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

To: John Rieman who wrote (36893)	10/24/1998 1:13:00 PM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

OT AT&T and Time Warner are talking about cable... cnnfn.com LU puts up 2 billion for wireless Winstar zdii.com CUBE/DIVI have at least 80 jobs posted. More jobs mentioning circuit boards than I remember.

To: John Rieman who wrote (36893)	10/24/1998 5:28:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Asian countries debate how to tune in to digital-TV By Bruce Gilley in San Francisco feer.com October 29, 1998 Like the fabled house-cleaning robot that never quite made it into the world's living rooms, digital television has been in the works for more than a decade. As with the robot, its benefits are undisputed: The technology produces sharper pictures and enables televisions to act more like computers because they receive digital signals. But the high cost of digital TVs and the fraught business of getting countries to agree on standards have delayed its emergence worldwide. Now, it appears, digital TV's day has almost come: Regulators will soon demand U.S. broadcasters use it. Asian nations are moving much slower, forcing their technology companies to look to U.S. sales to get an early foothold in the global market. Under U.S. Federal Communications Commission law, all 40 affiliates of the country's top four networks in major markets must provide digital transmissions by May 1, 1999. The 120 affiliates in mid-sized markets must go digital by November 1, 1999. Those 160 broadcasters will cover just over half of all households in the country. By the end of 2006, all stations will be expected to broadcast only digital signals. Households without digital TVs will have to buy converters that will enable their existing TVs to receive digital signals. How many people will opt for converters rather than buy a new digital TV? It's a question stretching the industry's nerves in the United States and Asia. "The transition to digital TV is inevitable, but the pace of the transition will be set by the private sector," FCC Chairman William Kennard said in a speech in New York on September 15. "We in government should not set up the industry for failure by creating false expectations or, worse, micromanaging what you should do with this promising technology." Expectations are high. TV-industry players the world over will be watching when digital-TV sales begin later this year in the U.S., where leading Japanese and Korean electronics companies will be marketing sets. Makers expect to sell 10,000-100,000 sets before the end of 1998. Sales could rocket into the millions next year as digital broadcasting begins in earnest. TV sales in the U.S. currently run at about 23 million a year. This huge domestic market has allowed the country to develop its own digital standard. But much of Asia has yet to decide which of several incompatible formats to adopt. So far, Taiwan and South Korea have opted for the U.S. protocol, and industry sources say China is leaning that way, too. Australia has selected the European standard. The consumer will see little difference between the U.S. and European systems, but the U.S. technology has the ability to squeeze more channels into a given frequency band. Japan has adopted its own standard, which puts a premium on the ability to transmit to TVs inside moving vehicles. Since the European standard offers no clear technical advantages, the remaining markets are now a duelling ground for the U.S. and Japanese formats. Singapore's Digital Television Technical Committee has tested all three standards and is to make a recommendation by the end of the year. The committee is particularly interested in determining which standard works best in densely populated, high-rise apartment areas. Hong Kong has the same signal-reception concerns as Singapore, but may have to follow China's lead because of the possibility of signal interference if the two employ different standards in such close proximity. But even after they adopt standards, most Asian countries are unlikely to follow the U.S. lead and set difficult deadlines for full digital broadcasting. Taiwan is an exception: It wants to stick close to the U.S. schedule to maintain its lead in Asia in manufacturing digital-TV components. Taipei wants 85% of all broadcasts on the island to be digital by 2006. Japan recently postponed its deadline to begin commercial broadcasts by three years, to 2002, and a deferral is also likely in Seoul. The technology's main commercial opportunity lies in high-definition television, or HDTV. High-definition digital TVs offer picture resolution six to seven times better than that of conventional sets. Regular digital TVs offer resolution just twice as good as normal televisions. The wider picture broadcast to digital sets also enhances sports viewing by showing more of the action. But digital signals have numerous other commercial possibilities. They can deliver Internet content such as home-shopping and music programmes to television sets. They can also carry interactive TV programmes that could, for example, allow viewers to download a news programme or reconfigure their TV screens to watch different holes of a golf-tournament broadcast. But clearer pictures and added features have little value for digital-TV makers if no one buys the sets. For companies with a stake in the industry, including many in Asia, the halting pace at which digital television is catching on means a lot of guesswork. "The billion-dollar question is how fast the adoption rate will be in each country," says Ang Peng, president of U.S.-based Tera Logic, which markets a decoding technology used in digital TVs. Tera Logic is betting on a 30% adoption rate in the U.S. by 2008. That means that while all broadcasts would be digital, most people would be using converters and still watching their analog TVs. Ironically, the slow adoption of digital TV in Asia is forcing Asian companies to focus on the U.S. market to keep their edge in the emerging technology. Japan's Matsushita Electric and South Korea's Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are all targeting the U.S. market after their governments decided to take the slow road to adopting digital TV. Matsushita Electric shipped its first digital TVs to the U.S. under its Panasonic brand name in August, from its border plant in Mexico. A full TV set, with a screen and separate signal receiver, costs about $1,700--about five times the price of an analog TV. Panasonic spokesman William Pritchard in New Jersey says the company expects U.S. consumers to buy about 50,000 digital-capable TV sets or converters this year. But the speed at which digital TVs become a fixture in people's living rooms remains a subject of fevered speculation. "Broadcasters have deadlines, but consumers will have a lot of flexibility," says Pritchard. "We've seen sales projections all over the map."