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

To: Stoctrash who wrote (28327)	1/21/1998 2:41:00 PM
From: BillyG	Respond to of 50808

No Fred, I wouldn't want to start any rumors like that. But those Texans . . . . . once they start the rodeo, there's no telling who they'll lasso.

To: Stoctrash who wrote (28327)	1/21/1998 2:49:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

These guys from the Yahoo thread want to know the answer to this Q... who wants to connect the dots? The audience in watching... ---------------------------------------------------- Subj: CUBE By: cartmanlovesdvd Date: Jan 20 1998 2:33 P.M PST Reply To: Msg. 1 by YahooFinance Staples is going to start build to order computers in 150 of its stores nationwide! they are offering Toshiba DVD drive option for $180 this includes a DIAMOND DECODER CARD (DIKIT2) can anybody confirm if CUBE is in those DIAMOND cards? thanks in advance(can't wait till thursday) GO CUBE!!!

To: Stoctrash who wrote (28327)	1/21/1998 4:38:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

HDTV componets............................................. ijumpstart.com HDTV Component Makers Take Different Paths Toward Profitability <Picture><Picture><Picture> Lucent Targets the PC Early; Motorola Banking on SDTV for Volume Lucent Technologies [LU] and Motorola Inc. [MOT] are two of the few component suppliers that have identified their HDTV business strategies and are actively courting potential customers. Multimedia Week spoke with executives from those chip manufacturers to find out what markets they're looking to for volume sales and where they're focusing their resources. Lucent will make an early play for the PC market while Motorola targets TV makers manufacturing mid-range standard-definition TV (SDTV) hardware and down-converter boxes for the bulk of its revenue. On the TV front, Lucent is selling a five-chip reference design with Mitsubishi Electric America and expects to have the HDTV silicon ready in volume in the third quarter. The chipset, which also includes an additional MPEG-2 decoder for 1080i, are sampling now for $1,000 and are expected to sell for $500 in volume, said David Thom, Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc.'s senior product manager. Motorola, working with Sarnoff Corp., won't have volume chips available until the first quarter of 1999 and hasn't nailed down pricing yet. Lucent unveiled a PCI card reference design at CES earlier this month and met with a very positive response from computer makers touring the show floor. "If I had 40 laying here, I could have sold all of them." Tony Grewe, manager of applications strategy for Lucent's microelectronics group, said. The card combines the demultiplexer and demodulator chips necessary to support 1080i HDTV on a PC monitor with a PCI bridge chip. The design doesn't include an MPEG-2 decoder, AC-3 decoder or display processor because Lucent believes PC OEMs will want flexibility with the audio and video chips. The company hopes to get the price of the card down to $150 "because that's what OEMs want" and provide volume shipments in time for fourth quarter, Grewe said. Lucent is looking to partner with a tuner maker and, in addition to selling the design as an OEM product, might have a third party sell a shrink-wrapped version at retail. Grewe said PC companies interested in sampling the design will be able to get their hands on them in next 30 days. When the card comes to market, it will be in a half-size PCI form factor. (see MMW, Jan. 14.) Mitsubishi's Thom said his company is evaluating whether to bring a PCI card to market by mid-February. The challenge for Mitsubishi is meeting the price requirements of PC OEMs. Meanwhile, Motorola has yet to initiate discussions with PC companies. Banking on SDTV "Our focus has been based on the TV-centric environment," said Brad Hale, Motorola product manager for digital TV. "Once we feel we're in a more mature position, we'll probably put together an effort to show how this technology could be used on the PC." Motorola executives expect mid-range SDTV sets selling for $2,000 to $4,000 will generate the most bang for the buck. "We believe Standard Definition TV is going to be 70 to 80 percent of the volume over the next five to 10 years," Hale said. The company's biggest push will be to companies building SDTVs that are 20-to-36-inch direct view sets. Officials don't think entering the market after Lucent will hurt their bottom line significantly because they expect only a few thousand HDTV sets to sell in the first year. In store from the Motorola and Sarnoff partnership is a scaleable design that can be augmented to display 1080i or work inside a set-top box to down-convert that signal for display on a traditional NTSC set. For set-top OEMs, the team will leverage a proprietary Sarnoff algorithm to handle the down-conversion process. When volume for high-end products comes around, Motorola expects to be ready. Hale envisions significant growth in HDTV sets will start to ramp in 2000 - the same time Motorola will have a five-chip design on the market for $100 that will do the job. At the core of full-featured design will be an MPEG-DTV2 chip capable of decoding and demultiplexing data. Motorola and Sarnoff are co-developing that chip now. The design also calls for a VSB demodulator, host microprocessor, a DSP-based audio processor and a Scorpion graphics processor. The microprocessor could be a PowerPC or a design based on Motorola's ColdFire architecture. Hale said the microprocessor will be "contingent on what feature set or performance our manufacturers want. In the low-cost products, we'll probably see a lot more of a ColdFire approach." Depending on the architecture, processor in the ColdFire family can generate between 30 and 100 MIPS and range in price from $5 to $20. To reduce price and offer a four-chip product, Motorola will take out the graphics chip and reduce the amount of RAM for MPEG-2 to 2 MB or 4 MB. For the three-chip design, the company will take out the graphics and audio chips and include a lower-cost microprocessor. Motorola has a hook into the set-top market with ColdFire, but the company expects to get a strong competition. "SGS-Thomson probably has the most experience in digital TV because of its relationship with DSS models," Hale said. SGS-Thomson Microelectronics Inc. [STM] already has two design wins. Thomson Consumer Electronics and Hitachi Home Electronics (America) Inc. (Lucent, 800/372-2447; Mitsubishi, 408/774-3191; Motorola, 847/576-5000.) Making Sense of Digital TV Interlaced Scanning: Image is constructed from interlacing two pairs of fields, each containing half the scan lines. Analog TVs use interlaced scanning. Progressive Scanning: Image is constructed from single frames containing all the scan lines, progressing from top to bottom. PCs use progressive scanning. HDTV: Must transmit a vertical display of 720p, 1080i or higher; be capable of displaying a 16:9 aspect ratio; receive, reproduce or output AC-3. SDTV: Can display a resolution lower than HDTV; no aspect ratio is specified; produces usable audio and receives all ATSC formats and produces a usable picture. (Most companies consider SDTV a display with 480p or 480i) ATSC: Present-day analog When will DTV Broadcasts begin? In top 10 markets by November 1998In 12 additional markets by May 1999In seven additional markets by November 1999In one additional market by May 2000Remaining commercial stations must begin DTV broadcasts by May 2002.Subject to FCC review, stations will cease analog broadcasts by 2006. Source: CEMA; Sharp Electronics