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Technology Stocks : Concurrent Computer (CCUR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ENOTS who wrote (6549)	1/19/1999 9:29:00 AM
From: ENOTS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21143

anyone following IMON??????

To: ENOTS who wrote (6549)	1/19/1999 9:43:00 AM
From: Nimbus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21143

A little math Let's look at the scenario of a STB(VCR)w/Disk with Cable Download from standard servers at the head-end. Mpeg2, decent quality, = 3 Megabits/sec = 375,000 Bytes/sec A 2 hour movie (7200 secs) then needs 2.7 Gigabytes of Disk. A 8.4GB disk today is $200 retail, or $23.81 per Gigabyte. A 2 hour movie would take $64.28 of disk space. There is an argument that a STB with a low-cost disk would allow use of standard servers (much much cheaper) at the Headend who transfers a secure copy of the whole movie to the customer, and if the download rate can exceed 3 mbits/s per home then the customer can view it as it comes in as well as view it as many times as he wants once it is all there (free ?), much like he does with a tape. If the rate is slower, then the customer may have to watch it starting slightly later. It also is possible for such a STB to store IVOD movies for replay later, much like a tape, but the advantage here is digital quality. The problem is managing bursty bandwidth demand, but this idea would allow the entire available bandwidth of cable to be optimally used, where this is not true with a standard constant bit rate VOD stream delivery scheme, where the surplus bandwidth goes unused if there is less than full user load present at any moment in time. Both schemes have merit, and the market and time will tell. Video Server companies need to be aware that there are other ways to deliver IVOD content, but right now the diskless STB is the standard and it relies on a streaming MPEG server. As more time goes buy the merits and costs of a disk in the STB improve accordingly.