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Technology Stocks : IATV-ACTV Digital Convergence Software-HyperTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SCOTT HEIMAN who wrote (5423)	7/7/1999 4:55:00 PM
From: Mike Fredericks	Respond to of 13157

Scott- Let me ask you a more straightforward question. I read a story on GIC which said that they estimate that by 4Q '00 there will be 2 million digital cable subscribers in the US. fnews.yahoo.com 1) Is this a good number or a bad number? 2) Can IATV generate a decent revenue stream with only 2 million digital subscribers in the US? 3) Assume that IATV is ready to go and is only waiting for the digital STB penetration. At what point (number of set top boxes) do they decide to release the product? Figure that there's a bit over 250 million people in this country, so probably somewhere in neighborhood of 70 million households. So 2 million households is only a 3% penetration. Point is, maybe you're right that the big hold up is that there are no digital STB's out there. This makes life quite a bit easier on the Wink's of the world who went analog first. When I read the most recent TVGIA release (the one that said TV Guide interactive already had 2 million customers) I had assumed (erroneously) that they would then have 2 million customers for the new version which meant that there were 2 million digital STB's out there already. Guess this isn't the case. Assuming the answers to 1-3 indicate that IATV should wait a while (meanwhile WINK and WGAT, who are not dependent on digital STB's, forge ahead and build a customer base), what do you forsee the impact being on the stock price? Is the stock going to stall in the 11-15 range for the next 12 months until IATV can announce that the number of STB's out there are sufficient? Or should they go ahead and release now, hoping that the new exciting applications available to those with digital boxes will drive up demand and lead to a quicker rollout? -Mike