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Technology Stocks : WAVX Anyone? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cm who wrote (7592)	6/27/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: SDR-SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11417

cm, . . . Re: Databroadcast Ryanscott has clearly labeled himself as a manipulator and charlatan and ought to be, at most, ignored. I'll venture a guess that the "test" will be some content transmitted over a friendly DTV station on a slow ramp-up over a couple of weeks, each couple of days adding in various features. I'd be very surprised if the whole distribution system wasn't already pretty well tested out on a hard-wired or direct RF link basis. Regarding the more general question of "Are we it in the future?": My own personal feeling is that many of the major players are (or have been forced to become) standards conscious. I think they might want to avoid a repetition of the VHS vs. Beta shoot-out or the videodisk standards shoot-out, especially since this time the shots could be coming from five or six or more different directions. If such is the case, and if Wave's high level, respected, and recognizable management has been doing the stealth marketing and courting job that we think they have, we could find ourselves at the very center of such developments. On the positive, most of the players seem to be moving toward client-controlled incremental purchase/payment; many of them have made statements implying trusted client objectives; rumors seem to link us with varying groups of players; and at this point inTelecast is a joint effort of three companies (Sarnoff-Fantastic-Wave) that are system facilitators, rather than being competing content producers or broadcasters. On the negative, the field is so potentially lucrative that it is a little hard to believe that the players are smart enough to accept standardization and thereby compromise their own egos in admitting that their own ideas might not prevail; some of the players are the very ones who prolonged the video cassette competition and the video disk competition and several other detrimental competitions within just the broadcast industry itself; AOL has notoriously bucked industry standards as evidenced by its clear belief that its many millions of subscribers aren't smart enough to use generalized browsers and have to be "protected" from browser flexibility by using carefully trimmed substitutes that keep control within AOL's hands; the broadcast industry and entertainment industry are notorious "eat your young" players; and it just seems to good to be true that we really are in the key position that we appear to be. I have great respect for Peter Sprague's ability to handle the very sensitive politics of this game. I think he can command a higher level of respect from a wider range of the players than could someone who hasn't been through the mill in such a wide variety of positions and enterprises. I think that the "stealth strategy" or "Trojan horse strategy" and its slog toward ubiquity has a chance of succeeding, because every major development that we see indicates masterful progress toward that goal. I am also heartened because there are no obvious competitors with a multi-dimensional system that provides all the Wave/Embassy capabilities. I am also, no doubt, probably only 25% or less objective and 75% or more prejudiced because I am a stockholder. This will be really interesting and is still a risk-heavy proposition. But if we really had nothing to offer, I believe the big boy players would have long ago said "hey kid, get lost" ... and they haven't. JMHO Steve