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To: BillyG who wrote (41157)	5/16/1999 8:12:00 AM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

mercurycenter.com AOL Mulling $1 Bln Hughes Satellite Stake - Report NEW YORK (Reuters) - America Online Inc. could invest up to $1 billion in a two-way satellite communications system from Hughes Electronics Corp., expanding on existing deals, Business Week reported in its May 24 issue. Citing ''sources close to the companies'', the report says the AOL-Hughes ties could extend beyond an existing programming deal with Hughes' DirectTV satellite television service and a converter box project with another Hughes unit. Hughes' Network Systems unit announced the satellite project, known as Spaceway, announced in March. It is to begin service in North America in 2002 and provide high-speed voice, video, and Internet data communications largely to business subscribers. Business Week said the Spaceway service could eventually be expanded to reach residential customers -- the core audience of America Online, which dominates the delivery of Internet services to U.S. consumers and to a lesser extent, worldwide. ''We can neither confirm nor deny speculation,'' said Marcy Woodhull, a spokeswoman for El Segundo, Calif.-based Hughes Electronics. A spokesman for Dulles, Va.-based AOL also declined to comment on the report. Tuesday, America Online announced the programming and set-top box deals with Hughes as part of its emerging AOL TV plans for a service to deliver interactive programming to home television sets, supplementing personal computer services. The service, which would rely on standard phone lines and dial-up online links, will be introduced in 2000, AOL said. The Hughes spokeswoman said the Spaceway project would deliver two-way, high-speed broadband satellite communications without the need for an additional phone line connection and would target both businesses and home office users initially. The Spaceway project would represent a new generation of Hughes current DirectPC satellite delivery system, which has attracted 100,000 subscribers to a one-way system that relies on standard phone connections for return communications. As part of its March announcement, Hughes said it would fully fund the North American leg of the Spaceway project with its own $1.4 billion investment but could seek additional partners for global expansion of the project.

To: BillyG who wrote (41157)	5/16/1999 3:38:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

VCD is a dying business.................... Net revenues in the first quarter of 1999 were $96.5 million, an increase of 10.5% over the $87.3 million reported in the corresponding quarter a year ago. This increase was led by growth in sales of DiviCom's encoder products, attributable to design improvements and feature and quality enhancements on next generation products, as well as significant growth in international sales. During 1999, DiviCom recognized additional revenue growth from higher volume shipments of its cable and data networking products. Semiconductor revenues increased primarily from higher volumes of decoder chips used in DVD consumer applications and DVD-ROMs on PCs, resulting from customers' adoption of the Company's ZiVA(tm) family of decoder chips and wider acceptance of the DVD format. Growth in sales of -8- codec products also contributed to the increase in semiconductor revenues. These increases were partially offset by decreased sales of decoder chips sold into the China market. This decline was due to a reduction in shipments and increased price competition. The reduction to revenues caused by the decrease in volume of VideoCD decoder chips is partially offset by higher average selling prices for Chaoji VCD decoder chips, also sold into the China market. The Company believes the market for VideoCD and Chaoji VCD applications will gradually decline as the market becomes saturated and as consumers adopt DVD applications in their place.*