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

To: stak who wrote (36890)	10/24/1998 9:04:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Kingdom PC with a Creative DVD decoder card....................... techweb.com November 01, 1998, Issue: 911 Section: Reviews -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pinnacle Sports SuperDisk, DVD Jonathan Blackwood With plenty of Pentium II processors and BX chipsets to go around, smaller vendors are joining the big guys in offering systems that include 100MHz bus technology and 100MHz SDRAM. One side effect of this trend: You'll be seeing systems with lots of flashy features built in as vendors try to stand out from the crowd. Kingdom's enticements include a 2X DVD-ROM drive and an LS-120 SuperDisk, both built into its new Pinnacle 400 DVD, a Windows 98 system. In addition to a 400MHz Pentium II, you'll also get 96MB of SDRAM and an 11.5GB Ultra DMA hard drive. The LS-120 SuperDisk drive, which uses special 120MB disks, can also read from and write to conventional floppy disks. The Pinnacle's video comes courtesy of a 17-inch monitor mated to an ATI RAGE PRO 3D graphics card with 8MB of RAM. Also included are NMB's space-saving keyboard, a Logitech mouse and Lotus's SmartSuite. I had to remove four screws to get into the somewhat old-fashioned case. The wraparound hood comes off in one piece. Inside you'll find plenty of access room, with all the cables tied neatly out of the way. The same can't be said for the rear of the case, however: A thick, black cable connects the Creative Labs Encore DVD/MPEG decoder to the video card, for all to see. Performance was about average for a 400MHz Pentium II-the Pinnacle 400 DVD achieved a WinScore 2.0 rating of 118. Its best performances were on our Photoshop/DeBabelizer Pro and AutoCAD tests. Its lowest score was on raw video, but even that was acceptable. Priced right at $2,197, the Pinnacle 400 DVD would be a good choice for SOHO use. But it doesn't quite have the speed or polish of the identically priced Gateway G6-400 on our WinList, which also features DVD and a 17-inch monitor. --Quick View-- Kingdom Pinnacle 400 DVD Bottom Line: Average performance, but some appealing extras for the SOHO user Price: $2,197 Platforms: 98 Pros: DVD; SuperDisk Cons: Performance; awkward cable on back of case Kingdom Computers, 800-385-3436, 717-662-7515. Winfo #756 Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc.

To: stak who wrote (36890)	10/25/1998 11:29:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Divicom partners on interoperable Euro Boxes...................... multichannel.com Broadband Week for October 26, 1998 Vendors Support Interoperable Euro Boxes London -- In what is a sort of European version of OpenCable, nine manufacturers teamed up at the annual European Cable Communications show here last week to announce their pursuit of interoperable set-top boxes. Calling themselves the DVB/DAVIC Interoperability Consortium, the team consists of Alcatel Alsthom S.A., COCOM, DiviCom Inc., Hughes Network Systems, Nokia Multimedia Network Terminals, Sagem, Simac Broadband Technologies, Thomson Broadcast Systems and Thomson Multimedia. The title refers to the European Digital Video Broadcast and Digital Audio/Video Council standards-setting groups. The companies said the group's goal is to "build the market for broadband interactivity over hybrid fiber-coaxial networks." Specifically, the DVB/DAVIC Interoperability Consortium aims to enable product interoperability so that interactive services running on HFC and wireless cable systems will work with one another, based on DVB and DAVIC standards. Interoperability, in turn, translates into a broader choice of technology solutions for cable-network operators, as well as into economies of scale that lower prices and expand the market, officials said. Also at the ECC show, consortium members segmented themselves into three functional areas: headend-transmission systems, set-tops and cable modems. Gregers Kronborg, newly appointed chairman of the DVB/DAVIC Interoperability Consortium, said he believes that DVB and DAVIC "are the best standards for the provision of products for interactive video, audio, data and voice services." Others involved in the project -- like Ulrich Reimers, chairman of the technical module of the DVB project -- were already positioning the consortium against other international interoperability efforts, like OpenCable. "I have no doubt that the cable operators of Europe and many other parts of the world will soon realize that DVB-DAVIC will be their best choice," Reimers said.