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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lml who wrote (7728)	7/25/2000 2:40:36 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Re: "Video-on-demand is a dream that never dies. But by the time the cable industry figures it out, the market may have passed it by." Hi lml, I spotted this in the new Forbes and thought it might add a little color to the V-O-D discussion we've been having lately. :) forbes.com Click Flicks By Mark Lacter REMEMBER WHEN THE CABLE GUYS first discovered the wonders of interactive TV? "Our new electronic superhighway will change the way people use television," swooned Time Warner Chief Executive Gerald Levin in a 1993 press release. He was talking about an Orlando cable system wherein couch potatoes could order Hollywood movies or pizzas at their whim. But the tryout was a financial dud and Time Warner pulled the plug. The company has been a lot quieter about its latest attempt to peddle interactive TV. There were no press releases issued to commemorate a new video-on-demand system installed in 40,000 homes last December on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, followed more recently in second-tier cities Austin and Tampa-St. Petersburg. AT&T, whose MediaOne makes it the nation's largest cable operator, with 16 million subscribers, has all of one video-on-demand trial under way with only two dozen customers. Even in Los Angeles, where Paul Allen's Charter Communications will phase in video-on-demand service to 600,000 homes this summer, the news merited barely a mention in the entertainment capital's newspapers. And yet logic says that consumers want it. Michael Burke's three kids had an annoying habit of not returning movies to the video store on time and leaving him with late fees of $20 a visit. That was before Charter's operations in Suwanee, Ga. began offering in 1998 a hundred or so movies the customer can start and stop at any time. But Blockbuster doesn't have to worry just yet. Only 4.8% of Time Warner's 12.7 million cable subscribers have the broadband wiring that's capable of handling the service. If they do sign up, they have to fork over another $300 each for an upgraded set-top box. "It's probably mile 1 of a 26-mile marathon," Bruce Leichtman, who recently left as vice president of media and the Internet at the Yankee Group, says of cable's hesitant foray into video-on-demand. While the cable guys were digging ditches, the Internet grew up. While the cable guys were digging expensive ditches, the Internet grew up and satellite dishes poached their customers, making video-on-demand less of a priority than hawking local phone service, Internet access and pay-per-view porno. There are also the personal set-top boxes from Tivo and ReplayTV that can hold a half-dozen or more movies on a hard disk. Blockbuster has even announced a deal with Tivo to download movies onto the boxes. Yet there remains that dream that someday, somehow, video-on-demand will catch on with cable customers. Yankee assumes 35 million households will have access to digital broadband by the end of next year, and 7 million will subscribe to the service. If each home orders three movies a month, at $4 per, that adds up to $1 billion in revenues. John Sie dreams on. The chief executive of Starz Encore Group, he runs premium movie channels for Liberty Media Group, the grab bag of media assets that is overseen by John Malone. With several billion dollars' worth of distribution deals in hand from Sony and Walt Disney, Sie is betting that cable operators will speed up their launch of video-on-demand. His idea: A cable operator would, instead of charging per view, offer an on-demand library for a flat $6 to $10 a month. Putting his money where his mouth is, Sie has invested $5 million of Liberty's money in DIVA Systems, a moneylosing outfit that makes interactive equipment. But Sie is hedging his bet by also selling content through ReplayTV. Technology says video-on-demand should happen. The experts say it will happen. But it may not happen in time to make money for the cable guys.

To: lml who wrote (7728)	7/25/2000 8:24:20 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

"I, too, cannot necessarily look to these figures to point out your pre-supposed hypothesis that the transition to DTV is stuck in neutral." lml- Stuck in neutral? There are 8,000,000 digital cable TV(of exactly what kind of digital I'm not sure) today. There are more than 8,000,000 digital DBS customers. That's at least 16,000,000. And it wouldn't surprise me if the more accurate figure is around 20,000,000 today. Numbers off the top of my head so they may not be accurate. I'm not sure why you think I believe it's stuck in neutral? -MikeM(From Florida)