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Technology Stocks : C-Cube

CUBE 37.25

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To: Stoctrash who wrote (38246)	1/15/1999 8:35:00 PM
From: Gerald Thomas	Read Replies (1) of 50808

CO-OPERATION MISSING AT WESTERN 390 Words 2838 Characters 01/11/99 Inside Digital TV (c) 1999 Phillips Business Information, Inc. The US cable industry has started to become frustrated with the industry's inability to come up with an open set-top box capable of running several applications. US industry executives walking the Western Cable show floor openly griped about the flurry of products and services that will live only once - in full demo/non-reality form. Other than a few products (notably Diva/GI's digital box with full VOD capability), most boxes dealt with pie-in-the-sky ideals. French pay-TV giant Canal+ exhibited for the first time at Western, sharing a stand with Pioneer (as a result of the summer's * Pioneer/C-Cube/Divicom alliance). Company executives also spoke on several panels. Their message was always the same: Canal+ boxes have been delivering multiple services to real subscribers for the past two-to-the-years. "There already is a generation of boxes in the marketplace if you look worldwide," said the company's international communications manager Jean-Louis Erneux. "We are working on a next generation set- top - open and standardised with more memory." The spin from US techies was that technology was waiting for the content to keep up. The always crowded show floor and filled to overflowing panel sessions coupled with the absence of real news showed that the next-generation set-tops are right around the corner. This did not stop several from griping about the lack of co- operation in the marketplace - as each set-top box featured just one application (albeit, usually an impressive application). That is starting to change, however. Scientific-Atlanta has always had technology that outpaced the services it offered. Slowly, it has started to bring more applications into its set-top. In December, it signed a deal with WorldGate Communications that will put WorldGate's Internet-over-TV cable service available via S-A's Explorer 2000 set-top and S-A's 8600x platform by the first quarter of next year. The lack of blockbuster news did not keep money out of the industry. Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures made a splash at this year's Western Show by committing $10 million to Wink Communications and $20 million to the High Speed Access Corp. (HAS). The Wink deal will see Wink's "enhanced broadcasting" module and e-commerce technology deployed in the Vulcan-owned Charter Communications and Marcus Cable systems. The HAS deal will have Vulcan take a significant minority stake in the turnkey Internet service provider. Previously, the US MSO bought part of the techie cable channel ZDTV.

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