Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : WavePhore (WAVO)- VBI fed WaveTop for WebTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tigerman who wrote (1030)	3/22/1998 1:07:00 AM
From: Paul K	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2843

People on the Memphis beta newsgroup were asking questions about this WaveTop thing appearing in Win98 so I posted the following message to them about where WavePhore's codec fits in to Win98's Big Picture: ----------------- WaveTop is a data download service provided by a company called WavePhore and has been in beta testing the past few months. The 'Preview Edition' of WaveTop was just released to their testers this week, it should appear in the Win98 Beta soon. WavePhore has leased two VBI lines (with options for more) from PBS National Datacast network of 264 PBS stations. wavetop.net They have been expanding/tweaking WavePhore's VBI codec in Win98 so you will be able to: 1. Receive Closed Caption decoding 2. Update TV Channel Guides - automatically downloaded from your PBS station. Otherwise you would use the Internet site. 3. Receive 'Enhanced Television' via HTML Codes and data inserted into TV programming: TV Producers can place a "TV Crossover Link" URL into the video stream (VBI line 21, text-2) that will cause an (I) icon to appear in the upper right corner of your picture at predetermined points in the program. When you click on the (I) it will pop up your browser and take you online to a web site of related interactive content (or to the data cached on your hard drive). These links can be broadcast by any TV network, not just PBS. microsoft.com To expand on the 'Broadcast Architecture' Microsoft has designed a programming language and coding utility that let producers embed Enhanced TV commands and streaming data packets that are keyed to the program's Time Code. microsoft.com To demonstrate this enhancement a Microsoft team has been working with producers of 'Baywatch' and 'FX, The Series' to include it in programs to be broadcast this summer (I assume with the release of Win98) microsoft.com 4. WavePhore's 'WaveTop' service: Your computer can receive upto 140MB of data per day in the background though the PBS data network. The data is cached on your hard drive and is viewed by a browser -- it's free advertiser supported. Content creators include: People, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Money, Fortune and Sports Illustrated for Kids, USA Today, Wall Street Journal Interactive, CBS SportsLine, PBS Online, Quote.Com, The Weather Channel, Music Boulevard, BarnesandNoble.com, Women's Wire, ParentTime, SuperMarkets Online and ZDNet. etc..... Since the data is on your local HD it pops up instantly when you retrieve it. 5. One possibility everyone must be considering in this VBI downloading is an ability to offer scheduled 'software broadcasts' to distribute software updates. They could be downloaded overnight to everyone, then users would probably use a keycode to unlock/install the package on their PC. I could see this as being a significant software distribution system that doesn't tie up the phone line with multi-MB files. Paul