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To: Tim McCormick who wrote (33591)	6/4/1998 9:59:00 AM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Microsoft exec pushes CE on a consumer crowd By Junko Yoshida LOS ANGELES - Craig Mundie, senior vice president responsible for Microsoft Corp.'s Consumer Platforms Division, came to the International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) to preach to unconverted members of the choir. During his keynote to a large crowd of consumer electronics system designers and IC engineers, Mundie pitched Windows CE as "a lingua franca" of connectivity, user interface and applications for digital consumer devices. "At Microsoft, we understand the convergence does not take place at a device level, but the computing technology level," he said. "We also do understand that the PC does not replace every TV and every phone." What Microsoft brings to the table, especially in a digital-TV market, is "customer choices," Mundie said, ranging from "DTV as a smart appliance, advanced set-top, or TV-with-entertainment PC." Appearing at the ICCE for the first time with a mission to convince the consumer industry that Microsoft could help bridge the TV and computing worlds, Mundie said that the digital consumer market is moving towards the adoption of a general-purpose platform. "Better devices for accessing information, entertainment and communication will be enabled by software," he said. "That requires a very sophisticated software, which is a critical component" of new digital consumer platforms. Software components necessary to build a spectrum of digital consumer products for the home is "fundamentally pretty hard stuff," Mundie said, "We'll free you from all the software complexity, and we'll let you focus on what your industry collectively does very well - building highly integrated, low-cost hardware." Mundie pointed to the latest Auto PC designed by Clarion and based on Windows CE as a good example. Mundie referred to Microsoft's "notable failure" in its earlier attempt to enter the consumer and embedded market with Modular Windows or another derivative Windows operating system in early 1990s. "We tried to jam a shrunk version of PC interface into embedded systems, and we failed almost immediately," he said. "Most embedded systems could not afford to incorporate a PC interface as a control environment, unless they were high-end systems." Microsoft believes it has learned its lesson. "Windows CE is developed completely from scratch," Mundie explained. The Windows CE operating system today consists of "more than 120 discrete modules," from which system vendors can select their own necessary features, he said. If Windows CE is downloaded to a WebTV-type of set-top box, it typically occupies a "less than 2-Mbytes" footprint of the total 8 Mbyte or 16 Mbyte of memory usually incorporated into such a set-top, Mundie said. Aside from handheld PC companions, Palm PCs and Auto PC, Sega's recently announced Dreamcast game console is about the only publicly announced entertainment product that will support Windows CE. But WebTV set-tops, Web phones and Web DVD players based on the Windows CE are on the way, Mundie said. More.............. eet.com

To: Tim McCormick who wrote (33591)	6/4/1998 5:17:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

BellSouth is an Americast Partner. Zenith has an order for 3 milion settops. That hasn't changed. Divicom builds the headends................................... divi.com DiviCom Extends Leadership in Digital Wireless Headend Deploymentwith BellSouth New Orleans Launch Milpitas, Calif. - December 8, 1997 - DiviCom Inc. (Nasdaq: CUBE), a leading provider of digital video networking solutions, today announced that BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) has selected DiviCom compression technology for its new all-digital wireless television service introduced this week in New Orleans. BellSouth's americastTM programming service offers viewers more than 160 channels of national and local programming, as well as movies on command. The americast programming service is a result of a partnership of BellSouth, Ameritech, GTE, SNET and the Walt Disney Company. BellSouth's state-of-the-art digital transmission center is built around DiviCom's MediaViewTM video encoder and multiplexer systems, which compress and combine the video signals for maximum transmission efficiency. "DiviCom is committed to building flexible products that meet our customer's needs," said Tom Lookabaugh, senior vice president and general manager, DiviCom Inc. "With our help, BellSouth can now offer its customers greater programming choices with high-quality pictures and CD-quality audio. We are proud to have been selected by BellSouth to help bring the future of digital television to New Orleans." BellSouth's New Orleans launch represents a major step in the company's plan to deliver home entertainment service to its customers. In 1998, BellSouth plans to begin offering its home entertainment service in areas covering more than two million homes in Atlanta, Orlando, Jacksonville, Daytona and Miami.