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Technology Stocks : Concurrent Computer (CCUR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kurt A. Altmann who wrote (3770)	5/17/1998 6:15:00 PM
From: Christiaan McDonald	Respond to of 21143

Kurt. your scenerio of infrequently viewed data stored in a remote (and maybe far away)location fits some of the discussion we heard in Atlanta. Frequently viewed data would likely be at each cable system's nearby site. CCUR discussed their view of this but I prefer not to post it here, as I said before, let the competition do their own homework. Some of the scenerios I heard discussed might actually involve Ncube, CCUR, and Seachange actually contributing different parts to the same system. I think the actual configuration of a system might differ for each local cable company and be determined primarily by economics, depending on the size of the system. Ken

To: Kurt A. Altmann who wrote (3770)	5/17/1998 7:44:00 PM
From: Goodboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21143

Kurt, I think you might find your answer by going into CCUR web site and going to the RTOS and video software area under Video on Demand. I think if you read carefully, you will find that thier method of information retrieval from storage will address part of your question. These two elements are key parts in cost and performance. Looking forward to seeing new high this week. New buyers are entering 13-d or g area. We are entering the first inning of a very important and profitable game. I am confident many things will have happened to CCUR before this fiscal year ends (June 30th). Buckle up, this ride is just starting. For those who fear the market, I think if you laid out a daily chart of this stock over the last year you will find very little if any market correlation. When you worry about the market, worry about the Pfizer and MSFT's of the world. Don't worry about CCUR. This stock has nothing to do with the market and everything to do with IVOD potential and reality. Enjoy the fun.

To: Kurt A. Altmann who wrote (3770)	5/18/1998 9:45:00 AM
From: Nimbus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21143

Video libraries for VoD Most systems I've seen have an on-line and near-line storage approach. The on-line storage is hard disk, currently 9GB drives in an array, and the near-line is usually magneto-optical disk. When you select a popular movie, it comes right from the on-line hard disk array to you as a bit-stream. When you select a less popular movie, the beginning of it will come from the online hard disk array, while the rest get's fetched from the M-O and "cached" in a transient area of the hard disk array. As you watch the beginning of the less popular selection, the system "backfills" the remainder of the movie file from near-line to on-line at usually a 10x-50x rate so that it is all there when you need it. When the movie is done, the transient area in the on-line array is then available for other less popular selections. The size of the transient area is flexible, and some systems "learn" on their own what is popular and what is less popular, like a true cache should. To you the viewer, you don't see any of this gong on, and you seen no difference between selections, but it is a common way to have a large cost-effective video library. The biggest issue is the statistics of how many streams can I serve in parallel with stripping a series of files from near-line to on-line storage. It is probable that certain burst conditions will arise where requests for movies will be denied until the system "traffic" clears up. The M-O storage, (usually a jukebox with 10-second access times or so), allows content providers to supply movies and other video materials (commercials, training videoes, ...) on a standard media type using a standard file naming convention. This "master content" is also retained in the M-Ojuke in case the on-line storage needs to be rebuilt or reformatted. As for sharing content amongst head-ends, technically this is possible, but the cost of the WAN, usually made up of ATM OC-12 (622 Megabits/sec) trying the head-ends together, or them all to a central near-line server, I don't believe is cost effective yet. The vision is for all prior recorded materials to be encoded and available on-line and searchable. It likely will happen over the course of 20 years. The big question is how much you and I will agree to pay for such convenience. We pay only $20 a month for internet access and 99% FREE content on the net. Also TV is free, you just have to tolerate commercials. I wonder if Pay-per-view model will die out in favor of advertising inserts in FREE VoD movie content to push this service into the mainstream. Finally, back to the roll-out. As far as I can tell there is no solid complete end-to-end cable delivered service being offered that affordably does what the market wants (VoD, games, fast internet access, Telephony, faxing). It is an immense challenge to do this in a way that is cost effective and standardized well enough to allow it to continue without starting over. It concerns me that at the cable show that it was reported that TW-pegasus was walking the floors to find VoD candidates. That implies to me that roll out ain't soon. As for CCURs solution to near-line vs on-line, I can't say for sure how it is being done. They do not have any public information that describes this aspect in great enough detail to critique.