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To: J Fieb who wrote (37995)	1/4/1999 12:11:00 PM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Here's a good seat for CES coverage........With the show opening Wed. maybe they don't need a magnet this time to draw people in...instead maybe they will have something more substantial to say? Won't have to wait long to find out. virtualces.com

To: J Fieb who wrote (37995)	1/4/1999 12:49:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

WD, Sony collaborate on AV drives -- A new interface, optimized for multimedia, is planned Mark Hachman 01/04/99 Electronic Buyers' News Page 56 Copyright 1999 CMP Publications Inc. Silicon Valley- Under a new agreement, Western Digital Corp. will collaborate with Sony Corp. on a line of hard-disk drives to be used in a variety of Sony's consumer-electronics products, beginning in 2000. Like competitor Quantum Corp., WD has asked Sony to provide the underlying link interface for a forthcoming line of hard drives. But while Sony will furnish Quantum with its standard IEEE 1394 i.LINK chip, Sony and WD are jointly developing a proprietary interface optimized for multimedia. WD's forthcoming AV drives will use an interface "that's not 1394, that's not SCSI, that's not IDE; I don't think either company knows how this will end up, as far as standards are concerned," said Russell Stern, senior vice president of strategic business development, marketing, and sales at WD, Irvine, Calif. Sony will develop the interface, architecture, and protocols for the new products, while WD will design and manufacture the drives themselves. The drives initially will be sold only to Sony for internal use. Prototypes of the first AV drives will undergo basic testing in March 1999; final production is not expected until 2000, the companies said. To improve business, Quantum and WD have joined the raft of companies designing products for the consumer and home-entertainment market. Milpitas, Calif.-based Quantum, for example, recently announced a partnership with TiVo Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., to develop a drive for use in a TiVo-designed entertainment set-top box for the home. And at Comdex this past November, Roy, Utah-based Iomega Corp. displayed third-party printers and other devices with its Zip drive built in. The drive produced in the Quantum-TiVo partnership will permit TiVo's set-top box to record one channel on the hard drive while the viewer watches another. Quantum's own streaming technology, which it calls QuickView, will be built into a proprietary TiVo interface. Storage products optimized for multimedia require adjustments in their error-recovery algorithms, physical interface, command set, mechanics, and acoustics, Stern noted. And, except for the interface, WD can apply what it learns to other mass-market products. The partnership between WD and Sony was significant, Stern said, because of Sony's historical preference for optical storage media, such as CD-ROM or DVD -ROM, instead of a magnetic disk drive. "One of the questions I was asked earlier today is, 'why now'?" he said. "I think that we've reached an acknowledged point in history where the areal density value [of a hard-disk drive] addresses this market." January 04, 1999

To: J Fieb who wrote (37995)	1/5/1999 8:05:00 AM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Re; iMAC and DVD....... On Tuesday, Jan. 5, Steve Jobs, Apple Computer, Inc.'s interim CEO, delivers the opening keynote address from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in the Esplanade Ballroom. The session is open to registered conference and workshop attendees only. ....... Apple set tops?WIth their ties to Motorola they must be a Blackbird customer?? As an example, Doherty cited the set-top arena. Because Apple would be the sole owner of an Apple-built set-top box, the company has no qualms about taking integration to its fullest potential. From Mark's Monday memo........ - JVC could show a $699 Divx player at CES, with delivery scheduled for May. Toshiba is supposed to show a DVD player with progressive scan output, but it may be on hold for delivery until copy- protection issues are worked out. Panasonic is expected to show a DVD player for use in cars. Sharp is expected to show a combination DVD- player/240-watt Dolby Digital receiver (including speakers) for $899. - The Compact Disc Repairman is expected to show a $3,000 resurfacing system for optical discs at CES. - CES is also expected to see a battle between proponents of DVD-Audio (Panasonic, among others) and Super Audio CD (Philips and Sony). - Vivid Interactive, a porno supplier, may show a four-hour DVD-10 (dual sided) and a six-hour DVD-14 (9 GB dual layer on one side and 5 GB single layer on the other) at CES and also announce plans for a 1080i DVD, according to a report in today's Consumer Electronics newsletter. Vivid's replicator, Optical Disc Media, confirmed that they are "working on DVD-14 now" and are "still experimenting" with HDTV versions, according to ODM CEO Erik Hanson. Based on what I've seen of Vivid's programming, my hat's off to anyone who can sit through six hours of it non-stop..........