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

To: Grantcw who wrote (34466)	7/18/1998 11:21:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

VCD changes again................................... eet.com Posted: 3:00 p.m., EDT, 7/17/98 China chooses consortium plan for Video CD By Yoshiko Hara and Junko Yoshida TOKYO - The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry has tapped the Video CD Consortium to devise a next-generation, higher-quality Video CD format. The government's decision to back the plan by Matsushita, Philips, Sony and Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) rather than competing formats was made to fend off market confusion. But it was done with the understanding the spec would fold in aspects of the government's own format. At least three incompatible formats have been duking it out in China: China Video CD, pitched by C-Cube Microsystems and its Chinese system OEMs; Super Video CD, developed by the government with support from ESS Technology; and the consortium's HQ-VCD. The government is expected to announce as early as next week an outline of the new format, which will basically merge Super Video CD with HQ-VCD. Picture quality will be MPEG-2 with variable-bit-rate compression, and playback time will be about 50 minutes. Audio will have four channels. The deal is a big win for the consortium, which came to the table late. C-Cube has been involved for well over a year in developing next-generation Video CD with Chinese OEMs, software publishers and the government. The consortium's negotiations stalled for months over royalty issues. But after products using the C-Cube format appeared last month, the government's attitude suddenly changed, according to a source. A meeting late last month in Beijing resulted in a deal, the source said. On July 4, the government announced in a Shanghai newspaper that it was preparing a new format and that manufacturers should make their products comply. A C-Cube spokeswoman said last week the decision won't exclude C-Cube from having a say in the final technical details. "We are currently closely working with the Video CD Consortium members and the [ministry]," she said. The Video CD market hit 12 million units in China last year. But thus far no royalties have been paid. The licensers expect that through the collaboration in building the next generation Video CD, they can establish a way to resolve the license issue as well.

To: Grantcw who wrote (34466)	7/18/1998 11:45:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

IBM encoder........................................ macweek.zdnet.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JULY 17, 1998 Argon encoder to take on DVD By Christina Follmann (christina_follmann@macweek.com) Wired Inc. said it intends to use its Argon real-time encoder to illuminate a path to multimedia and Digital Video Disc presentations. The MPEG-2 DVD hardware and software package for Power Macs is due by the end of the month as part of a $4,999 bundle called Ginseng. Ginseng is primarily designed for DVD authoring and intranet video-on-demand transmissions, Wired said. The hardware portion of Argon is a 7-inch PCI card that captures, encodes, and multiplexes video and audio in real time into MPEG or MPEG-2 streams, PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) audio, and constant bit rate and variable bit rate (VBR) formats. It will work at between 128 Kbps and 15 Mbps. The board will have inputs for composite video, S-video and line-level audio, and it will come with expansion connectors for component and D1 video input as well as audio compression standards such as AC-3, Wired said. The software component of Argon creates MPEG streams in real time. It also lets users preview encoded video and audio before recording, the company said. The Ginseng bundle will include Wired's Mason 10 decoder board, available since 1996. A version for Windows is due in August, and a Linux version will arrive in November. Wired's previous encoder card, Butanell, was more expensive than Argon and lacked some of its DVD features, such as PCM and VBR support. It also used a longer (12-inch) PCI card. Wired Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., is at (650) 969-9300; fax (650) 969-0119; info@wiredinc.com; wiredinc.com.