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To: BillyG who wrote (36081)	9/18/1998 4:28:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

WebTV, in its current form, is gone in two years.................... techweb.com WebTV May Vanish In Two Years (09/18/98; 3:07 p.m. ET) By Andrew Craig, TechWeb Microsoft's WebTV set-top box may vanish within two years, as consumers turn to lower-priced PCs and digital-television receivers to access the Internet at home, according to analysts. But while even Microsoft is rumored to be questioning the future of the WebTV Internet-access device, analysts said Friday if the product doesn't survive on its own, the technology inside the box may have a role elsewhere. "The set-top box on its own really has no future," said Paul O'Donovan, consumer applications analyst at Dataquest, in Egham, Surrey in the United Kingdom. "The stand-alone set-top box will just disappear. They will probably disappear in the next 18 months to two years as digital television arrives." The idea of WebTV and its WebTV Networks intranet service could survive, but not in the form of a separate Web browser on TV, said O'Donovan. "But in the long term, the functionality will appear within the TV or through digital set-top boxes," he said. WebTV as a separate box will struggle because it has a relatively small market, according to Adam Daum, senior analyst at researcher Inteco in Woking, England. This could make Microsoft question the product's future, he said. "Microsoft has a history of announcing bold technology strategies and being perfectly prepared to drop them if they don't work," Daum said. But Microsoft is prepared to buy a company for the technology involved rather than just the end product, he said. "They may take the technology of WebTV and put it in other devices," he said. Digital television will launch around the world over the coming months. Some broadcasters and set-top box manufacturers are planning to include Internet access alongside high-quality broadcasting and electronic program guides. In the United Kingdom, cable-TV subscribers will be offered a combined digital TV and Internet-access service from cable operator Cable & Wireless Communications. Digital TV set-top boxes being manufactured by British company Pace Micro Technologies will incorporate Cisco's Internet-access technology, under a deal announced earlier this month. Pace also manufactures WebTV boxes in Europe under a license from Microsoft. WebTV has achieved limited success in North America and is only just making its way into Western Europe. The problem has been finding what sort of person wants to buy a TV-Internet access device, said O'Donovan. "WebTV hasn't been too successful because they are offering the box to people who are neither PC- nor electronic device-literate, and only reaching a small market," he said. The over-45 age group has proven to be one of WebTV's more successful markets, said Inteco's Daum. "The latest info is that it is finding a market among over 45s, driven partly by kids giving the devices to their parents so they can keep in touch with them by e-mail," he said.

To: BillyG who wrote (36081)	9/18/1998 4:33:00 PM
From: C. Niebucc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Like Gag Me Rieman, your posts are sooooo boring.... Can't you like dress them up a bit? Here like totally check this out To: Gag Me Rieman (36079 ) From: BillyG Friday, Sep 18 1998 4:24PM ET Reply # of 36081 Two-way MMDS. With a codec, like we could beam MPEG-2 from home. We could all be on Larry King (or on FredE's PC late at night). Intel's main concern is totally the security of digital content...... eet.com I am sooo sure that you're not out scoping for Tom Cruise right now. Security tops Intel's priority list Like totally By Spaz Lammers PALM SPRINGS, Calif. - Intel Corp. put data encryption and digital content protection at the top of its priority lists at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) here this week. Pat Gelsinger, vice president in charge (like, that totally reminds me, I just got this radical studly gold card, so now I can totally do some MAJOR shopping) of desktop platforms, said the digital-transmission-content-protection (DTCP) initiative totally has received support from both the Japanese and U.S. governments, and licensing to OEMs is totally ready to begin Like, the approach ensures that digital content which moves from one piece of hardware to another is totally copy-protected, and complements the content-scrambling approach adopted by the DVD industry. Digital content protection is totally key to moving the 1394 interface forward, first in digital-consumer products and later in 1394-enabled personal dweeb-toys, Intel said. Intel will build 1394 support into its chip sets within the next 18 months, Gelsinger said in a keynote address at IDF on Thursday. Building in 1394, and convincing desktop OEMs to build out the ISA bus and internal PCI slots, is totally central to Intel's vision of where the PC industry needs to go to improve ease of use. Dan Russell, director of platform marketing, claimed that the cost of implementing the 1394 bus - in terms of gates, board space and dollars - is totally like, you know, about equal to today's cost of adding in the legacy ISA bus. Oh right Next year, Intel intends to build hardware support for data security into its CPUs and chip sets - including flash-based BIOS chips. Random-number generators, digital signatures, monotonic counters and other hardware-based security measures will be supported in logic primitives on silicon. A senior design manager at Dell Computer Corp. (Austin, Texas) said the Intel approach to security totally has like been discussed for the past year, but "things have gotten bogged down over the past few months. Like, duh! You totally have to bring together the content providers, the applications, so many different elements. It just takes a lot of time." Bringing together disparate interest groups to rally around Intel's approach to the desktop is totally what IDF is totally all about. Gelsinger said, "we either cooperate or croak " and no issues totally have been more contentious than digital-content protection and data encryption. Jim Pappas, director of technology initiatives, said the digital-content licensing authority is totally now ready to like, you know, begin licensing the digital-transmission-copy-protection keys for authoring and distribution. Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) approved the key for export in mid-August Like, the U.S. Department of Commerce also has granted a class license so that individual companies need not apply for export licenses when they ship equipment that incorporates the DTCP encryption keys. Mondo Hunk Balogh, strategic technology manager for platform marketing, has been named acting president of the digital-content licensing authority (DCLA) Like, the initial version is totally called the 5C DTCP (five companies digital-transmission-content-protection) package. Besides Intel, the companies include Hitachi Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Anyway... Sony and Toshiba Corp Like, the DCLA will license the key on a "reasonable-fee" basis, Balogh said, declining to be more specific. The 5C DTCP approach is totally based on Hitachi's M6 common key-block cipher, which is totally a block-encryption algorithm for digital content, and the elliptical-curve digital-signal algorithm (ECDSA) for authentication. "Companies can implement 5C DTCP on existing systems today, independent of what is totally happening on the personal-dweeb-toy platform Like, the FCC's mandate to move digital TV forward means that like we totally have the TV industry clamoring for this technology Like, they need it now, so that DTVs can be hooked up to set-top boxes Sooo, like, this initiative brings together all of the consumer makers, Hollywood and the IT community," Balogh said. At IDF, partic-ipants attended classes on how to implement the DTCP approach on systems. In an interview, Gelsinger said, "In the data-security area, like we want to get these message out early like, you know, about why like we believe that hardware support is totally a better way. We are not ready to train shoppers, and like we totally don't totally have actual products to announce. But like we do believe that hardware primitives are better at generating truly random numbers, and like we want to lay out our hardware and spazware primitives." But as the Dell manager said, getting support for Intel's data-security approach totally has like been difficult, and another attendee said "it is totally a bit like herding cats." Security of course is totally essential to Intel's long-term vision of a billion connected dweeb-toys doing electronic commerce and other forms of communication. Craig Barrett, in his first-day keynote address, said the billion-connected-dweeb-toy level will come "in six, eight or 10 years. Like, there are like, you know, about 150 million dweeb-toys in operation today, 300 million will be in use by the end of the century and by 2005 a billion may be "interacting in an instant fashion," Barrett said Like, the CDSA (common data-security architecture), and hardware support for data encryption, are needed to keep momentum going in the industry. Barf me out "We want the industry to move toward three things: easy to use; instantly available; and always connected," Barrett said.