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

To: BillyG who wrote (43718)	8/5/1999 2:36:00 PM
From: Black-Scholes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Last night I went to Best Buy to check on DVD sales. They were out of all DVD players and the manager (who I requested to speak to) said that the purchasing dept. at the Best Buy headquarters QUADDRUPLED their original orders for DVD's in anticipation of XMAS. They may put in another order in two more weeks because DVD sales have been expanding much faster than they thought possible.

To: BillyG who wrote (43718)	8/5/1999 2:48:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Canal Plus says no talks with Microsoft PARIS, Aug 5 (Reuters) - French pay television group Canal Plus is not involved in any talks with software giant Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), a Canal Plus spokesman told Reuters on Thursday. He was answering Reuters' questions on a research report dated August 2 from broker Merrill Lynch in London that said Canal Plus was in ''detailed negotiations with Microsoft about the next generation convergence digital decoder incorporating full Internet interconnectivity.'' ''We are not talking to Microsoft,'' he said. Last month a specialist newsletter published by the Financial Times group, New Media Markets, said CanalSatellite, the digital satellite TV service operated by Canal Plus, was examining Microsoft's Windows CE and Web TV for its own projects to offer Internet access. Canal Plus currently uses its proprietary technology, called MediaHighway, for Internet and other interactive applications, the Canal Plus spokesman said. MediaHighway is a middleware -- between a system's hardware and software -- that offers interactivity in applications such as games, home shopping or banking and Internet access. Canal Plus has licensed it to 25 companies and it is used in over three million set top boxes around the world, he said. ''We can offer Internet access with MediaHighway,'' he said. Canal Plus used decoders equipped with MediaHighway in an experiment offering Internet access to a personal computer via CanalSatellite last year, and in September it plans to present the use of electronic mail via a television set using MediaHighway at a trade show in Amsterdam, the spokesman said. However, for better visuals on the Internet, MediaHighway alone would not be enough and extra memory and another microprocessor would be needed, he said. David Chermont, the Merrill Lynch analyst who wrote the report, said Canal Plus could still work with Microsoft on a next generation set top box using the best of both technologies. ''There would be a lot of sense in bringing together Microsoft and Canal Plus's know-how for developing the next generation of decoders,'' he said.