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


To: DiViT who wrote (49596)6/30/2000 1:31:05 PM
From: Peter V  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 50808
 
File first, find your plaintiff later . . .

Any member of the proposed class who desires to be appointed lead plaintiff in this action must file a motion with the Court no later than August 28, 2000.

What's up with SI today? None of my subject marks are in alphabetical order, the link to the first new post does not work. It would be nice if they got the bugs out of these "upgrades" before they slap them on us.

[edit] I had a hell of a time just posting this message. Kept getting an error notice.



To: DiViT who wrote (49596)6/30/2000 2:35:58 PM
From: MikeM54321  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 50808
 
Thread- What? Now I've heard everything! So C-Cube Microsystems dumps a giant problem on Harmonic, and then turns around and sues Harmonic for taking the problem property off their books? I think I know the convulted reasoning behind this, but it doesn't make it right(or credible). This suing thing is just getting disgusting. -MikeM(From Florida)



To: DiViT who wrote (49596)6/30/2000 7:40:25 PM
From: John Rieman  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 50808
 
300,000 of these settops are C-Cube's. They could end up with hard drives in them. They may have some interesting "new" C-Cube chips. Pace win, they will say Broadcom, but not the other guys chips. That's just like C-Cube........

multichannel.com

Broadband Week for July 3, 2000

Pace Micro Gets Big Win With Comcast Box Order

By DAVID ILER July 3, 2000



U.K. set-top maker Pace Micro Technology plc won another big U.S. deal last week, announcing a three-year contract with Comcast Corp.'s cable unit to supply 350,000 digital set-tops.

The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Last November, Pace inked an agreement with Time Warner Cable for at least 750,000 digital set-tops -- its first consummated U.S. deal.

The Comcast deal will help to fuel the MSO's furious digital-TV-rollout schedule. In a May announcement, Comcast president Brian L. Roberts said the company expects to end the year with 1.25 million digital subscribers, up from previous estimates of 1 million. On Jan. 31, Comcast announced that it had topped the half-million mark.

In Pace's latest U.S. win, it agreed to deliver to Comcast 300,000 set-tops with Motorola Broadband Communications Sector's "DigiCipher II" conditional-access technology, an integrated cable modem and hard drive functionality designed to support personal-video-recording services.

Pace licensed DigiCipher technology from General Instrument Corp. (now Motorola BCS) in January 1997.

According to Pace Americas president Neil Gaydon, the hard drive, if Comcast opts for it, will store a minimum of 40 gigabytes of video.

According to Gaydon, Pace worked on developing a PVR user interface with Comcast, representing a separate technology from the TiVo Inc. and ReplayTV Inc. PVR services now in vogue.

Gaydon wouldn't discuss this box's tuning and processing chip set, citing competitive concerns, although he said the tuner is American Television Systems Committee-compliant.

In a news release, Pace said the box's processor is capable of 300 million instructions per second.

Pace said the box will support Microsoft Corp.'s "Microsoft TV" and Liberate Technologies' interactive-TV platforms. The box will include support for high-definition television and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' "1394" interface.

This box represents a new configuration for Pace, and it is designed for Comcast systems that use Motorola's headend and conditional-access technologies.

It is intended to "bring a fresh look to the DigiCipher world," Gaydon said. With the deal, Pace will become Comcast's second source, after Motorola BCS, for these systems.

The remaining 50,000 set-tops will be Pace's "Di5101" "Pegasus-compliant" box with "PowerKEY" conditional access; the PowerTV Inc. operating system; and either Scientific-Atlanta Inc.'s "Resident Application" or Pioneer New Media Technologies Inc.'s "Passport" interactive program guides.

The Di5101 is the same box earmarked for Time Warner.

The box will include Broadcom Corp.'s "BCM7100" chip, and the first volumes will be produced this year, with full-volume productions due early next year.

The new DigiCipher-based box will be produced in the United Kingdom and, later, in Mexico by Flextronics International Ltd.

While Gaydon wouldn't reveal the prices of each box, he equated the DigiCipher box with Motorola BCS' "DCT-5000-level" box and the Di5101 with the S-A "2010," although he added, "We think the performance of [Pace's] box is considerably better."

With the Comcast order, Pace is demonstrating its ability to supply set-tops for both S-A- and Motorola BCS-based networks. "We'll be able to supply both technologies to the market," he said.

Longer term, Gaydon said, Pace hopes to work with Comcast in developing a home-gateway set-top to support home-networking technologies.

Beyond the financial reward of the Comcast DigiCipher-based set-top order is a significant victory for Pace because, as Paul Kagan Associates Inc. senior analyst Leslie Ellis explained, the company both licensed DigiCipher and opened a Denver office in 1996 to seek an order from Tele-Communications Inc. (now AT&T Broadband).

But Ellis added that the exercise "was little more than TCI using Pace as a fulcrum to get a better price from GI. Pace turned out to be just a pawn in the game."

Pace's Comcast win could bode well for the company, as "there's a total shortage [of digital set-tops] at this time," Ellis said.

She quoted one unnamed set-top-box maker as saying that market conditions for digital set-tops are "hand-to-mouth," with manufacturers cranking out boxes as quickly as possible to meet the escalating demand of MSOs racing to sign up digital subscribers.

.



To: DiViT who wrote (49596)7/1/2000 10:33:04 AM
From: John Rieman  Respond to of 50808
 
Seeking a standard for DVD-recordable.....................

eet.com

Spec seeks to bring cohesion to DVD formats
By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times
(06/30/00, 4:24 p.m. EST)

TOKYO — The DVD Forum rolled out plans this week for a specification aimed at bringing greater order to an array of fragmented DVD standards. The DVD Multi effort is seeking to provide broader compatibility across DVD disks for the competing DVD-RAM and DVD-RW recording formats used in the consumer video market.

DVD Multi is not a new format, but a set of specifications and a brand that will define which drives will read and write which disks for the various DVD consumer and computer applications. Currently, each manufacturer decides for itself which types of disks its systems will read and write, a situation that has created confusion for OEMs and end users alike.

Koji Hase, acting chairman of the DVD Forum, said DVD Multi will go a long way to solving the compatibility problems that dog DVD formats today and may even help ease the conflict between the DVD-RAM and DVD-RW recording formats. The initial costs of complying with the spec will eventually be erased by those benefits, he added.

A first step — defining a DVD Multi spec for computer applications — is expected to be completed by the fall. DVD-ROM drives branded with a DVD Multi logo will be required to read DVD-Video (if the PC has a DVD-Video decoder for drives), DVD-Audio (again, if the PC has a DVD-Audio decoder for drives), DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R disks. In addition to those playback capabilities, recorders wearing the DVD Multi logo must be able write on DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R disks.

DVD Multi-compliant consumer DVD-Video players will be required to read DVD-Video and all recordable disks, including those from DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD-R systems. DVD-Audio players with the logo must be able to read DVD-Audio and all recordable disks in audio recording formats. DVD-Video/Audio players will read DVD-Video, DVD-Audio and all recordable disks in video and audio recording formats.

The Forum has no plans for additional disk formats, although new versions of existing formats, especially in the consumer field, are in the works. Hase said the DVD Multi standard will embrace all versions.

It's unclear how responsive OEMs will be to the new spec. Even without DVD Multi, OEMs could build products today that read and write to all formats, but that compatibility comes at a design cost.

"Even if the compatibility issue is technically solved, the market does not necessarily move," said Kenichiro Mori, a market researcher at Yano Research Institute Ltd.