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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geoffrey Wren who wrote (11912)	1/18/2001 10:43:11 PM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78652

Geoffrey, It's hard saying where technology will be in a few years. We have cable available in my area now with 2 meg download speeds at $28 a month. I've been paying $15 a month for a 56K connection plus an extra $25 a month for a second phone line. I figure I'll make the switch sometime in the near future. At those kind of download speeds, it starts making downloading a movie online more realistic. From what I understand, cable connections are still the exception rather than the rule in most of the country, but I suspect it will be pretty universally available fairly soon. A few years ago I was guessing there would be a lot of start ups in an online movie market. Now I think it's more likely going to be the movie companies selling direct to the public. At least I can't think of any reason off hand why they would want to cut a middle man in on the action. Maybe the rental outfits will get a piece of the action for awhile, but a look at some of the balance sheets doesn't leave me with much confidence they could raise the capital to put something together short of Chapter 11. Bankruptcy is about the only way they could get out of all the leased property, blow out the old inventory, and get cleaned up enough to attract some venture capital. It may not happen that way but it strikes me as the path of least resistance. There should be some stock bets on the outcome a few years down the line, but I doubt any of them will be value plays. Should be interesting to see how it all plays out though.