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To: Teddy who wrote (1268)	4/23/1999 4:32:00 PM
From: Brian1970	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4337

NO Teddy, I don't think they're being polite. I think they're being ignorant, ignorant of a potentially great company with a great, patented line of products that have been rolling out over the past year or two. No doubt IVDO is risky. Most BB stocks are. I've even scaled back my initial position. But I'm still long on IVDO, and I will post something here from the IVDO thread on SI, which I think may be very interesting. By the way, everybody, "IVT" is the name of the company (Instant Video Technologies). The stock ticker is IVDO... To: Chris Forte (1520 ) From: Pierre Friday, Apr 23 1999 2:23PM ET Reply # of 1524 While decidedly more mundane than C Nelson Reilley's trip, here's a few observations made during my visit to NAB. The show: Huge - 105,000 people by the time I had arrived Wednesday morning. don't know the final tally, but the sense I had from tech vendors to hot dog vendors was that this was a very well attended event. The excitement was palpable, and the buzz was that we were seeing the early stages of television and computer convergence. The focus everywhere was delivering a superior video image. My sense was that MPEG is the coding of choice, and MPEG2 delivers true movie quality video - given sufficient bandwidth. The bottleneck is bandwidth. The big players were all present. Apple, Sun, Oracle and Microsoft displays were within a stones throw of the Virage display. Intel was across the room. Sony and Pioneer around the corner. The booth: IVT was one of several vendors identified as Virage partners, all clustered around a very large and impressive Virage display area. the Virage indexing and retrieval product is very cool. They did regular shows with chairs for 15-20 viewers, and each show while I was there was sro. One remarkable bit of technology they demonstrated was the ability to "learn" a face and then search for that face. The IVT booth was well attended and constantly busy while I was there. The demo included 2 monitors - on one was a constantly running film clip and, with a mouse click, a superimposed image of the "player" (think of Quicktime or RealPlayer). On the other screen was an image showing output from two servers. The demo included shutting down one, and then both, servers, and watching the film continue uninterrupted. The player would show the buffer status, full when connected, and shrinking during disconnect - but the film never so much as flickered. Very impressive. What I learned: 1. Bursting is just one component of the new Burstware product. Intelligent network control seems to be at the heart of the system. Right now Burstware manages a server, or cluster of redundant servers, to keep clients happily viewing uninterrupted video. I didn't see another product like it. 2. Current licensees: Regarding Sprint, the product is being used by one division for training sessions. I don't know whether it is destined for greater things with the Sprint network, but it's a foot in the door. Digital Creators seems more a VAR than an end user. They offer distance learning and web based training and apparently are licensing Burstware to incorporate that in their program. Casey-Werner is a television production company that licenses Burstware and uses it to get video distributed in house across its network. 3. New sales: Pretty closed mouth on that front. They obviously are targeting some high profile customers, but appear to also be focusing on bread and butter accounts - companies with networks that need to move video in house. One interesting arena is hotels that provide in-house movies. They've been talking to several, apparently.- and see that as a miniature version of large scale vod, an arena they think they can participate in. Distance learning and web based learning is another natural, and Digital Creators seems the logical entree into that arena. Frank Schwartz was apparently brought aboard to focus the push into those areas. 4. New products: A new release of Burstware with enhanced features is scheduled for the fall. Tom Koshy told me that the next big step for Burstware is to go beyond server to client into a server to server product. He didn't say it, but given his background and the nature of the industry, this is probably a product they need to successfully pitch backbone and ISP providers. Juicy tidbits: Eric Hall had resigned. I asked Richard Lang about that and was told that Hall came aboard as a part time CFO (3 days a week). He was asked to become full time CFO and declined in order to pursue another project he was concurrently involved with. A couple things of note. Lang was not defensive nor was he downcast over the loss of Hall. IVT needs a full time CFO, and Hall couldn't devote the time and stay involved with his other project. Hall left on good terms. Hall's connections, particularly with Yahoo, are now IVT connections and Lang sees opportunity there. IVT would like to work with a portal provider (Yahoo?) to provide a download able player targeted at internet users with high bandwidth capability. I don't know enough about that aspect of the business to speculate as to who would proved the video/audio content - the portal or a content provider within the portal. I do know that much emphasis is placed on Burstware's code neutral capability - any streaming provider using any of the recognized compression coding (e.g. MPEG) works with Burstware. If I were looking for a home run, I'd look there. Apparently IVT has been approached by someone looking to network several (or all) of the video production companies in Los Angeles. The need to distribute video between companies in that scenario is obvious. No suggestion that this was a pending sale - seemed offered more as an example of one arena rich with potential customers. Impressions: One can't help but like the personnel IVT had present. I met most of them and was favorably impressed. In the short time I was there, I saw several of the officers from IVT - and they were actively participating in demonstrations and discussions with visitors to the booth. Richard Lang was personally involved in several demos - I liked that. Oh yes, and they are very aware of the discussions here on SI. At least we're not talking into a vacuum on the thread. The enthusiasm at the booth seemed genuine, and probably with good reason. A constant parade of potential industry customers who's products were compatible with Burstware had to be exciting for a company that needs to get noticed. For a coming out party, all the right people were there and many were looking IVT's way. Richard Lang seemed genuinely enthused when he said he believed this was IVT's year. As I was preparing to leave, I watched a fascinating demonstration of the product taking place. The audience was Oracle. The reception by the Oracle people was animated and positive. I saw phone numbers exchanged and smiles all around. I got pretty enthused myself. Made for a nice plane ride home. Pierre