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Technology Stocks : Ioptics: Microsoft-backed Start-Up -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brendan2012 who wrote (3)	3/20/1998 8:39:00 PM
From: ftth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39

Seems like there are many, many, potential applications in consumer and commercial products. It could coexist in a computer system if the cost per megabyte is significantly cheaper than a hard drive at comparable data rates. A good portion of everyone's hard drive space is already "wasted" with read-only executable code (like windows 95). A massive array of paralleled OROMs could be used at the headend of a digital broadband network for storage and delivery on demand of movies and other content (sort of like the uplink facility for DirecTV, except their content is stored on magnetic tape--miles and miles of it) so this could GREATLY reduce the cost of such a facility. There will be literally thousands of such facilities that will be coming on line as digital broadband content becomes more prevalent. If they can get the capacity up, which I'm sure they can, there are even more possibilities. A lot depends on how unique it is. Ioptics (a.k.a. Information Optics?) has pending patents in the area of signal processing techniques for optical storage. If these present roadblocks to entry, rather than just barriers to entry, they could be significant. They also need the backing/committment of industry powerhouses to be successful in my opinion. Mr Softie is a good start. Its a big enough potential market that they don't have to be the only player to be successful, but they do need to be the dominant player. I'd think they could concentrate just on the commercial end and be dominant. Leave the low margin consumer end for someone else. dh

To: Brendan2012 who wrote (3)	3/20/1998 9:05:00 PM
From: ftth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39

To get an idea of the magnitude of the storage capacity necessary at a digital broadcast facility, here's a blurb from the DirecTV webpage. Something like this would be needed at the thousands of yet-to-be-deployed digital broadcast centers world-wide: (The rest can be found here: directv.com THE DIRECTV BROADCAST SYSTEM The most advanced and state-of-the-art, all serial-digital equipment: Fully-automated Sony broadcast system can process and send up to 200 video and audio channels simultaneously. 512 input x 512 output Sony digital routing switcher, which carries 4 audio signals with each video signal, part of a 1,024 input by 1,024 output virtual signal routing matrix. THIS IS WHERE AN OROM-like PRODUCT COULD PLAY A ROLE: 56 Sony Flexicart robotic videotape playback systems. Two 1,000-cassette Library Management Systems that compile commercial and interstitial promotional messages for on-air playback. Over 300 Sony Digital Betacam videotape machines. State-of-the-art scheduling system developed by MEMEX Software, Inc. provides program library maintenance, multi-channel program schedules, broadcast log resource assignments, and second-to-second broadcast logs. 56 Thomson/CLI multi-channel compression systems compatible with MPEG-2 standard. Sophisticated encryption systems in the Conditional Access Management Center provided by News Datacom, Ltd. Four 13-meter transmitting antenna systems, six 6-meter C-band receive-only antennas, two 4.5 meter Ku-band receive-only antennas, and a ten-meter Torus multi-satellite, multi-band receive only antenna. 54 high-power satellite uplink transmitters. A very large coffee maker! There's almost 400 miles of audio and video cable in the broadcast center. But who knows, maybe they're not even thinking along these lines for their product. Just a thought! Maybe we'll find out 3/23 when their web site actually turns into something dh