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Technology Stocks : Tivo (TIVO) Interactive TV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Herc who wrote (29)	9/15/1999 1:55:00 AM
From: NY Stew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2093

With billions of dollars in VHS tapes and untold amounts of priceless personal recordings in the American households collectively I would think that a backwards compatible system would be more desirable. At $10-$15 per tape this will present a significant challenge to PVRs IMO. Tuesday September 14, 8:16 am Eastern Time Company Press Release C-Cube Partners with JVC to Bring New Video Capabilities to the VCR Market JVC Selects DVxplore for Newest Generation D-VHS Digital Recorder MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 14, 1999--C-Cube Microsystems (Nasdaq:CUBE - news), today announced that it has partnered with JVC to create the most advanced digital recorder on the market. As a result, VCR users can now record up to 24 hours of high quality digital video onto a single tape, enjoy advanced D-VHS trick modes, and record directly from DV camcorders. The companies have worked together to expand the capabilities of C-Cube's DVxplore(TM) MPEG-2 CODEC for D-VHS and have also collaborated to incorporate the chip into the new JVC HM-DR10000 D-VHS digital recorder. ''Together with C-Cube, we are advancing the D-VHS market,'' said Shingo Kawata, deputy general manager of the Video Products Division at Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC). ''As a result of our partnership, consumers gain access to the most feature-rich digital recorder on the market.'' ''D-VHS is an emerging digital recording technology that leverages the installed base of hundreds of millions of analog VHS and S-VHS devices,'' noted Fermi Wang, vice president and general manager of C-Cube's PC/CODEC division. ''We are pleased that DVxplore's unique capabilities, and our partnership with JVC, will enable digital video recording at home.'' Trick Modes The trick modes allow high-speed fast-forward and reverse seeking of stored video. Viewers can step through video to find specific scenes, do high speed fast-forward and reverse scans as well as perform such things as instant replay at the touch of a button. The high speed movement is done at up to 36 times the rate of normal viewing speed. C-Cube enables this rapid scanning via an advanced encoding technique that was developed together with JVC specifically for the D-VHS platform. The HM-DR10000 is the first D-VHS digital recorder on the market to take advantage of this engineering innovation. Recording from DV Camcorders With DVxplore inside, the new JVC D-VHS digital recorder will be able to digitally transfer video via 1394 from the newest generation of digital camcorders (DV format) onto D-VHS tape for viewing as well as cost-effective archiving and distribution. The transfer from camera to D-VHS includes transcoding from the DV video format into the MPEG-2 video format. The transcode occurs entirely within the digital domain, preserving image quality throughout the process. 24 Hours of Video Storage The MPEG-2 compression algorithms implemented in DVxplore allow D-VHS users to store up to 24 hours of digital video onto tape. Users can choose to record video at quality ranging from 4.7 megabits per second (Mbps) up to 14.1 Mbps. At 4.7 Mbits, users gain 24 hours of video on a single tape. At 14.1 Mbps, they can record up to eight hours. About JVC and D-VHS JVC, the inventor of VHS, is the technology licensor of the D-VHS format and holds a strong leadership position in the worldwide market for D-VHS digital recorders. D-VHS is all-digital and is backwards compatible to VHS as well as S-VHS. D-VHS digital recorders can record up to 24 hours of live broadcast television in the MPEG-2 format onto a single D-VHS tape. DVxplore is the most advanced D-VHS-ready MPEG-2 device on the market. It is currently the only solution that combines MPEG-2 encoding, MPEG-2 decoding, DV-to-MPEG-2 transcoding and advanced trick modes in a single chip. Availability JVC has announced that the HM-DR 10000 is expected to be available in November 1999. The initial market for this product is Japan.