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

To: rupert1 who wrote (60355)	5/3/1999 9:30:00 AM
From: rupert1	Respond to of 97611

WSJ Satellite PC article. I have put the Compaq excerpt up-front. "Also, starting in the middle of the month, buyers of certain Compaq Computer Corp. personal computers will be able order PCs that come with DirecPC software and hardware preinstalled, making the service more plug-and-play." May 3, 1999 ---------------------- Hughes, Broadcast.com Team Up To Offer High-Quality Net Video By TIMOTHY HANRAHAN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION Hughes Electronics Corp. is set to announce a distribution deal with Broadcast.com Inc. that will bring high-quality video to users of Hughes's DirecPC satellite-Internet service. The deal, expected to be announced Monday, will allow DirecPC users to view broadcast-quality movies, sporting events and other programs, a big improvement over the jerky video available using traditional dial-up modems. DirecPC generally boasts speeds of up to 400 kilobits per second, or about seven times faster than dial-up modems, although speeds may be ratcheted higher for certain video downloads, Hughes said. Broadcast.com already has several so-called multicast affiliates, but DirecPC will be its first high-bandwidth delivery system. Also, DirecPC is available nationwide, unlike other high-speed options such as cable modems or phone companies' digital subscriber lines. "With DirecPC, it's there, anywhere," said Mark Cuban, chairman of Broadcast.com. "For a national footprint" for broadcast-quality video, he said, "this is a unique opportunity." The companies also emphasized that DirecPC is well-suited for multicasting -- sending the same video at the same time to multiple users -- because it takes up just as much bandwidth to send a movie to 100,000 users as it does to send it to just 10 users. The video "is infinitely scalable," said Fritz Stolzenbach, a marketing manager at Hughes Network Systems. The deal comes at a pivotal time for DirecPC. Despite its national reach, DirecPC has yet to draw strong consumer interest because of its relatively high cost and daunting set-up process. Hughes has shipped more than 100,000 DirecPC systems to homes and small businesses since 1997, the company said, with most of those customers in the U.S. By contrast, about 590,000 U.S. households have cable modems, according to Kinetic Strategies, of Phoenix. Along with purchasing a satellite dish that must have an unobstructed line of sight to the southern sky, DirecPC requires users to maintain a traditional dial-up phone connection, as the dish can receive information but not transmit it. Critics have derided that setup as awkward. DirecPC, however, is moving to fix these problems. It now uses universal-serial-bus ports, which allow easier integration of peripherals such as DirecPC. The company's planned Spaceway satellite platform, meanwhile, will allow affordable two-way transmission between the satellite and the home. , starting in the middle of the month, buyers of certain Compaq Computer Corp. personal computers will be able order PCs that come with DirecPC software and hardware preinstalled, making the service more plug-and-play.