Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (2546)	7/21/1998 11:16:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

What's Up, Doc? DVD Meets the Web By Steven Von der Haar, Inter@ctive Week, 7/13/98 The bridge to the broadband world is paved with silver discs. At least that's the vision of Jim Banister, a vice president at Warner Bros. Inc. He's betting $1 million this year that next-generation compact discs, called digital videodiscs (DVDs), can serve up the broadcast-quality audio and video needed to spice up the online experience --- even for users with slow dial-in connections. "For years, we have been searching for an economical way to send rich multimedia to Web viewers," Banister says. "Now, we have the way." The path is DVD, a disc that has the look-and-feel of a typical compact disc but can store up to eight times more data, cramming between four hours and eight hours of high-grade video onto a single platter. Using systems designed by Hyperlock Technologies Inc. Warner Bros. plans to serve up content that can be retrieved from the disc only after a viewer visits its Web site. Such a scenario should sound familiar. For the better part of tile 1990s, content developers have been trying, with little success, to marry the capabilities of CDRoms and the Web. So-called "hybrid discs" arc littered with Web links that have gone largely unused. For whatever reason, few disc users wind up clicking on the Web connection, essentially torpedoing the business plans of developers aiming to make extra dollars bv sending their users online. But hope springs eternal at least at Warner Bros. Later this year, the company will release a DVD title dubbed Drive-On, which offers a look at backstage stories at the Warner Bros. movie studio. While the company is spending $1 million to $1.5 million on the project, even Banister is unsure which business model wi II work best for DVD. Users must visit a Warner Bros. site to get the keys to unlock content stored on the DVD. The company could sell targeted Web site advertising, subscriptions for the keys to unlock content or both. Banister is counting on expectations that the computer will be the first window for delivering DVD content to the mass market. DVD players for the computer will outnumber those bought to hook into a television set by a 10-to-1 margin in five years, according to Forrester Research inc. estimates. Even if the business model busts, the DVD can be a learning laboratory that will help content developers prepare for a future in interactive television, says Ted Pine, president of InfoTech Consulting Inc.

To: ahhaha who wrote (2546)	7/21/1998 11:30:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 29970

Will Net TV Effort Garner Bravos? By Steven Von der Haar. Inter@ctive Week, 7/13/98 Launching a television channel is nothing new for Bravo Networks. But this fall, the cable television programmer plans to unleash a content brand in a decidedly new venue: cable systems that offer high-speed Internet access. In March, Bravo took the wraps off interactive versions of its Bravo network and Independent Film Channel services delivered via cable modem. This October, it will begin using its broadband Web site to offer blocks of programming from a fledgling network dubbed World Cinema. Bravo may be the first network to engineer a way to deliver new programming to viewers without first winning a prized channel slot on capacity-constrained cable TV systems. "We see this as an incubator for launching an entire network," says Joe Cantwell, Bravo's executive vice president of media distribution and development. Bravo's broadband service, one of the first from a cable network seeking to deliver an interactive service via high-speed cable, is available to about 45,000 homes in 16 markets nationwide, Cantwell says. Cable modern users will be able to tap into four-hour programming blocks daily from World Cinema --- which will focus on foreign films from Bravo's broadband site. The World Cinema launch, however, falls short of the traditional notion of interactive television. Cable modems typically deliver data to computers, which means World Cinema's programming initially will be viewed mostly on PC monitors. "These are networks specifically built for broadband," says Scott Rigby, president of Thoughtbubble Productions Inc., a New York-based company that developed the sites in partnership with Bravo. "We're trying to create something that's different than just watching TV on a computer.