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

To: Don Hand who wrote (6552)	1/19/1999 10:34:00 AM
From: Goodboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21143

Bandwidth will remain an issue for many years. For every improvement, the extra capacity is drained as fast as it is created. This is no different than the faster chip and larger storage issues that have dominated the PC paradigm. 3 years ago the 750mhz pipe looked infinately large. Now 870mhz is already being upgraded and the MSO's know that the fatter the pipe, the more service and technology companies will add features and services to fill it. The current Vod paradigm will continue to dominate for serveral reasons. The largest is that the stream will take up little bandwidth versus a download to the stb paradigm. Will there is excess bandwidth unused in the beginning, this is about designing for the future and peak usage, not the initial beta testing ane scaling process. It is true that the STB becomes more expensive when storage is added (STB box could rise to over $500 from the sub $400 area currently). I think logic will also tell you which method the movie studios would prefer. The idea of free unlimited playbacks by someone who only paid $4 won't sit well. Movies will best be served by the current model. On the other hand, I beleive the TIVO model for regular programming has advantages. There are many issues here related to advertising and weather others would charge a premium to have a program played back on demand from some master library of programming. Anyone who beleives that the headend will have just one server to offer the many new applications and models is nuts. VOD is a viable product that has very powerful current ecomomics today to start giving revenue to the cable MSO's. Tivo and others will have to justify there services, how the revenue will work and advertisiing. I recently missed an A & E biography that I wanted to see. Had I remembered, I would have set the VCR. Had I used Tivo, it would have known that this program would be desired by me and it would have saved it into memory for later viewing. On the other hand, if I could just go up into an A&E library and download the program or have it stream to me immediately, that would be great. The problem is that if you miss the live program, A&E will sell it to you for $24.95. I doubt they would give up this revenue unless there was something paid to them. That means the consumer would have to pay for this service. In the end, it all starts to get very expensive for the consumer. At this time, the only proven service that the consumer is willing to pay for are first run movies delivered in real time.