Fantastic must read post by AlphaWolf on RB.
By: AlphaWolf
Reply To: 33451 by BullMarket Wednesday, 16 Jun 1999 at 12:49 AM EDT
Post # of 33473
Thanks BullMarket, This One Is Updated.........
EDIG And LU Have The Best Chance For An Industry Standard In The Up And Coming Wars Between MP3 And The Technology And Production Companies Whom Are Ready To Decide On A Secure Digital Downloading Solution, AN INDUSTRY STANDARD!!!
"We are taking the current generation of hand-held players to the highest levels of audio quality and design," said Joyce Eastman, director of audio for Lucent's New Ventures Group. "We have produced what we believe will be a solid design for an EPAC player that offers high levels of security with excellent sound quality."
"The quality of the sound that we've heard with EPAC on our hardware platform is exceptional," said Fred Falk, CEO of e.Digital.
"Our new DSP is a new class of processor for a new market," said Gary Johnson, worldwide manager of DSPs for Texas Instruments. "We look forward to further work with Lucent and e.Digital on making our player a success in the market."
Lucent's New Ventures Group has been developing opportunities for audio technologies developed at Bell Labs, and has been working closely with the music industry. Lucent's New Ventures Group is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the worldwide recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access system for digital music.
Read About It: (http://www.edig.com/Releases/pr042199.htm)
Lucent Has Also Taken Another Edge In The Race.
MIDDLETOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 1999--Lucent Technologies today announced that renowned music producer and technology guru Phil Ramone has been named senior advisor to the Internet music download initiative of the company's New Ventures Group. Ramone, an independent consultant, will work with Lucent to promote its Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (EPAC(TM)), a new version of the highest-quality audio coder, to the music industry. In the past year, he conducted a high-profile New York-to-Los Angeles Internet music demonstration of EPAC to key industry figures in October, 1998.
Phil Ramone, producer of such noted artists as Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, and Paul Simon, and Chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), has been an early adopter of recording technology throughout his career and a pioneer in the growing Internet music industry.
''Lucent brings a wealth of technical credibility to the downloadable music industry, and I firmly hold that their solutions are second to none,'' said Ramone. ''Producers in the music industry, as well as the average music lover, deserve the best listening experience possible when hearing music over the Internet. Lucent helps bridge the gap between where we are today and where we need to be in order to sustain a viable, Internet music business.''
Read About It: (http://www.edig.com/Releases/pr050399.htm)
The Production Industry Won't Go Away, But The Free Distribution Of Copyrighted Music Will Be Stopped In The Near Future. It Has To Be Stopped, No One Will Produce Music If They Can't Produce A Profit From It. LU's EPAC Solution Paired With EDIG's MicroOs System And Texas Interments' DSP, Is The Obvious Answer.
edig.com
biz.yahoo.com
biz.yahoo.com
And LU As Well As Texas Instruments Are Founding Technology Companies Of The Secure Digital Music Initiative, Or SDMI, Which Is Also Founded By The Recording Industry Association Of America To Find A Solution To The MP3 Free Distribution, Piracy, Problem.
e.Digital Corp. and Lucent Technologies Select SanDisk's CompactFlash for Secure EPAC Internet Music Player
Fred Falk, president of e.Digital, said, ''We are pleased to expand our ongoing relationship with SanDisk, the leader in flash memory for data storage. We chose CompactFlash for its size, high capacity, serialization feature, simple interface and reliability. Our SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) compliant music player features our patented MicroOS(TM) file management system and plays music stored in Lucent's EPAC audio format, which offers high security features and excellent sound quality.''
(http://www.edig.com/Releases/pr052699.htm)
We Are Talking About The Ground Floor Of A Huge Opportunity Here, And This Is Just The Beginning. EDIG Will Be The First To Produce Lucent's EPAC Solution, Expected By Christmas.
EDIG Announced Today 6/15/99 That They Are Shipping The First Of Many Products To Lanier From Their First Purchase Order Worth 3 Million And Will Follow On A Quarterly Basis
Picture Of Lanier's Cquence Mobil Device That Shipped Today:
lanier.com
(http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/990615/ca_e_digit_1.html)
Harris Is Pending Board Approval For A Lanier Spin Off To The NYSE!!!
''Lanier has been a stellar performer in the office equipment industry - providing a strong line of copiers, fax and dictation products - outpacing many of its competitors for the past 10 years,'' Mr. Farmer said. ''Spinning Lanier off as a highly-successful independent company will reward our shareholders and give Lanier operational and financial flexibility to take advantage of significant growth opportunities in their industry.''
(http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/990413/fl_harris_1.html)
About Lanier Worldwide, Inc.
Lanier Worldwide, Inc., based in Atlanta, is a $1.5 billion wholly-owned subsidiary of Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS - news). With over 1,600 sales and service locations in more than 100 countries, Lanier is one of the world's largest providers and designers of DOCutivity(TM) solutions and services that lower the cost of document creation, distribution, replication and retention, while enhancing customer productivity. Lanier's wide array of tailored next level document solutions include black and white copiers, color copiers, multifunction devices, digital dictation systems, print-on-demand solutions, document management solutions and a variety of outsourcing services.
"Cquence Mobile will allow the end user to have all of the benefits of the traditional hard-wired dictation station, with the added freedom to dictate anywhere," said Rod Reed, Director of Marketing, Lanier. "Traditional digital voice recorders lack the functionality needed by high-volume users. Cquence Mobile will provide the healthcare and legal markets the latest in digital voice technology without sacrificing functionality."
Fred Falk, President and CEO of e.Digital, stated, "Completion of Cquence Mobile is a major milestone for both companies. We are very proud of the finished product, which represents the highest quality, most feature-rich portable dictation device ever built. The product will soon be installed in Lanier's customer base, and Lanier will provide rolling sales forecasts as we near completion of the initial purchase order." (From 6/15/99 PR)
Hewlett Packard Is Partnering With Lanier!!!
biz.yahoo.com
The First Prototypes Designed By EDIG For Intel To Be Jointly Marketed To Intel's OEM's Is Scheduled To Ship Mid Summer.
Falk added, ''With the research and development we've done over the last two and a half years, and our involvement in the VoiceTIMES alliance with IBM (NYSE:IBM - news), Intel (Nasdaq:INTC - news), and others, we are positioned to play a major part in the evolution of the digital dictation industry.''
Falk continued, ''Beyond dictation, our goal is to leverage our digital product design expertise and MicroOS into one of the industry standards for use in portable digital music, data, image and eventually, full-motion video devices. Part of the fulfillment of this goal is e.Digital's recently-announced partnership with Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU - news) in the development and marketing of a secure Internet music player based on e.Digital's MicroOS and Lucent's EPAC (Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder) compression technology.''
We Can't Leave IBM Out Of All Of This, So….( edig.com
What Is It That EDIG Has That Everyone Else Wants?….. (http://www.edig.com/Releases/pr020199real.htm)
Here Is A Recent Email From Robert Putnam Of IR:
Thank you for your e-mail. On development work, like we are doing for Lanier, Intel and Lucent, non-recurring engineering fees are paid to e.Digital. If we are contracted to build the final device, like we are doing for Lanier, we use a third-party contract manufacturer; in Lanier's case, that company is Eltech, who we announced last fall. The contract manufacturer fronts the labor and materials so that the company does not need to have manufacturing dollars invested in the product while still receiving close to 30% of the proceeds. We plan on staying a lean, mean engineering machine and getting our MicroOS into as many flash memory-based portable, digital devices as possible. The Lanier product will be shipping in quantity this year, we will have completed our Intel prototypes and be jointly marketing that technology this year, and, based on our on-going negotiations with several companies, they expect to have secure Internet music devices available this Christmas. Best regards, Robert Putnam, IR
Lucent Technologies, Texas Instruments, Intel, Lanier And IBM All Did Their DD, Go Do Yours!!!
Charts:
quote.yahoo.com
EDIG's Home Page:
edig.com
More on Microsoft and the MP3 Revolution
By Jim Seymour
Special to TheStreet.com
5/17/99 3:43 PM ET
My two columns on MP3 pulled several hundred emails, mainly from investors to whom all this was news and from MP3 buffs wanting to know if I'd share with them my (presumed) secret list of great MP3 download sites. And a few readers (after some bulletin-board discussions and semi-organized efforts to persuade me) wondered why I didn't address the Lucent (LU:NYSE)-e.digital (EDIG:Nasdaq OTC BB)-Texas Instruments (TXN:NYSE) alliance, which also looks like a major Secure Music Download possibility. Simple: I was saving it for another column, coming soon, which will look at other MP3-and-beyond industry players.
Several readers, including Stephen Reinhold, asked what I know about using MP3 files in their cars:
How do products like the Rio fit in with MP3's future? The car audio industry is starting to push out MP3 players for the car. Having played with a Rio, there would be a sizable market for such devices. What's your take?
Good question. The best prototypes I've seen so far involve small, dockable MP3 players about the size of the Diamond Multimedia (DIMD:Nasdaq) Rio. You pop 'em into a slot in a dashboard device about the size of a cassette deck, and they play back through the car's sound system. When you want to go for a jog or take the player to your home or office PC to dump some new tunes into it, just push a button and it pops out. This is an elegant idea, and I think it'll be popular -- so popular, especially given our obsession with auto-sound systems, that it'll be yet another accelerator for the burgeoning MP3 market and, eventually, for secure-download-standard files. Whatever that standard is.
Scott Slutsky asked what I think MP3 means for traditional music retailers, such as Transworld Music, which operates almost a thousand retail stores under the names Camelot, Coconuts, Record Town, Planet Music and more, and Musicland Stores (MLG:NYSE), which has more than 1,300 stores under the names Sam Goody, Media Play and others.
Simple answer: It ain't good news. Though record stores are going to be with us for some time to come, they'll hold a far smaller share of the market for popular music five years from now than today. Actually, the damage will appear long before then. For these storefront operators, the double whammy of MP3 and whatever legitimized secure-download system emerges as its legal analog is that first, they'll undercut today's pricing, and second, they'll appeal most to precisely those customers the retailers rely upon: the frequent-buyer under-30 crowd. Not a pretty picture, I'm afraid.
No doubt both Transworld and Musicland will be among the players selling pop-music downloads online, once a viable industry standard for secure downloads is apparent, but their world will never be the same. Their huge retail presences are a fearsome ball and chain in a more nimble world with no existing retail distribution to protect.
Finally, speaking of pricing, Paul Hurley and a number of other TSC readers think today's outrageous prices for CDs are ripe for a well-deserved tumble, and MP3 may bring some rough justice to the record companies that used the transition from cassettes to CDs as an opportunity to triple prices and set up one of the century's biggest, longest-running consumer gouges:
Perhaps another option for the music industry would be to take a cue from the commercial software industry and drastically cut the price of their products. CD production costs are considerably lower than the old vinyl LPs, and even less than cassette tape. It will still be hard to compete with "free" MP3, but $4.99 current-release CDs may help stem the tide. (But will the music industry abandon its margins?)
Hmm, will Howard Stern ever chair the Fed?
Jim Seymour is president of Seymour Group, an information-strategies consulting firm working with corporate clients in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and a longtime columnist for PC Magazine. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. At time of publication, neither Seymour nor Seymour Group held positions in the companies discussed in this column, although positions can change at any time. Seymour does not write about companies that are consulting clients of Seymour Group, or have been in recent years. While Seymour cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he invites your feedback at jseymour@thestreet.com.
Courtesy Of AlphaWolf & rolla95
There Are Many OEMs Out There Who Would Benefit From EDIG's MicroOS, News Can Be Expected At Any Time As The SDMI Finalizes Their Decisions. Examples Of Some OEMs That May Or May Not Be Looking Into EDIG's MicroOs Are, Sony, Panasonic, HP, Compaq, The List Goes On And On!!!
This Is Just The Beginning!!! And As A Old EDIGer Once Said, “You Are Here!!!” (DABOSS 1999)
Good Luck All!!!
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