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

To: Ian deSouza who wrote (31168)	3/19/1998 5:46:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

VCD 3.0. Next step, VCD-Recordable.......................... We interviewed Mr Woo, Idall's head honcho in Berlin during the IFA show (IM 151). He predicted that market saturation would be reached in 1998 and the market for the existing players would start to slide in the cities, although the rural market is still expected to grow. What was the future, we enquired. DVD? No way. Recordable VCD would be the next step, he whispered. VCD 3.0 The bad news until now has been that VCD could do little more than be a carrier of karaoke titles and films. All that is already changing. Thanks to the widespread piracy a massive replication industry has arisen. All that capacity has led to some weird results. You can even get the news on disc in China! Soon it will be educational programmes as well. All this has meant a bonanza for the 300 or so VCD manufacturers - although this number is declining as the market leaders force out the smaller competitors. The Chinese government is waking up to the implications of the VCD revolution. In late September the electronics ministry hosted a meeting in Zhung Jiang at which it unveiled plans to develop a successor to the White Book 2.0 standard. Joining Chinese video CD manufacturers at the meeting were US arch-rivals C-Cube and ESS Technology. The plan is to add more interactivity and Internet connectivity to the White Book 2.0 specification to create a new standard which is being dubbed VCD 3.0. The 3.0 concept is being pushed by ESS Technologies, an American company headed by Fred Chan which has around 30 percent of the VCD chipset market and is hot on the heels of market leader C-Cube. The proposals revolve around the use of HTML and Java, again developed by EnReach (see lead story). EnReach is headed by Bo Wu, a Chinese national who came to the United States seven years ago, received his master of science degree and then founded his own company in 1995; see enreach.com. Existing VCD players could be upgraded by a simple change of a ROM chip. Interaction would be through the remote controller. The use of HTML and Java has no Internet significance, at least for the moment. In China there is as yet no Internet infrastructure and it is expensive. HTML and Java is being used because it is an easy way to produce low-cost multimedia applications. The biggest potential application is educational multimedia. The China-specific VCD spec aims to accommodate more interactive features than standards adopted elsewhere. C-Cube is working closely with EnReach and is watching development of the 3.0 standard with great interest. Super VCD At the same time C-Cube and Philips are following a different line which they are calling 'Super VCD'. Their market research revealed that what the consumer wants is better picture quality: an issue which gets more pressing as consumers start to buy larger 25-inch TVs. ijumpstart.com