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

To: DiViT who wrote (26124)	12/4/1997 2:02:00 PM
From: Vik Sharma	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

DELL is using C-Cube zdnet.com

To: DiViT who wrote (26124)	12/4/1997 5:12:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

David, your "Home of the Future" will be in Hong Kong in January. Cube must be shipping some chips this Q>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> internetnews.com Hong Kong comes first with interactive TV ÿÿÿÿ HONG KONG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The citizen of the future will switch on the television, key in an order for food, wine and a movie, then settle down for the evening. ÿÿÿÿ For Hong Kong's residents, the future starts next month. ÿÿÿÿ Hongkong Telecom IMS, a unit of the territory's dominant telecoms provider, Hongkong Telecom, on Thursday unveiled what it called the world's first commercially available interactive television service. ÿÿÿÿ ''We should be able to pick up the licence by the year's end and start operating in early January,'' Hongkong Telecom IMS managing director William Lo. ÿÿÿÿ To be known as iTV, the service initially will provide Video on Demand (VOD), Music on Demand (MOD) along with karaoke, and online shopping in four cybermalls including Wellcome, one of the territory's dominant supermarket chains. ÿÿÿÿ By April the company will add Home Banking and later Network Games and Broadband Internet services. ÿÿÿÿ The Hong Kong government last month approved the company's licence for interactive television, the first issued here, and was now ironing out the fine detail. ÿÿÿÿ ''We are not only turning the home TV set into a revolutionary all-time infotainment centre to bring customers a convenient and enhanced way of living. We are looking at providing Hong Kong people with a total lifestyle solution for tomorrow,'' Lo said. ÿÿÿÿ The company has invested HK$1 billion ($128 million) in the development of the project over the past three years, and plans to invest a further HK$10 billion in the next decade. ÿÿÿÿ ''The launch of iTV will make Hong Kong the world's first major city where interactive TV services are commercially available, putting Hong Kong ahead of the rest of the world in the information era of tomorrow,'' Lo said. ÿÿÿÿ Hongkong Telecom IMS is already the biggest provider of online Internet services with 180,000 customers in the former British colony, which became a special region of China in July. ÿÿÿÿ Launching the service in Hong Kong, Lo said he expected to sign up to 200,000 households as subscribers in the first year, a sizeable chunk of a market consisting of 1.6 million homes and a total population of 6.5 million. ÿÿÿÿ Over 10 years the company expected to sign up one million households, about 70 percent of the total. ÿÿÿÿ Users will have to key in a password and a secret pin number before they can tap into the services. ÿÿÿÿ They will then choose a service, movie or game from a menu of options using the remote control. The company will charge up to HK$25 to watch a full-length movie, and HK$8 for a short cartoon. ÿÿÿÿ Games will be priced in batches, such as HK$10 for five plays, rather than one play at a time. ÿÿÿÿ The move is a further strengthening of the group's position in a rapidly evolving communications and entertainment market, where it has already taken the lead as a provider of Internet and mobile communications services. ÿÿÿÿ Hongkong Telecom also hopes to see the interactive television service launched in Australia and Britain through London-listed parent group Cable and Wireless Plc, provided that communications bottlenecks could be overcome. ÿÿÿÿ ''My guess is that some of the things you are seeing here will be available in those two markets within the next two years,'' said ÿÿÿÿ The service operates with a three-tier pricing structure including a one-off installation charge of about HK$300, a monthly fee of HK$200 for rental of the communications box, and pay per play charges for movies and games. ÿÿÿÿ The company has already sealed deals with movie suppliers including Disney and Warner Brothers to provide VOD content now totalling 700 movies. Users would choose from 100 movies, and the list would be 40 percent refreshed every two weeks. ÿÿÿÿ Hongkong Telecom IMS could effectively have a one-year head start on other companies interested in the service. ÿÿÿÿ But Lo said: ''The government is likely to give out more licences and you'll see more players in the market.'' ^REUTERS@

To: DiViT who wrote (26124)	12/5/1997 10:42:00 AM
From: BillyG	Respond to of 50808

Highlight of review of Dell DVD computer with Cube inside.......... For decoding MPEG-2 and AC3 (Dolby Digital audio) signals, the Dimension uses a Quadrant International CineMaster C-1.2D card, a PCI board that talks to the machine's graphics accelerator card via a pass-through cable. Full-screen, 30-fps MPEG-2 video decoding and AC3 audio decoding are both handled by C-Cube Microsystems' single-chip ZiVA DS-C decoder. The ZiVA chip is compatible with all DVD standards, and offers NTSC/PAL DVD video decoding, CD-ROM data decoding, as well as full VideoCD 2.0 compatibility. <<SNIP>> All of this innovation in an unassuming gray minitower case may sound great, but you're probably wondering just how this setup performs with a DVD movie. Well, wonder no more: It's fabulous. During testing with the DVD version of the movie Legends of the Fall, playback was simply flawless. Audio was clear, crisp, and vibrant, with resonant bass tones. Video playback went off without a hitch-no jerky movements due to dropped frames were evident throughout the entire movie, even during wide-angle, fast-moving pan shots. We played the movie in full-screen mode and easily controlled playback through Dell's on-screen DVD interface. The icons on this interface are a bit esoteric, but if you hover your mouse briefly over each button, a short function descriptor window pops up to help. Software vs. Hardware DVD In PC Magazine's December 16 First Look of a Compaq Presario 4850 with a DVD-ROM drive, we noted the Presario 4850 relies on software to decode MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio signals. This system provides a good point of comparison between software and hardware DVD, as it, like the Dimension, is a 300-MHz Pentium II PC. The Presario was able to play back all of the DVD titles that we threw at it. However, we did witness jumpy and jerky motions due to dropped frames in slow motion and in wide pan shots. While we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of playback, it didn't quite match the quality of the hardware-aided DVD playback of the Dimension machine. This is because the maximum frame rate that the Presario can achieve is 25fps (through software decode and motion compensation conducted by the system's graphics accelerator), while the Dimension's CineMaster board can handle 30fps completely in hardware. Another drawback to software DVD is that it uses all of the CPU's bandwidth. Conversely, the Dimension's CineMaster board only uses an average of 20 percent of CPU bandwidth during MPEG-2 video decode. Granted, if you're watching a movie, it's highly unlikely that you're going to be doing anything else. However, if you're using a DVD software title, you'll likely have trouble running anything else at the same time on a fully software-DVD-decoded system. Until now, the argument for software DVD has been cost: Hardware DVD typically adds a few hundred dollars to the price of a PC. But while the Presario 4850 and the Dimension XPS D300-DVD both cost close to $3,000, the Presario's price doesn't include a monitor (a 17-inch Compaq monitor will cost you an additional $700).

To: DiViT who wrote (26124)	12/5/1997 4:18:00 PM
From: BillyG	Respond to of 50808

Microsoft -- digital TV in the U.K........... biz.yahoo.com Friday December 5, 7:40 am Eastern Time Microsoft , watchdog meet on UK digital TV LONDON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - British watchdog Oftel said on Friday U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp had met with it to find out more about regulatory issues surrounding the launch of digital television in Britain next year. An Oftel spokesman confirmed a report in the Guardian newspaper that a team of Microsoft legal and regulatory affairs officials had held an official meeting with Oftel head Don Cruickshank. ''They're aware of what's going on in the digital market in the UK, but they wanted to understand the regulatory processes,'' the spokesman said, adding that a single meeting took place at the end of September. He was not aware of any plans for future meetings. Oftel oversees access to the set-top boxes that will enable British viewers to receive satellite and terrestrial digital TV channels. The boxes are also expected to serve as platforms for interactive services, such as home shopping, banking and Internet access. Last month, Cable and Wireless Communications Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: CWZ.L) said it had talked with Microsoft about offering the U.S. giant's WebTV Networks over its digital network. ''We've had talks with several software suppliers in terms of the digital set-top box, and Microsoft are among them,'' CWC chief executive Graham Wallace said. Microsoft bought WebTV earlier this year for some $425 million.