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Technology Stocks : HAUP - Hauppauge Digital -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rajiv who wrote (1001)	8/27/1999 10:54:00 AM
From: Apakhabar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1149

What a jump in anticipation. 27 1/4 x 3/8 with at least an hour to go before the appearance.

To: Rajiv who wrote (1001)	8/27/1999 2:00:00 PM
From: Pluvia	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 1149

*STRONG SELL/SHORTSELL HAUP* INTC DROPS SUPPORT OF INTERCAST, HAUP BUSINESS PLAN IS CRUSHED. In June of 1996 the company introduced the Win Cast TV line (sold under the name of Win/TV-PCI outside of the US) of TV tuner boards for the PC. These boards were developed to replace the relatively expensive circuitry and the memory required on the WinTV-Celebrity Pro boards (their earlier version boards). The WinCast TV uses a technique called "PCI Push" and was designed to be used in the emerging Intel Pentium market which was relatively new at the time. Intel's Intercast. During 1996, Intercast was introduced in the US by Intel. Intercast Web pages are broadcast in the VBI and add a new dimension to TV shows by allowing TV producers to add real time information to their broadcasts. These pages are standard internet pages but sent with TV signals over the airwaves, the problem has been the VBI bandwidth which is relatively small. Intercast technology can only be seen on PC's equipped with an "Intercast" receiver such as HAUP's products. You cannot use Intercast on your home TV Set. In May 1999 HAUP shares surged from the low teens to the high 30's when a Business Week report said HAUP would sign a new JV with an internet broadcast company. Two subsequent announcements by HAUP - one May 21, 1999, announced HAUP would launch a PC based "e-commerce TV service", within weeks, and enter big content and distribution deals sometime after July. HAUP's CEO was quoted as saying HAUP expected to ally with large TV broadcast companies and internet firms to transmit TV shows and other content providers onto TV's digital TV hardware. June 1, 1999, HAUP signed a deal with WAVX which allows customers to purchase goods over the internet using HAUP's boards with WAVX's "Money Clip". Prior to this announcement WAVX was a pink sheet stock. The second shoe with respect to HAUP's May 21, 1999 announcements has yet to drop and apparently for good reason. WITHOUT NEARLY AS MUCH FANFARE AS THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT CAUSED HAUP'S STOCK TO SKYROCKET, ON AUG 16 1999 ZDNET REPORTED THAT INTC IS QUIETLY PHASING OUT INTERCAST - THE SERVICE RELIED UPON BY HAUP TO EXECUTE THE BUSINESS PLAN NOTED IN HAUP'S MAY AND JUNE ANNOUNCEMENTS. zdnet.com The article reported that INTC's move is a MAJOR setback for efforts to quickly bring TV broadcasts to PC screens - such as HAUP's business plan hopes to do. At the same time INTC announced that they expect to move their support of a standard known as ATVEF (Advanced Television Enhancement Forums Specifications - an HTML based interactive TV initiative for TV's and cable settop boxes. Intel was dropping Intercast due to the relatively small bandwith available on VBI. According to Marta Hasler, strategic marketing manager at Intel's Home Products group, the company will now back an interactive TV specification that is being engineered for TV's. Thus Intel drops their support of TV boards - such as HAUP's products, and picks up support of cable settop boxes. This only makes sense as the number of cable settop boxes sold this year should top 20 million. Where does this leave HAUP? HAUP has only sold approx. 600,000 TV boards over the last 3 years, many of which are the earlier version boards that are technologically "dated". Furthermore, we believe this is far to few units to meet critical mass and attract "e-commerce deals", or allys with "large TV broadcasters" or "Internet Companies", particularly now that INTC has dropped support of the Intercast technology which was CRITICAL to HAUP signing TV, e-commerce and Internet portal deals. In addition to what would appear to be significant hurdles now in HAUP's business plan, the last Q produced revenue results which look "funny" to us - to say the least. We would note that HAUP has a distributor in the Virgin Islands. Sales to this distributor could certainly make revenue figures look good . All comments are the EXPRESS opinion of the Author, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED...