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Technology Stocks : Gemstar International Group (GMSTF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Merriwether who wrote (89)	4/29/1998 7:01:00 AM
From: Michael Sinclair	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 226

Gemstar has some unique technology on it's hands. They bought out a small company called VideoGuide 8 months ago. VideoGuide (if you recall) tried to make it big with "Joe-six pack" consumers. They marketed a T.V. top unit the received TVGuide-like data from the same systems that broadcast national beeper info. It was a slick package, but they ran out of money for advertising. The home-grown technology that went into the unit was pretty slick too. They had a team of MIT/Harvard electrical engineers develop hardware and software that could be interactive, graphics-loaded, and cheap. Gemstar bought the company to get the hardware design and the format for data transmission. (I have a friend who worked for VideoGuide, so I was able to tour their operation and talk to the engineers) I'm not sure how Gemstar is planning on using the technology, but it sounds like they may be imbedding it in Japanese "cable-boxes" to display programming information in a similar format. I don't have any contacts with Gemstar so this is just a guess.. :)