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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DiViT who wrote (42372)	6/22/1999 10:32:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

A guy once said that the year 2000 box would be fun! Looks like it's funtional for work too.................. allnetdevices.com Broadband Scenario: Mirage or Reality? By David Haskin Managing editor, allNetDevices June 21, 1999 -- Like a mirage shimmering up from the hot desert floor, visions of a cable-centric future emerged from last week's Cable '99 show in Chicago. You're in a hotel room on a business trip to a distant city. You flick on the TV and, using the Bluetooth protocol, you beam files from your handheld to the set-top box. Using the television's remote control, you load a word processor and spreadsheet program and continue to build your business plan, which you started back at the office. The applications are provided by the cable service operator. You gather data from your company's database and plug that information into the business plan and e-mail a draft of the plan to your partner. Then, you switch to a browser and order a new necktie for tomorrow's big meeting, deliverable to your hotel via FedEx. Finally, you get back to the basics of cable TV and watch a movie. Missing from this dream-like scenario is the sore shoulder caused by schlepping your notebook computer through multiple airports. Also gone is the eyestrain caused by squinting at a handheld's minimalist display. The only eyestrain results from staring into the bright, bright future without your shades. There's a long way to go before you reach this broadband oasis, but two things are making it possible to even dream about it. The first is an apparent change in attitude by cable operators that is motivated, not surprisingly, by greed. No longer are they hell-bent on ramming cable modems down our throats. That's because satellite operators have, in some areas, been eating cable operators' lunch and full-scale set-tops, not cable modems, are required to combat that problem. Also, the FCC has made it clear that cable operators won't get much in the way of monthly rental fees from cable modems or set-tops since those devices must be made available to consumers via the retail channel. The second reason is advancing technology. Many cable operators were touting set-tops with more memory, more processing power, hard disk and other PC-like accoutrements. But we were most intrigued by a joint announcement by Scientific Atlanta, the set-top biggie, and little Peach Networks of Israel about Peach's new technology that will enable set-top users to access Windows applications via cable. In essence, this technology turns cable operators headend equipment into a network file server. Still missing in this shimmering scenario are links to back-end corporate data. Technology creating these links is starting to emerge for wireless devices such as smart phones and handhelds, where bandwidth is scarce. But it still hasn't emerged for broadband services. In a truly open IP broadband world, that shouldn't be difficult to accomplish. As is often the case, the real winner looks to be Microsoft. It presumably would garner licensing revenues both for cable systems that broadcast Windows and Microsoft applications. Plus, as set-tops get more RAM and processing power, they should easily be able to handle Windows CE, which is not as appropriate for devices with fewer resources. There's a long way to go before we either arrive at these glimmering images of the future or learn that they are, in fact, mirages. Peach claims it will begin testing its product until this summer. Licensing issues were studiously ignored in the announcements but must be resolved. But, oh -- isn't it a beautiful sight?