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

To: Stoctrash who wrote (35683)	9/3/1998 12:40:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

CANAL PLUS IN GLOBAL DIGITAL ALLIANCE (repeat)... Sometime ago, your or someone posted a blurb about a new Cube settop decoder that would include the sparc CPU. Can you find it now? 09/02/98 Cable Europe (c) 1998 Phillips Business Information, Inc. Canal Plus has joined with Pioneer Electronics, C - Cube Microsystems and C - Cube 's DiviCom subsidiary to form a global alliance capable of supplying end to end digital broadcasting systems and competing head on with players such as General Instrument and Scientific-Atlanta. Under the terms of the agreement, the parties will join together to develop end to end digital solutions for all types of platform from the interface with the billing system to the set top. The alliance will support open standards, principally the OpenCable initiative in the US and the emerging DVB-Multimedia Home Platform in Europe, and equivalent standards in Japan and elsewhere. The agreement gives a significant boost to Canal Plus' moves to establish itself as a pre-eminent supplier of digital operating systems with its MediaHighway technology and MediaGuard conditional access system, parts of which will be adapted for the US market. In the UK, Canal's presence in this field has had a significant impact, securing the contract to supply its system to the BDB digital terrestrial platform, a move which precipitated a row over interoperability with BSkyB. However, the French company is keen to emphasise that its role will not be limited to supplying conditional access and middleware. "We will be much more involved than that," said a spokesman. "We will be directly involved in marketing worldwide. We will be a system integrator [and] involved in manufacturing the set tops." The spokesman said that the alliance and would tailor its solution to the needs of particular customers. "We can change bits and pieces of the whole software package." DiviCom will supply encoding and multiplexing equipment, interactive data systems and its network management system for integration with OpenCable-compliant headends. C-Cube will supply Pioneer with the processors for set-tops. It seems likely that the structure of the alliance will remain informal, with different project teams allocated to particular customers. Pioneer and Canal Plus will also develop software applications for the platform. The deal takes place against the background of a wider effort by Pioneer to reposition itself as a major global supplier of digital TVs and broadcasting equipment. The electronics group recently unveiled a plan to double its sales by 2005 by developing new products. Separately, Pioneer has won an order from Canal Plus for "third generation" digital boxes for France, Spain and Italy. Production has started at its UK plant. Pioneer also announced that it will introduce its own branded boxes in Italy and France this month, adding web- browsing and email independently. Pioneer said in its statement that the alliance's support for open standards would include Java and Javascript. The DVB group has chosen Sun Microsystems' Java software as the likely operating software for the next generation of digital systems.