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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (996)	3/14/1999 11:35:00 AM
From: SteveG	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 5853

<..hoards of infidel Atari Dems who wanted to waste untold $$$ billions and billions on bastard analog HDTV..> not to take anything away from George, but you should check your details, and I would suggest doing so in the definitive and VERY detailed book on the history of HDTV by highly regarded and Pulitzer prize winning author/journalist Joel Brinkley (one of David Brinkley's sons) - "Defining Vision". Too much complexity to go into at this point, but Gore battled for government funding of research on HDTV in general (not analog vs. digital). Mr. Gilder was not mentioned in this otherwise Balzakianly referenced tome. It would be interesting to hear from George his participation in this process. BTW, IMO the book is a must read for anyone interested in FCC politics in general. (trite aside:) on another question, the acronym "FBBW" seems to be a "bastardized" form of the acronym for broadband fixed wireless - BBFW (occasionally BFW). I have read in press and analyst reports and used on SI the term BBFW for more than a year. I noticed recently Mark Lewin's usage of the "FBBW" form. I would defer to George's opinion on this trite distinction on the best term to describe this technology. My argument would be that wireless is usually meant to refer to mobile connections. Companies like WinStar, Teleport, Teligent, Nextlink and others use the airwaves in what is known as "fixed wireless", to distinguish it from generic wireless. Broadband further distinguishes this from any potential narrowband use of fixed wireless technology, and so seems more appropriately referenced as BBFW. Maybe George has no opinion on this, in which case I would call to precedent as well as logic for a standardized acronym of "BBFW". Alternately, perhaps George has some OTHER suggestion. Anyway, off to Reingold in NYC, where TGNT and WCII will be presenting. Fwiw, Nextlink cancelled, as did Williams.

To: Zoltan! who wrote (996)	3/14/1999 1:11:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 5853

Zoltan, >beat back the hoards of infidel Atari Dems who wanted to waste untold $$$ billions and billions on bastard analog HDTV?< Analog... digital... what's the difference? As long as the bandwidth is extremely dumb. Right? [My foregoing statement was a joke, by the way (or was it?), but it does touch[e] on a point which someone else stepped on, concerning multiple code admittance, if the bandwidth were entirely dumb.] I was somewhat familiar with the Philips-RCA/Sarnoff spin, along with others, of this issue prior to the eventual consortium. There were too many historical, time-dependent issues to generalize about on a thread like this in 1999, and still come out whole. It would engender a discussion on what-ifs, in light of the then-extant and subsequent happenings in the networking sphere. Was all of the HDTV to-do for naught? Given the disruptive attributes of the larger deployment, I wonder. Can streaming video over the 'net (and similar delivery mechanisms over cable which point to local, premises-based caching) overcome the intended HDTV encoding and transmission model which has been in the making for nearly two decades? Comments welcome. Regards, Frank_C.