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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BillyG who wrote (33675)	6/8/1998 11:15:00 AM
From: Don Dorsey	Respond to of 50808

Cable's Set-top Sigh of Relief Washington -- Barring a last-minute snag, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to adopt rules June 11 mandating the retail sale of cable set-top boxes. The upshot as of Friday: The rules won't be as crippling as industry experts had anticipated earlier in the week. That's because after months of intense negotiations, the FCC has apparently decided not to bar cable operators from distributing boxes with embedded security features. FCC and cable sources said key timing issues still had to be resolved. FCC sources said Friday that they expected talks to continue over the next few days with regard to whether the agency should exclude analog boxes and certain hybrid digital-analog boxes from its retail-sale policies. Cable sources said they expected the FCC to at least exempt traditional analog boxes from the rules. Circuit City, backed by House Commerce Committee chairman Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Va.), is pressing the FCC to mandate a separation of security functions from other box features starting in mid-1999. The cable industry has urged that the start date for that should be no sooner than September 2000. FCC sources could not say how the timing dispute would be resolved. Friday's news cleared the way for operators to continuing providing set-tops. If operators are forced to provide only removable security, the price per set-top could skyrocket up by $85.

To: BillyG who wrote (33675)	6/8/1998 12:51:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

NEC Unveils Digital TV Set Top Box On A Chip Martyn Williams, Newsbytes 06/08/98 Newsbytes News Network (c) Copyright 1998 Post-Newsweek Business Information, Inc. All rights reserved. TOKYO, JAPAN, 1998 JUN 8 (NB). NEC Corporation [TOKYO:6701] and NEC Electronics (UK) Ltd. have unveiled a new system-on-chip package for digital TV set top boxes. The chip contains all core components required to decode an MPEG -2 stream and present it for display and promises cheaper digital TV devices. The chip was designed at NEC's Multimedia Application Center (MMAC) in the United Kingdom and will save set top box manufacturers money by requiring a minimum of additional components. The uPD61030 needs just memory, an appropriate 'front-end' and interface components. In addition to decoding the digital TV stream, the chip is also capable of generating the graphics associated with electronic program guides and the other interactive applications that digital television is expected to provide. Built into the chip is a 64-bit NEC VR4110 microprocessor, capable of 100MIPS (million instructions per second), MIPS16 support, an MPEG -2 transport stream demultiplexer, an MPEG audio/video decoder and a graphics engine. Peripheral support functions include smart card interfaces, IEEE1284, parallel port, I2C interfaces and UARTS. Reported By Newsbytes News Network: newsbytes.com 06:01 CST