediahawk can deliver but the point he made was still valid. The Orlando trial was based on "alpha" stage, non practical equipement and intended to evaluate customer preferences and usage patterns not prove out a cost and business model for VOD. The use of an SGI Indy workstation as the settop box was always explained as an emulation of the settop of the future. TM had the price of the Indy at the time incorrect, however, the point is still totally valid. "Today's $5,000 Indy will be Tomorrows $500 settop..." Funny how close to the mark they were when you look at the specs of the latest GI and SA offerings.
The confusion over the various early claims of CCUR and Network Connection is also understandable. TM's boss and I sat in on early CCUR briefings about Mediahawk at a Navy technical exhibition and the exact performance was not at all clear. Network Connection was also working with SAIC at the same time and made some strong claims about their system. Clear, unambiguous technical data has never been a strong suite of the vod industry. The truth is that MANY technical experts and industry pundits were wrong about stream counts, costs and other important measures. Does anyone remember the famous Microsoft "Tiger" system which was going to deliver VOD to millions on off-the-shelf PC's? Way to go Bill! Try explaining to your favorite VC why the Microsoft solution wouldn't work and your million dollar system will! I had to do it many times.
I am sure that today CCUR marketeers are very happy Boeing understands that there are not simple technical solutions - even for a modest 12 channel system. When TM describes the inherent difficulties of launching a VOD service he knows what he is talking about. The point about reliability is NOT a claim that Mediahawk is not reliable but that the method by which it achieves reliability carries an added cost penalty not born by systems such as DIVA's or SEAC's. For example, Mediahawk duplicates titles on the disk farm. As the number of viewers increases more copies of the title must be generated. The assumption is that at any time a large number of subscribers are watching a few very popular movies. This is referred to as the "Blockbuster Model" and it provides that most movies are only duplicated once. However, as the VOD operators number of accessible titles increases dramatically the "Blockbuster" distribution flattens out - SOMEONE is watching Howard the Duck! In DIVA's system there is NEVER more then a single copy of any title plus a 20% overhead for parity. The net result of this is that in a large cable headend installation with 1000's of titles and 1000's of active simultaneous streams a CCUR system could require more then twice the disk space of a DIVA system.
Since TM has been totally above board about his opinions it is hard to see how you can argue that he has concealed a bias. I can't say if he is a long or a short, nor, can I say if he still even has a position in CCUR (he definitely did in the recent past). I can say that based on my professional interaction with TM he is a very capable engineer who deserves better from certain nasty folks on this group.
May you all have continued Good Luck with your CCUR stock...
Granby |
