Re: Set Top Wars Highlights
Important excerpts:
Sony recently began giving demonstrations of HAVI-equipped entertainnment centers that include not only TV, cable and audio gear but also a new kind of device that works much like a digital VCR and performs many of the storage and retrieval functions of a personal
computer's hard disk. The first HAVI-compatible systems may be introduced as early as this Christmas.
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((( Is this the big mystery deal????? )))
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Through the cable set-top box, with the Aperios operating system, all this equipment can be connected to the Internet at lightning speed.
Analysts expect Sony to complete the picture by announcing its own multimedia "portal," a Web site from which music, movies and
software can be downloaded, with Sony charging a fee for each transaction.
The first big test of Sony's vision will come later this year when the cable TV industry rolls out a new set-top cable box built by the
General Instrument Co., with the almost comically old-fashioned name DCT-5000.Cable system operators will be able to decide
whether to use Sony's or Microsoft's software, or that of other companies, in the boxes they deliver to consumers.
These operators have been promising powerful interactive cable systems since the beginning of the 1990s; the DCT-5000 helps make it
possible, technologically. And AT&T's entry into the cable business, through its pending acquisition of Tele-Communications Inc.,
provides the financial muscle and competitive impetus that the industry may have lacked.
As powerful as today's most advanced personal computers, the new set-top box will serve as the brain for dozens of activities, including Internet browsing, local and long-distance telephone service, video games, movies on demand and many new home
applications, like easy-to-use electronic phone books or call-screening based on Caller ID technology.
The possibilities are as limitless as software designers' imaginations. For example, the TV might replace today's ubiquitous home audio baby monitor. With a camera in the nursery, parents could keep tabs on a sleeping tot, using the picture-in-a-picture feature
of the family-room TV. And if the baby does something cute, it will be possible to save a video clip and then send it over the cable network to be viewed on the grandparents' television on the other side of the country.
The cable industry and its partners are betting that when families want to enter cyberspace, they would rather settle down on a sofa in
front of the TV than sit at a desk staring into a computer display.
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((((Is this the entry point for Digital Vedeo by Ampex
and the new "Consumer Orientation??? )))
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Eager to avoid re-creating the PC business model, the cable industry, led by John C. Malone, the electrical engineer turned chairman of
Tele-Communications, structured a deal in which Microsoft, Sony, Sun and other companies all are providing software for the set-top
box. No company has a monopoly. The companies were eager to be part of the deal, in the hope that beyond supplying their operating systems they would be able to sell highly profitable services -- like pay-per-play video games -- directly to the consumer.
Subscribers will pick different services from cable operators, rather than worrying about hardware and software, Robinson said. But the
kinds of applications that the new set-top boxes will make possible are the sort at which Sony has long excelled.
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Sony part owner of General Instrument
TCI part owner of General Instrument
AT&T pending acquisition of TCI
I put my money on Sony as the mystery partner of Ampex
I believe Sony is a valued customer of Ampex. Right?
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General Instrument, partly owned by both TCI and Sony, will make some boxes with special Sony I-Link connectors. And soon, perhaps
even later this year, the cable industry plans to allow consumer electronics companies to produce set-top boxes under their own names.
Then it will be possible to go to a store and buy a Sony-made set-top box, or a cable-ready Sony digital TV with the Aperios operating
system. Indeed, they may compete directly with systems from other consumer electronics companies with built-in Microsoft software.
And in the end, it will be the consumer who decides whether the future will be a post-PC or a PC-centric world. "
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Maybe BIG announcement of Ampex somehow partnered in this mix say sometime about mid-year.
Ed Perry
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