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

To: Tim McCormick who wrote (37181)	11/10/1998 10:37:00 AM
From: Don Dorsey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

TV-set brands carefully enter digital future Strategies differ for gaining edge in new segment by Bradley Johnson TV set marketers are taking a calculated approach to rolling out the first digital TVs, eyeing early models as halo products to drive retail traffic and position brands for leadership when--an assumption--the mass market finally emerges. With the debut this month of high-definition digital broadcasts in 10 major cities, marketers are beginning to ship sets. The TV picture features images through the digital shorthand of zeros and ones, which also approximates early sales prospects. Thomson Consumer Electronics, the No. 1 set maker, projects first-year industry sales of 20,000 to 100,000 sets--in an industry that this year expects to sell a record 29 million regular, or analog, TV sets. ---more--- adage.com

To: Tim McCormick who wrote (37181)	11/10/1998 9:19:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Dazzling... Make your own VCD's in China? Isn't that illegal? <g> MPEG -1 encoder to capture home videos Ainul Azmel Adnan 11/09/98 The New Straits Times The New Straits Times Press Computimes; 2* Page 34 (Copyright 1998) AS more and more consumers bring the digital video technology of video compact disks (VCDs) and digital versatile disks (DVDs) into their homes, replacing the old trustworthy analogue VHS, it wouldn't be more timely to introduce digital video recording system as well to complete the picture. Digital video recording systems have always been an expensive item, costing tens of thousands of ringgit - only within the reach of production professionals. However, as the market of digital video recording trend creeps into the home of ordinary consumers, more and more manufacturers are banking on this trend to push their products. Dazzle from Dazzle Multimedia is one of the many products which is made for home users. In the package, you will find the Dazzle hardware - an external MPEG -1 encoder that plugs into the ECP/EPP parallel port of your personal computer (PC), a bundle of appropriate cables ranging from RCA, S-Video and stereo jack to connect the hardware, and a bundle of software. The software included are Amigo - the digital video capturing/recording software; MetaCreations Kai's Power Goo SE and Gryphon Morph for creating special effects on your video clips; and Adobe Photo Deluxe - an excellent image editor. Then there are Cinax iFilmEdit Video Editor to edit your MPEG -1 movies; InterActual VideoSaver, a bonus screen saver program; CeQuadrat WinOnCD, another excellent program to create VCDs from a CD Recorder/Writer; Astound Studio M, a multimedia presentation program; and VDOnet VDOPhone, a live video-conferencing utility for the Internet/intranet networks and local area networks (LANs). Setting up the hardware is easy. As all the components are external, you do not need to open up your PC casing. You connect the Dazzle to your video source, be it a VHS, camcorder or laser disk player, through either a composite or an S-Video connector. The audio source however, goes to the PC's sound card as Dazzle does not provide audio recording hardware. Once you've got the drivers and software installed, the Dazzle is ready to rock. Video is captured at 352 by 240 resolution and 30 frames per second for NTSC; and at 352 by 288 at 25fps for PAL/SECAM source. You can also select a lower capture resolution (called quarter screen) at 176 by 120 for NTSC or 176 by 144 for PAL to reduce file size for the purpose of video-conferencing over a low bandwidth network. Although the Dazzle does not capture audio directly, it will co-ordinate the process with your sound card. Therefore make sure your sound card has good audio recording capabilities or you won't hear anything from the video clips you have recorded. Watch out for some generic sound cards that have poor recording capabilities which can result in distorted and noisy output. Once everything is in place, you can start doing digital video recording as long as your hard disk space allows. A typical one-hour recording will take up approximately 600 megabytes (MB) of your hard disk drive. Captured quality is not perfect - pixelation is quite noticeable and can get blocky during fast scenes. Quality can be improved slightly by using the S-Video cables (presuming that your video source has S-Video outputs as well). Movies captured from laser disks using S-Video is very much clearer compared with those from VHS. However, the frames are very smooth. Dazzle managed to capture an entire two-hour movie with no frame drop whatsoever. Audio capture quality has to depend on your sound card. If it is good, you'll get CD-quality audio at 44.1 kilohertz stereo, 16-bit sampling rate. Once the video clips are stored in your hard disk, you can have them edited using iFilmEdit. The features of iFilmEdit are very basic. You can trim only the beginning and the end of a video clip. If you want to snip away a portion in the middle of the video (like what the censorship board usually does), you can do it by splitting the video into two separate clips - one before the scene and one after, and them pasting them back together. After you have got the final copy of the video clip that you wanted, you can created VCDs by writing (or burning it, as it is known) it onto a blank CD in a CD-Recorder/Writer using the WinOnCD software. Of course, a CD-Recorder/Writer is not included in the Dazzle package, so you have to get one separately. If you don't have a CD-Recorder, you can record your final video clips to a VHS tape if you have a video card with TV output attached. These cards come in cheaply these days, costing less than RM200. I compiled some music videos from various VHS and laser disk sources, patched them up together with iFilmEdit, and made the 74-minute VCD on my Pinnacle RCD5020 Recorder with ease and lots of fun. I also managed to "convert" my old VHS wedding tapes captured using an analogue camcorder a few years back into VCDs! Although the result is not as clear and sharp as the original, but for home use, I would say the Dazzle did the job pretty well. Caption: The Dazzle MPEG 1 encoder: A mid range encoder designed for light usage.