David,
Thank you for the post. Here is another great news from Liberate. It has signed a deal with Real Networks to port Real Player plug-in into Liberate's platform. It is nice to see Liberate positioning itself as the technology leader in this market. The more I look at Liberate, the more I like it. Plug-ins such as Real Player will make Liberate's platform much more attractive to media providers. And the good thing is that WRS doesn't have to spend a single dime to make this happen.
Fundamental wise, either Liberate or Intel (I2O) gets rolling, WRS will see much higher growth than 20% annually. Liberate is certainly looking better every day. And the fact that AOL owns a large portion of Liberate, we are guarantee with an ally on WRS' side. Now let's see if I2O can get rolling. And Intel's StrongARM push into the post-PC era maybe a potential third ball for WRS.
Here is the Liberate/Real Networks news.
Khan
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RealNetworks software to be added to cable boxes
By Martin Wolk
SEATTLE (Reuters) - RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq:RNWK - news) announced a deal Thursday to distribute its RealPlayer G2 multimedia software in Liberate Technologies television set-top boxes, company executives said.
The distribution arrangement is the latest step in a move by Seattle-based RealNetworks to extend its dominance of the market
for audio and video software into the emerging world of high-speed Internet connections.
Liberate, formerly known as Network Computer Inc., is backed by a number of cable television and technology companies led by Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq:ORCL - news) and America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news)
It has forged deals to provide interactive television software and services to cable giant Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq:CMCSA -news), regional telephone operator U S West and America Online's AOL TV and others.
''This is a great step forward for us into broadband,'' RealNetworks senior vice president Len Jordan said. ''It lets us continue to broadly distribute our player and allows us to distribute more broadly into cable.''
RealNetworks, which already has distributed its software to 65 million Internet users, has been moving aggressively in recent months to speed development of a so-called broadband network that would allow the delivery of more video over the Internet.
The company says 85 percent of Internet sites with multimedia content already use RealNetworks software rather than rival products made by software giant Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news)
Liberate is the chief rival to Microsoft in the battle to provide software for advanced television set-top boxes expected to be
distributed to millions of cable television customers in coming years.
But Charlie Tritschler, vice president of marketing for Liberate, said the deal with RealNetworks was not exclusive and the company would continue to work with Microsoft in other areas.
Network Computer initially was set up by Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison and Netscape Communications Corp. to offer an alternative platform to the personal computer standard dominated by Microsoft.
The company, which has now shifted its focus to the set-top box, announced investments totaling $50 million from 11 companies last month and filed to go public. |
