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

To: BillyG who wrote (27972)	1/11/1998 11:40:00 PM
From: CPAMarty	Respond to of 50808

The Associated Press LAS VEGAS (AP) - Visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show often found themselves surrounded by televisions. But one company unveiled a prototype TV that can be surrounded by people - all of whom see the same picture. Even the Jetsons never had anything like the 360-degree TV. ''This solves a major problem with television: How can you give everyone a center-stage seat?'' said Gregory Levy, president of E.S.P. Electronics Inc. of Los Angeles, which is developing the technology. The TV in the round was one of the most unusual items at CES, which attracted tens of thousands of people, mostly retailers, Thursday through Sunday. The 360-degree spins the TV image but does so at a speed that the human eye ''freezes'' it, Levy said. Observers on any side of the cylindrical screen see a two-dimensional image, just as they do with a standard television. He hopes to have the first sets on the market at the end of 1999 and expects them to be used initially in such settings as medical schools, flight simulation and sports bars. Eventually it likely will end up in videophiles' living rooms. The sets, which can display CD, DVD and videotape images as well as digital and analog TV signals, should be comparable in cost to standard-screen digital televisions by the first years of the next century - and as common, Levy said. ''Our goal is when you walk into Circuit City you see it there,'' he said. Don't you hate it when you take notes and later on can't read what you've written? Or do you use a voice recorder but never get around to transcribing those messages? Voice It Worldwide Inc.'s VR 1000 digital voice recorder can help busy people with lousy handwriting by recording up to 50 minutes of messages and transfering them onto a personal computer. Once the notes are in the PC, users can store them, share them via electronic mail, or send them over the Internet to a transcription service. Or they can wait until mid-1998, when the VR 1000 will acquire the ability to translate the spoken word into text, thanks to a collaboration between Voice It and Applied Voice Recognition Inc. ''I talked to a guy yesterday who said he (ships) his cassettes back to his office to be transcribed,'' Voice It spokesman Jim Babcock said at the company's booth. ''This keeps you from having to do something like that.'' The gizmo that looks something like a small, simplified TV remote, started shipping last fall. It costs about $220, including PC-linking cable and software. Additional memory cards are available. Digital versatile disk players continued to be big topic for discussion at this year's show. Yet it was the smallest DVD player that drew the largest crowds. Panasonic introduced the first portable DVD player, a lightweight gadget with a 5.8-inch liquid-crystal-display screen that hinges open like the monitor of a laptop computer. The DVD-L10 weighs 3.5 pounds, 1.5 pounds of which is a rechargeable battery giving two hours of use. It comes with an AC adapter; a car power cord and surround-sound headphones are optional. The device also can plug into a television and play the DVD image on the set. It can play music and video CDs as well as DVD disks. Panasonic expects to start selling the portable DVD player this spring at about $1,300. Andrea Goettsche, marketing coordinator for Panasonic Consumer Electronic Co., said the company is considering a version that could receive a television signal as well as play DVDs. A lot of families are buying second computers. But not all of them get second printers, and not many of them get second Internet connections. And that means they're getting a headache. Only one PC can send pages to the printer or surf the Web. And the only way to share files is by ''sneakernet,'' copying data on one PC onto a floppy and then walking it over to the other computer. Of course, all the digital devices could be linked in a network. But that's not a task for the faint of heart. But a Utah company has come up with a way to set up a network using a home or small office's existing electrical wiring. ''There are no Ethetnet cards to install, no cable to run ... no server to set up,'' said Todd Green, Interlogis Inc.'s' director of marketing, as he demonstrated the company's Passport networking products. Users plug adapters into electrical outlets, link the adapters to computers and peripherals with cables and put networking software on the PCs. All the PCs can print with the touch of a button, transfer files, share Internet access and play multiuser games. The Passport products are expected on the market by spring. A package including equipment and software to link two PCs and a printer is expected to cost about $250. AP-NY-01-11-98 1430EST