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

To: tony schwarz who wrote (42720)	7/10/1999 8:34:00 PM
From: rocky haag	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

I would say like Bof baby. But CUBE to double soon count it baby

To: tony schwarz who wrote (42720)	7/11/1999 11:30:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

The war over "PODs"............................... multichannel.com Weekly Preview for July 12, 1999 Cable Warns Again About Hybrid Boxes By BILL MENEZES July 12, 1999 The cable industry continues to wrangle with key political and technical issues that it said could slow its interoperable digital set-top initiatives if they are not resolved. The National Cable Television Association and major cable players reiterated their objections last week to the Federal Communications Commission's inclusion of hybrid analog-digital set-top boxes under the FCC mandate for separating security functions from nonsecurity functions in digital set-tops beginning next July. Separately, cable and the broadcasting industry subtly renewed their pressure on consumer-electronics manufacturers that are refusing to back their endorsement of the so-called 5C Digital Transmission Content Protection technology as the proposed copy-protection standard for digital-TV broadcasts over cable. Cable also indicated that it would move ahead with 5C as its copy-protection scheme for digital television regardless of whether consumer-electronics manufacturers such as Thomson Consumer Electronics, Zenith Electronics Corp. and Philips Consumer Electronics Co. decide to stick with their rival protection proposals. "We're at a point where we're moving forward with 5C," said Lisa Lee, director of the OpenCable project for Cable Television Laboratories Inc. "We will continue to work through the standards process for that, but we have to move forward. There's a lot of work to be done in the next year." While the issues are not new, the recent statements signaled that they remain far from resolution while deadlines for addressing them edge closer. In its semiannual report to the FCC on progress in creating specifications for a separable point-of-deployment" digital security module and host interface, the cable group said CableLabs was continuing its development of a standards-based solution, but it would likely miss the commission's July 2000 deadline for the analog portion. The group -- which includes MSOs and key vendors such as General Instrument Corp. and Scientific-Atlanta Inc. -- also reiterated its warning that the OpenCable program, which was intended to make digital set-tops suitable for open retail sale, could get bogged down if CableLabs has to keep expending resources to deal with soon-obsolescent analog-technology issues. "The addition of the requirement to handle analog conditional access in a hybrid digital-analog set-top has already diverted significant resources from the original OpenCable effort," the report read. The renewed warning comes as CableLabs begins initial testing this week of the PODs submitted so far by vendors -- the first step in lengthy interoperability trials for OpenCable gear. CableLabs will serve as the incubator for testing of the scrambling and descrambling abilities of PODs submitted by GI; S-A; Philips; and partnerships of SCM Microsystems Inc., NagraVision and Pioneer Digital Technologies; SCM and NDS Ltd.; and SCM and Mindport. Testers will also use host devices such as digital set-tops and a TV with integrated set-top functionality submitted by Sony Corp. Lee said CableLabs was working on a hybrid-box solution based on the complete or abridged "EIA-105" standard. But the industry believes the result will be an ungainly package sporting both a digital POD and an analog decoder module, which manufacturers would be loath to produce because of its cost and their desire to focus on the growing digital sector, instead of on the fading analog portion. She echoed the industry's warning that the hybrid-box work would take CableLabs' limited resources away from the primary digital set-top development work, slowing the effort to make the July 2000 digital POD deadline. "I believe it would put that deadline in jeopardy," she added. As for copy protection, the NCTA and the National Association of Broadcasters wrote FCC chairman William Kennard early this month to say that they were meeting his targets for creating compatibility specifications between cable boxes and digital TV sets in terms of the proposed interface and the method for protecting the broadcast signal from unauthorized digital copying. In noting that the NAB, the NCTA and the motion-picture industry agreed on a combination of the IEEE-1394 "fire-wire" interface and 5C copy-protection scheme, they acknowledged that consumer-electronics makers remained split on the issue. The group said it would continue meeting with consumer-electronics companies to resolve the split, and it remained committed to submitting cable-compatibility specifications by Oct. 31. "While we understand that not all manufacturers support this 1394/5C combination, we are hopeful that this will be agreed upon as part of the requirements for a cable-ready TV," NCTA president Decker Anstrom said in his July 1 letter to Kennard. Thomson said it remains adamant that the smart-card-based "XCA" copy-protection system it developed with Zenith is a less expensive, more appropriate solution than 5C, which is based on chip sets embedded in set-tops. "There needs to be continued agreement to work together on the basic parameters of copy protection," Thomson spokesman Bob Arlen said. "It could be that the answer to this is a series of business arrangements, and not a lot of broad bilateral agreements on the part of the industry."