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

To: Ian deSouza who wrote (28929)	1/29/1998 2:59:00 PM
From: Ian deSouza	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

A review of a line up of DVD players. I like Toshiba's... zdnet.com

To: Ian deSouza who wrote (28929)	1/29/1998 3:23:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Cube partner, Hitachi... Hitachi Forms Information Media Systems Group to Strengthen Its Multimedia Business 01/29/98 Business Wire (Copyright (c) 1998, Business Wire) TOKYO, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 29, 1998--Hitachi, Ltd. today announced a reorganization of its Information Systems Group and Consumer Products & Information Media Systems Group into three new groups, the new groups will be Information Systems Group, Information Media Systems Group and Consumer Products Group. This reorganization change will make Hitachi's business groups from current four groups to five groups: Power & Industrial Systems Group, Information Systems Group, Information Media Systems Group and Consumer Products Group and Electronics Components Group. Through this change, Hitachi aims to strengthen its multimedia business as well as its information systems business in the corporate market. The Consumer Products Group will focus on audio-visual products and home appliances. The organization change will become effective February 21, 1998. The digitization of information, communication and broadcasting together with the spread of the Internet and multimedia technology is speeding up the networking of corporations, homes and society as a whole. Due to this, multimedia technology that has been advancing mainly in the corporate market is now spreading in the SOHO and other personal-use applications sectors, creating a new market. - more The Information Media Systems Group is being established to cope with demand from this multimedia market that is expected to expand rapidly and has diversified customers ranging from corporate to personal customers. The group will be formed by merging the personal computer operation of the Information Systems Group and multimedia products operation of the Consumer Products and Information Media Systems Group, respectively. By unifying the operations from product development to marketing, Hitachi will be able to speed-up the introduction of new products and to build global marketing strategies. Hitachi aims to provide products that will become de-facto standards in the market by converging its key technologies in the multimedia field such as computers, DVD , MPEG, SuperH (tm) microprocessor, progressive LSI and All Format Decoder (AFD), together with display technology such as Super TFT LCD and Plasma display. The new Information Systems Group will focus its resources on information systems operations for the business market. This includes systems integration of enterprise systems and service provider business such as multimedia content business and business media service for inter-corporate electronic commerce (EC) transactions as well as development and marketing of high-end servers and computer peripherals. The Consumer Products Group will encompass conventional home appliances, an area in which Hitachi is already providing a number of leading products to the market. With new opportunities being created by the move toward energy saving, environmentally friendly products and by the digitization of broadcasting formats, Hitachi will continue to focus on developing competitive products by utilizing its related technology. Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1996 (ending March 31, 1997) consolidated sales of 8,523 billion yen. The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at hitachi.co.jp. CONTACT: Hitachi America, Ltd. Terry Kubo, 914/333-2902 tatsuya.kubo@halny.hitachi.com 10:35 EST JANUARY 29, 1998

To: Ian deSouza who wrote (28929)	1/29/1998 3:27:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

DVD COULD COULD CHANGE VIDEO FOREVER J.D. Considine The Baltimore Sun 01/29/98 St. Louis Post-Dispatch FIVE STAR LIFT Page 30 (Copyright 1998) Thanks to DVD , the future of home video has never seemed brighter. Or sharper. Touted as the greatest breakthrough in entertainment gadgetry since the compact disc, DVD (which, depending on whom you ask, stands for either Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) makes VHS tapes or laser discs look positively antiquated. DVD delivers a crisper, more detailed picture than either of them. Moreover, DVD can fit an entire film on a disc the size of a CD. Want to hear "Terminator 2" dubbed in French? Push the "audio" button on your remote, and you can switch from English to French, or Spanish. Need subtitles? Use the "subtitle on/off" feature to turn them on, and the "subtitle change" button to choose which language you want. Viewers can also choose to watch "T2" with the wide-screen picture people saw in theaters, or in the "pan-and-scan" version used for TV broadcast. Nor are those the only features available with DVD . There's a parental control option that can allow parents to set the machine so it will check a film's MPAA rating and not play NC-17 or R-rated films without a password. Some DVD discs even offer a multiple-angle option, so the viewer can change the camera angle while watching. DVD players may also be used to play music CDs. Most amazing of all is that this technology has arrived on the market at a surprisingly affordable price. DVD players are available for as little as $500 -- much less than first-generation CD players or VCRs -- while most discs are priced between $20 and $25. Discs also may be rented, though not everywhere. Blockbuster has introduced DVD rentals in about 100 stores nationally. DVD is likely to leave consumers with a few questions. For instance, how does it work? What are its drawbacks? And how can we be sure DVD won't end up like Beta and quad, forgotten in the scrapheap of entertainment technology? Of all the advantages DVD has over other video players, the most obvious is picture quality. Not only does DVD offer a higher line resolution (more lines per screen) than VHS or laser disc, it also offers greater color separation. Just how much greater depends on the player and the TV to which it's connected. Most TVs of recent vintage have what's known as a composite video connection on the back, a standard jack like the ones found on the back of stereo equipment, an RCA jack. Video signals arriving via this kind of connection go through a "comb filter" inside the television, which separates the signal into yellow, red and blue signals, which then flash on the screen. Trouble is, some data gets lost in the combing process, reducing sharpness of the image. That's why many DVD players include several other video inputs. Most common is a four-pin connector called an S-video input connector, which sends the image along pre-separated, so there's no need for the comb filter inside the TV. Trouble is, these connectors won't do you any good unless your TV has corresponding input jacks. On the audio end, DVD players are advertised as offering CD-quality soun d. While this is true enough, many DVD players sound only as good as low-level CD players. DVD is a real blessing for serious film fans. Unlike videotape, which requires endless fast-forwarding to find a specific scene, DVD allows viewers to call up illustrated indexes on the screen so they can skip directly to the scene they want. Finally, remember that even though DVD players are capable of playing all sorts of special effects, you won't see them unless they're built into the software. Not every disc offers a choice of languages, nor do they all allow the viewer to choose between a wide- screen or a pan-and-scan image.