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

To: Ron Mayer who wrote (36258)	9/26/1998 4:51:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

It will be interesting to see how the CVD/SVCD "battle" develops. 3 formats: 1) China VideoCD ( CVD ), developed by C-Cube Microsystems and its Chinese OEM partners (customer driven) 2) The Chinese government's own SVCD format (politically driven) 3) HQ-VCD, pitched by the Video CD Consortium. (Matsushita, Philips, Sony and JVC, which originated the Video CD standard) 2 & 3 have merged. 1 is supposedly a superset of 2 (& 3). Looks like 1 is viable as long as the Gov't doesn't outlaw it. Anyone ask Cube what happend if the Chinese Gov't outlaws CVD? At this point I think it doesn't matter. The OEM's already are buying CVD from Cube (at a slightly better margin) and supposedly their players can play std VCD, or SVCD, so all bases are covered. My concern for Cube would be if their CVD chips couldn't play SVCD. Haven't heard that yet. Anyway, next year they'll be buying DVD instead. The cost are already down to the point where this whole CVD vs SVCD battle could just go away. ---- Chinese brace for invasion of MPEG-2 digital-compression chips Sunray Liu 09/28/98 Electronic Engineering Times Page 24 Copyright 1998 CMP Publications Inc. Beijing - Domestic startups and overseas suppliers of digital compression chips are gearing up to do battle in the Chinese market as the MPEG-2 decoder market heats up. A taste of what's to come surfaced in mid-September, when the U.S. chip maker Zoran Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.), a supporter of China's Super Video CD (SVCD) standard, announced a single-chip decoder. Zoran said its "Supera-AV" SVCD decoder chip is entering production. Zoran is the latest supplier to back the SVCD format in the race with the rival video CD format. As more IC makers back the SVCD spec, more cost-effective decoders are expected to become available to systems makers. And as more foreign suppliers eye the Chinese decoder market, local suppliers of MPEG decoders are expected to cut their profit margins. The China IC Design Center, a state-run fabless design house here, is expected to launch its MPEG-2 decoder soon. SVCD and CVD aren't the only markets for compression technology. The fast-growing Chinese PC market, which is expected to account for 4.5 million new machines this year, will also give the decoder market a boost as multimedia and Internet applications grow. Along with DVD-ROMs and graphics accelerator cards on PCs, software-based DVD, digital cameras and videoconferencing will also drive the market for JPEG and MPEG chips, industry watchers said. Other future drivers of the Chinese decoder market are cores. The Chinese government is spending $1.2 billion to establish a foundry in Shanghai called "Project 909," or China Huahong Microelectronics Ltd., to spur the growth of more domestic fabless design houses. The government has also invested more than $200 million in eight companies that will establish their own IC design facilities to support Huahong's foundry business. Local startups One company founded on Aug. 18, Beijing Huahong IC Design Ltd., will focus on chip sets for PCs, memory, DVD decoder, smart-card, DSP and other emerging applications. In order to shorten development cycles, and to ease intellectual-property concerns, some of the new companies are expected to buy cores from overseas partners. Either way, cores and licensing deals are expected to be thriving businesses as the decoder market takes off. With all of the attention focused on the race between CVD and SVCD, some experts here are beginning to worry that confused customers will balk at buying new video products until standards issues are resolved. Most Chinese consumers bought their VCD players within the last 18 months. Many consumers are expected to resist replacing their relatively new players so soon. Still, pressure from suppliers of new and cheaper DVD players may push buyers back into stores sooner than expected. Prices for DVD players are dropping to $250. September 28, 1998