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

To: John who wrote (38721)	1/29/1999 6:58:00 PM
From: DiViT	Respond to of 50808

Divx Hacker Box Viewed With Suspicion techweb.com (01/29/99, 6:17 p.m. ET) By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb The first code breaker for Divx, the pay-per-view DVD derivative from Circuit City, is being peddled on the Internet -- but its validity is in doubt. The box, titled Divx Hack, is said to wipe out all purchased movies in the Divx player's memory so the Divx owner is never billed for watching a movie. Divx players are standard DVD players with an extra feature that allows for playing special Divx discs that can only be viewed for 48 hours after the first viewing. After that, more viewing time can be purchased. This is all done by setting up an account with Digital Video Express (DVE), the parent company and developer of the service. The Divx player calls out to DVE once per month to transmit all purchases and charge the subscriber's credit card for the sales. It also informs the DVE computers of what movies the owner has rented in the course of the month. The Divx Hack intercepts that call and makes the machine think it connected to DVE. The Divx Hack home page is on the Niue domain. Niue is a tiny Polynesian fishing and resort island that has been selling its top-level domain, .nu, to American businesses because the number of .com addresses is rapidly diminishing. But the page makes requests back to a page on Xoom.com, a free hosting page. That page is the home page of 805, a group of hackers in the Ventura County area of Southern California. The order number for Divx Hack is a voice mailbox in the 805 area code. Divx officials said they don't believe the box will work and caution would-be movie thieves against buying anything from such a questionable seller. "We don't think it would be any better than disconnecting your Divx player and would caution consumers against sending $150 in cash to a P.O. box in Ventura," said Josh Dare, a spokesman for DVE. Because the Divx Hack intercepts the modem call from the Divx player to DVE's systems, a player would eventually shut down, Dare said. It could not play Divx discs but could still play standard DVD movies, he said, if the player does not connect to DVE's computer systems after a certain amount of time. One of the developers behind it, who would only give his name as Miguel, said he believes the Divx Hack box is legal. "When you buy a Divx disc, it is yours -- not property of Divx. It is your property and you can do whatever you want with it," he said. Dare disputes that, saying when a Divx customer creates an account, they sign an agreement stating they agree to the incremental charges for purchasing additional viewing time with the Divx disc. The Divx Hack box is now under review by DVE's attorneys, he said.

To: John who wrote (38721)	1/29/1999 8:29:00 PM
From: JEFF K	Respond to of 50808

<Did you take into account the # of o/s shs?> Yes, John I did. Market Value Zoran about 10.0m x 19.81 = 198,100,000 Cube about 37.5m x 20.13 = 700,475,000 Ratio 3.5 to 1 Revenue Zoran revenue 44m down 2% from 97 Cube revenue 355m up 4% from 97 Ratio 8 to 1 Net Income Zoran 929 k down 75% from 97 Cube 42.8m down 3.5% from 97 Ratio 44 to 1 Equity Zoran 35m Cube 210m Ratio 6 to 1