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

To: DiViT who wrote (37870)	12/18/1998 2:42:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Open DVD players would sell better, if only they were on the shelves. I was in a Bestbuy last weekend, all the Toshiba and Pioneer players were out of stock. Only one Magnavox w/ spatulizer, was left. They had just got in a new shipment of Samsung and Sony players............................................. e-town.com ARE DVD PLAYERS DWINDLING? Shortage bad for Open DVD, good for Divx by David J. Elrich NEW YORK, December 17, 1998 -- Say it isn't so! We've heard through the industry grapevine -- and seen anecdotal evidence -- that there may be a severe shortage of low-priced Open DVD players during the final holiday rush. While this is great for manufacturers who are selling players as fast as they can make them, an unwanted beneficiary -- according to some DVD fans -- may be the controversial Divx pay-to-play system. With few low-priced Open DVD players in stock, the next option for shoppers is a Divx player such as the RCA RC5230Z ($399 list). The entry-level machines that sell for around $300 -- such as the Pioneer DV-414, Toshiba SD2008, Panasonic DVD-A110 and their ilk -- are in mighty short supply. E/Town learned Toshiba is in a sold-out situation with retailers. This means that what dealers have now is what they've got until the new models arrive early in 1999. They can't simply call up and ask for another 500 to satisfy demand. You'll still find the higher-priced SD3108, but the SD2008/SD2108 are disappearing fast. Shades of the videogame industry hitting the mainstream CE business. Panasonic reported most of its models are and have been in tight supply, especially the popular A110 and portable PalmTheater. "Consumer demand has been strong and we have already seen some shortages at retail," Panasonic's Rusty Osterstock reported. "With all of the intense advertising by hardware and software companies and retailers, consumer awareness is growing rapidly and they are spending this holiday season on DVD players and more sophisticated home theater systems," said the assistant general manager of the DVD division. Sony has been in a tight supply situation since day one of the DVD era. The company really doesn't play in the $300 range -- the DVP-S300 is its entry-level machine at $399 in stores. Yeah, we know you can get it for less on the internet but we're talking about classic "bricks and mortar" stores. "We're seeing spot shortages of the 300," said Mike Fidler, Sony's VP of DVD Marketing. All players are "moving rapidly through retail, which is a great situation to be in," he told E/Town. Higher-end Pioneers are still available but you won't see slash-and-burn pricing since demand is so strong. [Is this the first slowing down of the "CE death spiral" of self-defeating pricing that David has written of in the past? -- Ed.] Fidler also noted that smart retailers could find entry-level players since there are 30 brands selling machines, but "the low-priced A110, Pioneer, and Toshiba players are in tight supply." He told E/Town that the much anticipated S7700 will be introduced at the January Consumer Electronics Show and available shortly afterwards. Fidler couldn't resist making a friendly suggestion to his retail friends: "DVD is still an enthusiast's market. They should be able to walk people up to better features." In other words, stop focusing on $299 players and sell machines with analog Dolby Digital outputs, the whole drill. Another big impetus to the season's strong DVD sales is the internet where companies like Best Buy, Amazon, and Reel.com are selling DVD software online at deep discounts. That there are now 2000 titles certainly is another factor driving sales. Who is inadvertently benefiting from this shortage of low-priced players? None other than Divx, the bete noir of so many Open DVD enthusiasts. Circuit City's marketing clout certainly doesn't hurt. As we reported earlier this week, Thomson told the press, sales of Divx players are "very strong." Circuit's huge Divx ad blitz is underway and it's driving people to its stores. We can hear the sales pitch now. "We don't have the $299 Pioneer in stock, but you can take this RCA home with you today for just a bit more. We know you hate paying late fees on rental tapes. With Divx you don't have to get stuck ever again. It plays all types of DVDs -- and we'll even throw in five free movies." How strong will sales be when Toshiba et al crank up the assembly lines for the '99 Open DVD models? Only time will tell. But a word to the wise: if you want to buy a top-name low-priced DVD player for the family this holiday season, better grab it now.

To: DiViT who wrote (37870)	12/19/1998 1:07:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

ReplayTV and TVIO are in a race... BTW: Word is ReplayTV uses the Sony encoder which means they are using a separate decoder. Not sure about this one tho'. techweb.com TiVo Introduces Fast-Forward TV (12/19/98, 12:47 p.m. ET) By John Gartner, TechWeb Silicon Valley start-up TiVo has begun field trials of a new personalized TV service that it says will revolutionize TV viewing in the same way the Internet changed information delivery. On Monday, TiVo will debut its service in Los Altos, Calif., as well as a partnership with disk-drive maker Quantum to provide custom hardware for the receiver boxes. TiVo is also licensing its technology to cable TV operators and consumer-electronics companies to merge the service into next-generation appliances. Quantum will make high-speed hard drives optimized for delivering multiple streams of audio and video between the TiVo receiver and the television. TiVo has designed custom processor chips to process and manage the streaming MPEG-2 data, so users can pause, fast forward, rewind, and replay any television broadcast. TiVo's TView hardware platform includes real-time MPEG encoder chips and proprietary database and storage systems. It's now being offered to television, DVD, VCR and set-top manufacturers for integration with their products. Merging TiVo and these devices makes for "perfect convergence products," said Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications. DirecTV and local cable operators are participating in the Los Altos field trials. TiVo expects to announce agreements with an additional 12 partners in the coming months. The TiVo service tracks user viewing and stores up to 20 hours of programs that can be viewed any time. The receiver box will sell for about $500; the monthly fee for the service will start at less than $10. "Five hundred dollars won't be an impediment to the first wave of adopters who will pay almost anything to get the service," said Arlen, who expects prices to drop sharply before a national rollout. The ability to pause live TV and replay it in slow motion justifies the $10 monthly fee, which otherwise would have been spent on TV Guide, Arlen added. The TiVo service is partially modeled after the Internet's always-available content and search and browse features, said Stacy Jolna, vice president of programming at TiVo. Jolna came to TiVo from Microsoft's WebTV. With 99 percent penetration of TVs in U.S. homes, he thinks letting users search television programming is a greater opportunity than TV-based Web browsing. "This has the potential to be bigger than the Internet," Jolna said. Josh Bernoff, principal analyst for TV research at Forrester Research, said people will pay to have greater control over programming. "The battle will be fought over ease of use, not advances in technology," said Bernoff. TiVo is applying smart-agent technology used to track usage patterns on the Web. Jolna said the agent technology automatically matches a user's likes and dislikes against the available broadcast content to recommend programming. Users can also search based on genre, or the name of an actor or a show. Jolna said user-viewing data is kept private, as the information is stored locally and sent back to TiVo servers in aggregate. Users can opt to provide demographic information, which TiVo hopes will let it eventually replace standard advertising with ads targeted to a particular viewer.