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


To: MikeM54321 who wrote (9316)11/26/2000 3:31:50 PM
From: ftth  Respond to of 12823
 
Right, what I meant by that is if you only have a lame selection of movies, the service won't appeal to many people because there simply isn't enough worthwhile content to choose from (kinda like cable TV is today), and you wouldn't use it. That being the case, the oversubscription ratio could be much higher.



To: MikeM54321 who wrote (9316)11/28/2000 4:14:50 AM
From: Raymond Duray  Respond to of 12823
 
Hi Mike,

Re: (new) introductory screen for VOD services. I'm guessing it may mean that it will be offered to me shortly(as it says on the screen<g>). If so, I'll be the first to generate revenues for TimeWarner and report back to the thread on how it works.

I'd love to find out if they'll have the classics available. "Behind the Green Door", and "Debbie Does Dallas" come to mind.

AT&T makes over $100MM per annum in adult entertainment revenues. Imagine the trouble they'd be in with Wall Street without that cash cow, or was that cash flow. Or is it more like the crazy aunt in the attic that they sort of don't care to mention in the earnings announcements.....

La Vida Loco, Ramon



To: MikeM54321 who wrote (9316)12/1/2000 3:58:46 PM
From: MikeM54321  Respond to of 12823
 
Thread- Interesting focus group comments. Most likely Nick is correct. Probably a cableco and probably ATT. -MikeM(From Florida)
_________________________

Message 14923478

Nick writes:

I tried to post this last night-I took part in a focus group today, thankful to have to leave the house. I only knew it had something to do with internet service. Well this company wanted to get people's feelings on high-speed access for $46/month, and which services they would be interested in on top of that. "Movies On Demand" would be ready for viewing immediately-twenty new release movies, eight hundred plus from a library all with stop, rewind type functions. Cost is an additional $5.95/month plus $7.95 per movie (ouch!). Another service is "TV ON Demand" which takes 10 minutes after your order to view, I assume to download to a disk in the settop, 800+ titles current and past with VCR funcionality. Cost is $11.95/month plus $.50 per show.

Other sevices they wanted to know about is Satellite TV, Gaming, music from 800 internet radio stations, Video Gathering, Unified messaging and Voice Telephone service with the capacity for four voice lines without additional wiring (so this is voice over IP) with a $300 one-time fee for phones.

My guess is that this was for AT&T who I believe is the only cable co. in the area and because of the telephone services which seem pretty extensive. Isn't $7.95 per new release VOD movie a little high? I thought TWX was around $3.99. Whoever it was, I'm glad of their interest in VOD. Looking forward to the weekend when the market is closed and my nausea dissipates. Thank you guys for the good info. Nick



To: MikeM54321 who wrote (9316)12/13/2000 7:43:22 AM
From: MikeM54321  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 12823
 
"If so, I'll be the first to generate [VOD]revenues for TimeWarner and report back to the thread on how it works."

Thread- Well it's here. A watershed event for this tech nerd(and it has nothing to do with the presidential election). Just think only two years ago I was amazed to get a data signal(cable modem) from my MSO. Then about one year ago, I saw the first digital TV signal I've ever seen. And today--Discrete streaming of video to my TV via my digital STB.

It's amazing to me that this speed of movement is not fast enough for Wall Street to quit trashing MSOs(at least with the slow to move argument). With ATT firing the first shot just two years ago, the MSOs take a 50 year old plant, converted it to two-way HFC. Offered cable modem connections. Then digital TV services. And now VOD. Just about 90% of this occurring right after ATT started the ball rolling in earnest with their $100 billion gamble.

So after about ten(really about 20) years of hype, I can finally order up a movie on my TV, at will, with VCR like controls. I believe from a cursory glance, there are about 100 movies being offered. It's a very simple menu that actually works well.

IMO, I can easily see this generating an extra $10/month in revenues from the average TV viewer. So let's say it's $5/month. $5/month x 12 months x 70 million subs = $4,200,000,000/year. If you raise that to $10/month, then it moves to $8,400,000,000/year incremental revenue for the MSOs. Or about a 33% increase in overall MSO yr/yr revenues. If/when there are about 1,000 selections, I can see myself ordering up at least $10/month in movies and the average moving up to whatever Blockbuster is doing in average customer revenues.

Of course there are a LOT of IFs in the scenario I scribbled down. As ftth believes, there may not be enough bandwidth to allow all subs to hit their server at once. At this point I don't know if I'm getting my stream from a cached server in a local hub or not? Most likely it's coming from a headend. Probably the master headend since this is just starting to rollout beyond a test stage.

I haven't tried recording yet, but it appears as if this would be very easy to do. It appears to me, if I wanted to pop in a VCR tape, I could record a movie I was watching and then give it away to someone else(although I won't do this). That will probably cut into the revenue stream. The downside is, of course, you lose a level of quality. But when recordable-DVD rolls out, this will be a moot point. -MikeM(From Florida)