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To: BillyG who wrote (30459)	3/7/1998 4:36:00 PM
From: Don Dorsey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

"Indeed, response to the tier has been so overwhelming that TCI is considering offering a self-installation kit for the digital set-top boxes, she said. " In Denver, TCI Digital Cable Racks Up 2% Penetration By Kim Mitchell Since its launch Nov. 14, TCI Digital Cable has racked up a penetration rate of almost 2% in its hometown of Denver, with a slightly higher penetration of 2.4% in the greater metropolitan area. In the city of Denver, which counts 105,041 cable subscribers, TCI had signed up 1,947 customers as of the end of January, according to city officials. The MSO said it recently signed up its 10,000th digital subscriber in the Denver metropolitan area, which counts some 410,000 customers. TCI president Leo Hindery last year said the company aimed to offer digital to 92% of all homes passed by the end of 1997, but the MSO has been mum on actual penetration numbers. However, a spokesman said last week that the company would release more information on the digital tier effort when it releases its first-quarter results. The spokesman said the MSO has its digital product in front of 9.2 million of its 14.3 million homes. What's more, on March 3, TCI will roll out its $10 digital tier to another 85 cities, representing 830,000 cable subscribers. Indeed, response to the tier has been so overwhelming that TCI is considering offering a self-installation kit for the digital set-top boxes, she said. TCI Digital Cable launches started out slow last year and were stepped up as the year progressed. Marketing in Denver has been kept to a minimum, although several full-page ads promoting the product recently have appeared in area newspapers. The 36-channels digital tier costs $10, plus $3 for the converter box and 30 cents for a remote. The tier features a mixed bag of 36 video and 10 DMX programming services, including 19 basic networks. Among them: Discovery's Kids, Science, Travel and Civilization networks; ESPNews; Independent Film Channel; Classic Sports Network; Game Show Network; BBC World; CBS Eye On People; Turner Classic Movies; Outdoor Life Network; Sci-Fi Channel; and HGTV. The package also offers Prevue's digital guide, about seven channels of pay-per-view, Spice and about 10 multiplexed pay services, which only are available if the customer is a subscriber to the pay network's primary feed. TCI is considering expanding the tier in systems where it has undedicated channel space, the spokesman said. (March 2, 1998)

To: BillyG who wrote (30459)	3/8/1998 12:52:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Matsushita taps Rambus DRAMs for digital video David Lammers 03/09/98 Electronic Engineering Times Page 08 Copyright 1998 CMP Publications Inc. Tokyo - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. will announce today that it has licensed Rambus memory and logic-interface technology for use in digital televisions and other digital consumer products. Matsushita may use the high-bandwidth Rambus channel with its Media Core Processor, a very long-instruction-word core that it plans to use in DTVs, car-navigation systems, set-top boxes, DVD players and other videocentric markets. "This is a pretty big deal for Rambus," said Dataquest Inc. analyst Jonathan Cassell, who tracks ICs used in digital consumer markets. "We're strong believers in the potential of the digital-TV market, and Rambus DRAMs have the necessary bandwidth" to handle MPEG-2 decoding in high-definition DTVs. DRAM granularity, which partly determines how many devices are required to fill the bus, is a major factor in consumer systems, which often require only one or two memories. At peak rates, Direct Rambus provides 1.6 Gbytes/second from a single device, sufficient for the 600-Mbyte/s bandwidth needs of high-definition DTVs. Only one or two 64-Mbit Direct Rambus DRAMs would be needed to enable the main processing functions (signal transport, video decode and video-signal processing) in a digital TV. Direct approach Matsushita-the world's largest producer of consumer electronics-declined to comment before the press conference scheduled for today. But the Osaka-based company is expected to confirm it will use Direct Rambus DRAMs in digital TVs that are slated to be released in the U.S. market later this year or early in 1999. At the Winter Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas, Matsushita had demonstrated a prototype DTV using second-generation Concurrent Rambus memories and logic made by another manufacturer, a Rambus spokesman said. Matsushita is said to have licensed both memory and logic-interface technology from Rambus (Mountain View, Calif.) and may use the license not only for consumer devices but also for personal-computer chips.