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 : Ampex Corporation (AEXCA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hal Campbell who wrote (3246)	8/16/1998 7:42:00 AM
From: Gus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17679

Thought-provoking article, Hal. The Televisionspace Race wired.com ....Mundie and his group had to rethink the company as well. As the railroads once had to decide if they were in the train business or the transportation business, Microsoft had to decide if it was in the personal-computer industry or something bigger. With Myhrvold and Gates around, that was a no-brainer. The real issue was how the company could profit as the computer morphs into myriad new forms and insinuates itself into people's lives in ways they barely perceive. The economics of the PC business were by now well established , and on Microsoft's terms. But as digitization hit the telephone and the television, Microsoft would increasingly find itself on turf owned by bigger companies - AT&T, Time Warner, TCI. What could Redmond bring to the party, and what could it collect in return? As they grappled with these issues, Microsoft's people also realized they'd have to reinvent TV - not an easy task from the cloistered, sylvan setting of their Redmond campus. A brainy corporation reliant on faceless, voiceless communication through electronic blips, Microsoft would have to transform a showbizzy medium best known for inducing mind-numbing passivity into one that somehow encouraged the audience to talk back. How would it do that?... *....You know, somebody once said that the beauty of geometric growth is that everything that's happened until now doesn't matter.* True, everybody and his second cousin are working in the digital domain, but you know what they are finding out? They are finding out that, especially as you progressively increase the quality of video and audio, it is still very, very, very difficult to convert the analog (the real world) into the digital domain to be processed by all the whiz bang digital circuitry available before it is shipped out the other side of the pipe and converted back again into analog (again, the real world). Invariably, something gets lost when you convert a slice of reality (sound, sight, etc) into the electrical streams that is the only language understood by the modern day digital signal processing systems. The way I see it, AXC has built a knowlegeable base that spans the evolution from the analog signal processing systems of the fifties and sixties to the digital signal processing systems of today. Broadcast quality video and audio. NASA and DOD acceptable data integrity. That kind of knowledge base is still valuable today. A great example of this underappreciated aspect of the digital age is the universal hate that the pony-tailed(?) music pros like Al Cassaro have for the 16 bit sound of the compact disc. I wonder if the 20 bit format of DVDs sounds all that much better to them. Which reminds me of your running reference to pricey sound systems with retro vacuum tubes. My understanding is that the sound is not all that great considering the kind of premium you have to pay, but that it really is a great mood-enhancer and a really cool nightlight as well that keeps you from stumbling in the dark on your way out...of your own house. LOL. Gus P.S. The way I see it, AXC is in the neither world, neither a value play nor a growth play yet, because it is still putting its plan in place. Wait and see demand + a healthy supply of stock and warrants out there. Result: steadily declining price. If you think about it, owning a stock divorced from the general market may not be all that bad if you consider that a third of the global economy (Asia) is in varying stages of contraction. Also, in the 10Q I note that inventories raw materials in particular) went up due to the move to transfer parts of DCRsi manufacturing to Colorado. Am curious to see if AXC can do something with its office park neighbors --- Excite and AtHome. Note also the surprising (to me at least) dip in recurring royalties (did some patents in the pool expire? past due ones? or just seasonality?)