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

To: John Rieman who wrote (30780)	3/11/1998 6:36:00 PM
From: Don Dorsey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Perhaps we are about to see a boost from the video conferencing market. I have just been solicited to participate in the private placement for company which will provide centers to be used for video conferencing. Customers would pay a per minute fee, as if making a phone call rather than purchasing expensive equipment. Supposedly these units will initially be put in Kinkos, and various malls around the country. I'm not sure whose equipment they use, but I believe Picturetel uses CUBE chips.

To: John Rieman who wrote (30780)	3/12/1998 12:18:00 AM
From: Chemsync	Respond to of 50808

Hong Kong Tel & Cable & Wireless and VOD Thought a review of HongKong Tel's VOD might be in order. The article is from late '97. Not much news out of there lately but they were speaking highly of VDSL. They've sunk a ton of money into interactive multi-media. sg Hong Kong gets interactive TV REUTERS HONG KONG - 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. For Hong Kong's residents, the future starts next month. 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. "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." ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿTo 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿBy April the company will add Home Banking and later Network Games and Broadband Internet services. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThe Hong Kong government last month approved the company's license for interactive television, the first issued here, and was now ironing out the fine detail. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ"We are not only turning the home TV set into a revolutionary all-time infotainment center 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThe 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. "WE SHOULD BE be able to pick up the license by the year's end and start operating in early January," Hongkong Telecom IMS managing director William Lo. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ"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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿHongkong 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿLaunching the service in Hong Kong, Lo said he expected to sign up to 200,000 households as subscribers in the first year, a sizable chunk of a market consisting of 1.6 million homes and a total population of 6.5 million. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿOver 10 years the company expected to sign up one million households, about 70 percent of the total. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿUsers will have to key in a password and a secret pin number before they can tap into the services. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThey 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿGames will be priced in batches, such as HK$10 for five plays, rather than one play at a time. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThe 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿHongkong 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ"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 ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThe 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. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿThe company has already sealed deals with movie suppliers including Disney and Warner Brothers to provide VOD content now totaling 700 movies. Users would choose from 100 movies, and the list would be 40 percent refreshed every two weeks. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿc 1997 Reuter Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuter content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuter. ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ

To: John Rieman who wrote (30780)	3/12/1998 12:43:00 AM
From: Chemsync	Respond to of 50808

Want to get serious about VOD? Place your bets.... The video compression standard adopted by HKT is, of course, MPEG. sg New Racing-on-Demand Service on Interactive TV (iTV) 5 March 98 Hongkong Telecom IMS today announced the launch of its new Racing-on-Demand (ROD) service on Interactive TV (iTV) this Saturday (March 7) in partnership with The Hong Kong Jockey Club. With ROD, horse-racing fans will be able to stay on the fast track with easy access to a complete video library of every race of the season since September 1997, as well as declared starters two days before every upcoming race meeting. Dr William Lo, Managing Director of Hongkong Telecom IMS, said, "Horse-racing has long been a major part of our local culture. We are happy to team up with The Hong Kong Jockey Club to bring about a successful marriage of the latest Interactive TV technology and this unique racing 'tradition' of Hong Kong. With its comprehensive race information and video archives, ROD will make racing an even more enjoyable and exciting part of Hong Kong people's life." In addition to complete race videos and commentaries -- all supplied by The Hong Kong Jockey Club, the new ROD service features special last 200m slow-motion videos; dividend tables; and head-on videos off the finishing line to help horse-racing fans make the best bets and analysis for the next race. The archives will be updated the day following a new race meeting. The ROD archives have been built to hold videos of up to two race seasons, and will continue to be enriched in the future with racing information, such as training times, top tips and jockey/trainer standings, etc. Mr Lawrence Wong, Chief Executive of The Hong Kong Jockey Club said, "We welcome the partnership with Hong Kong Telecom IMS to provide what is believed to be one of the world's first racing-information-on-demand service. This service will be available at Sha Tin Racecourse next Sunday, March 15. We believe racegoers will find it both informative and convenient." With special, easy-to-use ROD "Search" functions -- via horse brand numbers or declared starters of next meeting, horse-racing fans can choose to watch videos of races of their own choice anytime they want. Fans will soon have a chance to try out these and other ROD functions at the upcoming Hongkong Telecom Cup on March 15 at the Shatin Racecourse. Along with ROD, which is now offered free to iTV subscribers aged 18 or above, other services currently available on iTV include Video-On-Demand (VOD), Music-On-Demand (MOD) and Home Shoppng. Hongkong Telecom IMS is also working to expand the package to include Home Banking, Network Games and Broadband Internet later this year. The company has been officially granted the first licence of its kind last month to provide the world's first commercial video-on-demand service in Hong Kong. Questions & Comments? Please contact webmast@ims.hkt.com Copyright c 1997 Hongkong Telecom IMS. All rights reserved. Last revised: March 10, 1998

To: John Rieman who wrote (30780)	3/16/1998 10:21:00 PM
From: J Fieb	Respond to of 50808

John R, Here is another release on the same subject; nc.com Oracle and Netscape really need to get something going, maybe they have a paying customer...... NCI and Cable & Wireless plc, one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, today announced an expansive agreement to use NCI's DTV Navigator platform for Cable & Wireless' broadband consumer services. The technology will enable a range of new Internet-based services including electronic mail, electronic programming guides and Web browsing. The first deployment will begin later this year with Cable & Wireless Communications in the UK. Find out why cable companies, such as Cable & Wireless, prefer an open solution from NCI for digital set-top boxes. Read more and watch the .......................... Here is that old usenet post on Oracle's NC with the CUBE mention in it. Is this a CUBE win? Also a suggestion that the ARM and CUBE MAY work together? Any help out there?............... On Mon, 5 Jan 1998 23:15:46, "Russ Williams" wrote: > >The first NCs will have the same processors as PCs. You simply do > >not understand the concept. You are confusing NCs with Microsoft's > >answer to NCs, namely Winterms. > > No, you're wrong. Try reading Oracle's definition of an NC. Why would > they need a C-Cube (IIRC) back-end? And since when do PCs use > StrongARM chips? MS' answer is just that - something that does the > same, but is Windows specific. > I haven't read Oracle's specifications but that is irrelevant. NCs is a broad classification of machines. None of which look at all like Winterm. Winterm is a dumb terminal and does not have local processing like NCs will. Closer to NCs is the NetPC that it appears MS has given up on. The NetPCs problem is that it is still disk dependent, subject to user and disk corruption, and will have a high cost of maintenance, in short, no improvement over Windows. Bob O - Computing for fun techstocks.com Does " C-Cube (IIRC) back-end?" make sense to anyone?Is this deal for software only or the complete set-top?