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> nowpublic.com will be using Flash video
> Flash may become the "universal format for video"
> Up to 10k website's currently/will use Flash 'high quality video'
> Bought Flix, selling our own Flash encoding tools and also licensing to others
> On2 advantages, best compression ratios and most flexible licensing model
> Nintendo SDK, trend to use more video in the games, not just animation. Shipping SDK's to Nintendo game developers.
> Most important customers:
1) Flash (more than 1/2 of this Q's revs from encoders) Fastest growing segment, will accelerate sharply with the new VP version.
2) AOL for upcoming VOIP/VIM, On2 will play a critical role.
3) XM, video in the NEAR future in cars AND portable video devices.
> On2 has 20-25 "large" customers
> VOIP platforms will migrate from PC's to cell phones and to living rooms.
> Flash Platform, convergence, so many can use the content.
> Flash Lite, our video will play a big role in that. (My favorite part, decoder$!!)
> Worldwide resellers getting active, Japan, S.Korea, China...
> Still looking for stategic acquisitions in related audio/video markets.
> Investors should look for Flash/Flash Lite growth....encoder sales should accelerate sharply.
> Investors should know that VP7 is quickly being adopted in the 2-way live VOIP/VIM areas.
Companies like AOL, Skype and one other name I didn't catch....
Fundamental changes at work. 1. TIVO-like devices are driving advertising dollars away from TV and Cable programing to the internet. 2. AOL is changing its business plan and is becoming a free access portal and will generate income through internet advertising. Its new video enhanced site or Video hub should have access to huge amounts of content, after all AOL is Time Warner. From DAM's comments AOL will use VPx. 3. MACR's Flash 8, will introduce playerless video to internet advertising. Vividas is currently using VPx in a playerless like format with full screen video. (killer app.) 4.XMSR video ipods coming. 5. DAM has On2 well positioned for the coming internet video advertising explosion. The Flix purchase is part of this strategy. Although pps is only 56 cents, someday On2 will be recognized as a key enabler of these changes taking place. Revenues will follow (I hope).
Is Google Video going with.....
by: jhm212
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 06/16/05 04:45 pm
Msg: 124856 of 124935
the best looking playerless video coming to the net??
Todays rumor was Google Video wants Maelstrom!!! (No, I didn't start it...lol)
"...Google Video is the name of the search giant's TV experiment. In theory, it would have access to every TV show ever made, and make episodes available to users on demand, for a fee. Currently, the service has closed-caption transcripts from several networks, including PBS, CNN and C-SPAN. But Google Video Director Jennifer Feikin says users are frustrated and want to click on the links and watch the show. "That's where we want to be," she says. "The idea of this project is to show what the future may look like."....."
Adobe PDF's want Maelstrom!!
by: jhm212
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 06/17/05 12:51 am
Msg: 124874 of 124935
"....With Macromedia, Adobe gets the Flash video-handling software that Chizen said will help his company bring technology to non- personal computer devices much faster than Adobe could do on its own. Adobe plans to pair PDF, which has become a de facto standard for handling digital documents, with Flash software, which is used in 98 percent of PCs to play videos."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=adHl7sRrcSbo&refer=top_world _news
Macromedia to out-develop Microsoft
By Barbara Darrow, CRN / 7 June 2005 15:30 AEST / Software
Macromedia hopes to parlay its Flash and Flex franchises into an application development stack to rival that of superpower Microsoft.
This week Macromedia will preview its next-generation Flash player, code-named Maelstrom, due to beta and slated to ship by year's end.
"Maelstrom promises to enable high-quality video, like Windows Media Player or Real Player, without having to open separate windows -- video is deeply integrated into the Flash player, said David Mendels, executive vice president at the company. Maelstrom also will feature advanced font rendering to boost legibility of even very small type sizes. That technology was licensed from a third party, but not Adobe Systems.
Macromedia and Adobe are slated to complete their merger this year, and the combined company could mount a threat to Microsoft.
Macromedia also has joined the Eclipse Foundation and plans to develop a new Eclipse-based IDE for building rich internet apps for the Flash Platform.
In the planned development platform, Flex will provide web app development, Flash MX will offer interactive content creation, Breeze offers collaborative tools, and Flash Lite furnishes mobile clients. But Flash is the core.
"This nugget -- that strategic, runtime, cross-platform, cross-device technology -- is running on 600 million devices, 98 percent of all PCs," Mendels said. Nokia and Samsung also have licensed the Flash technology.
Few companies have faced down Microsoft in a frontal assault. Asked if Macromedia can reverse that, Mendels paused. "We cooperate with Microsoft in many areas. They make good software, but we believe cross-platform is a real advantage.
If you're in a 100 percent Microsoft-only area and you know everyone is on the latest version of Microsoft, then maybe Microsoft is best for you. But if you don't know if they're on [Internet Explorer] or Firefox or Mac or Windows or a Nokia phone running Symbian, as soon as you get that world, the real world, it may not be best."
Macromedia could penetrate the enterprise, agreed Kevin Chesney, vice president of architecture at Dorado, a J2EE-centric banking ISV. "Flash actually gives [Macromedia] broader reach than Microsoft and certainly more browser support."
Robert Ginsburg, CTO of VAR Version3, said Flex delivers rich applications over the web, but people are not used to working a browser inside a window that does not respond to browser commands.
Flash is a lighter client, Mendels said. Windows is "hundreds of megabytes, and the next-gen Avalon [the Windows presentation layer] requires the .Net runtime -- something like 25MB right now. Flash is 480KB. It's a very small, lightweight runtime that cuts across the universe."
Macromedia Unveils Flash Platform
By ChannelTimes Staff
International Desk, Jun 8, 2005
Macromedia, Inc. has unveiled the Macromedia Flash Platform, delivering rich content, applications and communications across browsers, operating systems, and devices of all kinds. The company also previewed the next generation of Macromedia Flash Player today, now in beta. Code-named Maelstrom, the updated player will dramatically improve Flash expressiveness and performance, the company claimed.
The Flash Platform includes a universal client runtime, an openly published file format (SWF) specification, a robust programming model, time-tested development tools, dedicated server technology, integrated solutions, and the support of major systems integration partners, ISVs, and OEMs. A host of third-party tools and solutions based on the Flash Platform leverage the platform, such as SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer (announced in April). The Flash Platform enables differentiated experiences in a variety of vertical markets: financial services, education, government, and telecommunications including mobile.
Roman Bukary, vice president of solution marketing, SAP, said, "The Macromedia Flash Platform is a perfect complement to SAP NetWeaver and Enterprise Service Architecture (ESA). With ESA, users have a rich repository of business functions, processes, and services, and Macromedia Flex provides a great way to enhance the presentation tier for those services. Together, SAP and Macromedia can raise the bar on development productivity and quality of user experience for SAP Analytics and a wide range of other business applications that leverage ESA."
"Major enterprises and organizations are embracing the fact that great experiences mean great business," said Stephen Elop, CEO, Macromedia. "Great experiences improve customer and employee interaction, directly improve sales, and deliver a compelling brand experience, leading to significant ROI through increased use, brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction. The Flash Platform is quickly becoming a core component of the enterprise's overall business strategy."
Macromedia Flash Player, which forms the backbone of the Flash Platform, is currently installed on nearly 600 million Internet-connected desktops and mobile devices, including more than 100 licensee companies in the consumer electronics space, it supports a pervasive platform that commands a million-strong developer community whose existing content can be leveraged on an array of devices, the company said.
"Flash has grown up into today's Flash Platform, delivering a next-generation user experience to customers who develop interactive content, applications, and communications for use across multiple browsers, operating systems, and devices," said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect, Macromedia. "The Flash Platform provides the solid foundation for delivering experiences that perfectly complement existing enterprise infrastructures and server-side technologies like J2EE and .NET."
The Flash Platform comprises the following core products: Macromedia Flash Player, the cross-platform client; Macromedia Flex for rich Internet application development; Macromedia Flash MX 2004 for creating engaging, interactive content; Macromedia Flash Communication Server for two-way audio/video streaming; Macromedia FlashCast for delivering mobile content; Macromedia Breeze for delivering online communications; and the Macromedia Flash Lite client runtime for use on small-footprint, mobile devices. Future versions of these products, as well as new products, will continue to enhance the platform over time.
In support of today's Flash Platform news, Macromedia unveiled a new initiative to help broadband telecommunications providers deliver solutions on the Flash Platform ; announced membership in the Eclipse Foundation to develop a new IDE based on Eclipse for building rich Internet applications that run on the Flash Platform; and announced significant milestones in the adoption of Flash throughout the mobile content ecosystem.
Maelstrom, which is currently in beta, will be available for public download later this year.
Thursday 9th June 2005
Macromedia unveils a new Flash content delivery system 10:46AM
Ahead of its acquisition by Adobe, Macromedia has unveiled a new Flash content delivery system known simply as Flash Platform and released a preview of the next generation of the Flash Player, codenamed Maelstrom.
Flash Platform comprises a universal client runtime, an openly published file format (SWF) specification, a programming model, time-tested development tools and dedicated server technology. As well as rich media, Flash Platform can be used for enterprise applications, communications, and mobile applications.
The Maelstrom upgrade to Flash Player will add improvements to performance and font display and provide a higher quality video codec. Maelstrom is currently in beta and will be available for public download later this year.
Macromedia estimates that Flash is now installed on some 600 million computers worldwide and, according to the NPD Group, take up of new versions is rapid, with 80 per cent of installations occurring in the first year.
'Major enterprises and organisations are embracing the fact that great experiences mean great business,' said Stephen Elop, CEO, Macromedia. 'Great experiences improve customer and employee interaction, directly improve sales, and deliver a compelling brand experience, leading to significant ROI through increased use, brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction. The Flash Platform is quickly becoming a core component of the enterprise's overall business strategy.'
Meanwhile Adobe has given the US Department of Justice more time to investigate its proposed takeover of Macromedia, but nonetheless expects it to go ahead in the autumn.
Simon Aughton
MediaTuner Launches Web-based Rich Media RSS Aggregator and Player
Dynamic web-based Rich Media service, allows users to easily watch and listen to Video Blogs and Podcasts.
Westlake Village, CA (PRWEB) May 23, 2005 -- MediaTuner announces the official launch of a web-based Rich Media and Text RSS Aggregator and Player.
Using Text and Rich Media RSS feeds, MediaTuner allows users to easily organize and play - Video Blogs, Podcasts, Live Video and Audio Streaming Media, as well as view images and text information, such as news, sports and blogs.
Utilizing the proprietary Universal MediaTuner Player, users can play, listen to and view, up to 80 different file types, including Quicktime, Windows Media, Real, JPGs, Flash, PDFs and BitTorrents.
MediaTuner is a web-based, next-generation Rich Internet Application (RIA), requiring no program downloads or installation. All that is required to use the application, is the latest Macromedia Flash Player and player plugins. MediaTuner runs on either a PC or Mac and can be found at http://www.MediaTuner.com.
David Cronshaw, President of MediaTuner, says that this service, "will revolutionalize what media content we watch, listen to and read on the internet. With self-publishers of compelling content such as Video Blogs and Podcasts becoming mainstream, MediaTuner allows users to organize and easily time-shift their new internet viewing and listening habits. I know that from my own personal experience, everyday I logon to watch and listen to my favorite Video Blogs and Podcasts, such as Rocketboom and Adam Curry's Daily Source Code."
Lead developer Fernando Flórez from Funciton Communications, who led the MediaTuner development team, says that this application, "follows the new wave of Rich Internet Applications using top-notch technology to assure a great experience to end users."
Santiago Angles designed and developed the dynamic user interface.
About MediaTuner
MediaTuner is a Rich Internet Applications company, focused on increasing communications and media user experiences with Internet-enabled and mobile devices, using easy-to-use web-based technology.
Macromedia previews next Flash release
Friday 08 Apr 2005 - 10:34
Macromedia's technology agenda is focused on boosting Web-based video experiences, company officials said during the Flashforward2005 conference on Thursday.
Executives provided glimpses of upcoming technologies such as Maelstrom, the code name for the planned Flash Player 8 release; 8ball, which is the next version of the Flash authoring tool; and Flash Cast, the content delivery technology for mobile phones. Company officials would not comment on specific release dates for the planned technologies.
"Video is a huge new trend for the Flash Player," said Kevin Lynch, Macromedia executive vice president and chief software architect. Although video support has been available since Flash 6, wide adoption is just starting right now, he said. Flash 6 was released in 2001.
Use of Flash Player for presenting video is preferred because it is ubiquitous on users' desktops, according to Macromedia. "Video should be treated like any other element on the Web," said Mike Downey, Marcomedia technical product manager for Flash authoring. Downey showed video demos based on Flash being run by organizations such as the state of Pennsylvania and Adidas.
"It [video] really improves the overall experience because you're not just looking at an image but you're seeing people moving around," Downey said.
Maelstrom, the next-generation Flash Player, identified as Flash Player 8 on screen during a demo, offers improved rendering performance, allowing for effects such as blurring of a live video or applying "grayscale" to add gray tint to an image.
A video demo of a candle that was shown supported effects such as making the flame taller. "It looks like a piece of a video but it's not. It's all created with a static image of a candle," Lynch said. Additionally, video can be combined with other graphics. Also, the video codec in Flash Player 8 offers higher quality at the same bit rate.
Text is boosted as well in Flash Player 8, with improved font rendering that is "way better than it is today," Lynch said.
The upcoming 8ball version of the Flash authoring tool is focused on making it easier to work with video and improving the authoring experience for mobile devices. ActionScript usage is boosted and the release offers a better user interface and improvements in documentation and workflow, said Doug Benson, senior director for product development at Macromedia.
The interface for Flash is being tightly coupled with the interface of the Macromedia Studio MX Professional 2004 Web development tool. Interface customization also is a highlight of 8ball.Â
A demo was shown of an animated dog, in which shadows could be shown behind the dog.
"This release of Flash is all about enabling creativity," Benson said.
An attendee at the event was pleased with 8ball, noting features such as shadowing. "I can see where you can start creating different kinds of content," as opposed to simply developing flat graphics, said Steve Wood, a multimedia developer at State Farm Insurance.
According to a demo the company presented, Flash Cast technology makes a cell phone screen appear similar to a TV set. A CNN video feed was shown being delivered to a cell phone. "It uses all the functions of the phone to display great Flash content," said Gary Kovacs, vice president of marketing for mobile and devices at Macromedia.
I like this
by: randy_cooper2000
04/05/05 05:02 pm
Yes. That is interesting. I'll look forward to the PR release later on this. I believe this is the acquisition in an encoding company that has been discussed for some time now. Note, this is a Purchase and License agreement which indicates ONT has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Wildform to acquire the full rights to this software line as opposed to acquiring the full company. This is frequently done when a company has other product lines that the acquirer does not want or the liabilities that the acquirer does not want to assume.
I'll be interested to see the acquisition terms and existing revenues from this product line.
Nice to see all the speculation on MACR's usage of VP has been confirmed. Now with an established Flash encoding line ONT should be able to quickly capitalize on the Flash launch.
Regards,
R
On2 also announced today in a separate press release that it has entered into a purchase and license agreement with Wildform, Inc. regarding the Flix(TM) Flash video encoder technology. On2's video compression technology will be incorporated into this line of products.
Waleed Anbar
Product Manager, Flash Player and Central
Maelstrom in Your Future
Over the past year, we have rededicated ourselves to getting broad community feedback on our future development plans and efforts. Some of that is done privately through beta lists, customer advisory boards, and customer visits. Increasingly, some of it will be done publicly.
To this end, we have recently begun showing what we are working on for the next version of the Flash client, code-named "Maelstrom." The effort on Maelstrom roughly falls into three main themes: performance, expressiveness, and standardization.
Performance
Flash has evolved beyond its animation roots to become the leading rich client for complex business applications, an expressive medium for content, and a versatile communications endpoint. This evolution has increasingly put new types of performance demands on the Flash client.
To address this situation, a big part of our development focus for Maelstrom is aimed at improving performance. Accelerated graphics and code execution are all areas that show a lot of promise. For example, with enhanced bitmap image support, you can animate graphics as bitmaps instead of rendering them as vectors in each frame. This dramatically increases the number of objects that can be animated smoothly and preserves processing cycles for other tasks.
Expressiveness
You have told that you would like more expressiveness—a richer palette of options to create powerful effects. We have taken that to heart and are working on a number of new features:
Video: We plan to include an exceptional, new video codec that's comparable to some of the best codecs on the market today. This new codec allows you to deliver exceptional video quality at reasonable broadband rates and at larger sizes. We also plan to support a real-time transparent alpha channel that will enable live composition of non-rectangular video, allowing for the layering of video with text, graphics, and even other video.
Text: We plan to deliver a new text rendering solution that produces text as clear and readable as we have seen. It offers sharp, anti-aliased text and will support precision typographic features such as hinting and kerning. Furthermore, Flash text becomes much more readable, regardless of monitor type, resolution, or character set.
Real-time graphic effects: We're working on a set of killer real-time graphics effects like glows, blurs, drop-shadows, color matrix, and others. You can apply them live to any objects in Flash, including graphics, text, and even video. Because these are applied live, they can react interactively. Because they are dynamic, they reduce author time and file size by eliminating several post-processing steps in Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks that are required to achieve these effects today.
Blend modes and gradients: Professional designers can now create high-quality effects by composing graphics using a variety of blending modes—overlays, lighten and darken, multiply, screen, and more. In addition to more precise control over radial gradients and gradient stops, the possibilities for runtime creative expression with graphic elements are endless.
Powerful new APIs: Lower-level runtime access to graphic objects provides new options for visually tweaking your content, allowing developers to get high-performance, low-level control over graphics objects. By taking advantage of the performance improvements I mentioned previously, developers can create never-before-seen graphics effects and visual experiences in real time. This fine-grained access also enables dramatic performance optimizations and control over runtime performance.
Standardization
As you probably already know, ActionScript is based on ECMAScript, the open standard scripting language. As an ECMA member, Macromedia continues to participate in the evolution of ECMAScript through the standards process. In Maelstrom, we plan to evolve ActionScript toward full compliance with the latest ECMAScript version, called Edition 4. This will bring new power to ActionScript.
Those of you who have seen the demos at Macromedia MAX and other conferences will likely agree with me that Maelstrom has many exciting features to offer and is consistent with where developers and designers using Flash need us to take it.
Showing technology while it is still under development is risky, however, so please keep these key thoughts in mind as you think about Maelstrom or any other technology we show before it is shipping:
When we show you stuff that is still in the lab, that means it's still cooking. There is no guarantee that any of the features we show you or talk about will actually make it into the final shipping product.
The whole point of showing things early is to get your feedback and have that feedback impact our future direction. We maintain a feature request form where you can send us suggestions and thoughts about features you like and don't like. Even though we typically do not respond directly to individual requests, we do read, catalog, and prioritize your suggestions as part of our development cycle.
Please avoid the tendency to jump to dramatic conclusions about how the technology will impact your present efforts. Again, this stuff is still in the lab and could change course by 180 degrees before it ships.
Just because we are starting to show things, no implication should be drawn on the timing of the shipping products.
Maelstrom will be integrated into all of our products that rely on the Flash client. As has always been the case, existing content—regardless of when it was created or for which client version—will continue to be rendered exactly the same as the author intended.
There are many features in Maelstrom that are completely new and will require new code to be written if you want to take advantage of them in existing projects. We will offer more information on how to take advantage of these new features when we're closer to release. We plan to document extensively all the ways customers can take full advantage of what Maelstrom has to offer. We are committed to making this as easy as possible.
Finally, we have conducted download testing for different-sized clients and have concluded that the expected footprint of Maelstrom will not materially impact the historical adoption rate of new Flash client versions. We attribute this to many factors, including the rapid adoption of broadband worldwide.
We think that Maelstrom will be the most significant release of the Flash client ever. Much of it is credited to all the great feedback and commentary that you have given us. Keep that feedback coming!
Those of you who are interested in joining Macromedia beta programs can review our requirements and complete an application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the author
Waleed Anbar's life revolved around Macromedia Flash for four years before he finally came to Macromedia to help build the future of Flash and forge innovations in the world of interface design, graphic art, and information visualization. Ironically, he devotes his time indoors to making computers more effective so that future generations might be able to get outside once in a while.
Sirius Mobile Video Service Now Planned for 2006
Wed Jan 5, 2005 10:35 PM ET
Printer Friendly / Email Article / Reprints
By Franklin Paul
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. said on Wednesday it is planning a children's video service for cars in 2006, a year later than it had expected, using software from Microsoft Corp.
Sirius, which provides subscription based satellite radio services for a monthly fee, said last year it would offer video services by mid-2005. Spokesman Jim Collins said timing depended on automakers rather than Sirius' capability.
The company's shares closed up about 1.7 percent after trading nearly 3 percent higher earlier in the session.
"All of our partners have expressed an interest," said Collins. "The timing of the service is dependent on when our automotive partners are ready."
He did not disclose specific agreements but noted that Ford Motor Co. had demonstrated Sirius' video technology in some Lincoln Mercury models at car shows. Collins said video was not part of Ford's existing agreement to offer Sirius in up to 1 million cars in 2 years beginning this summer.
Separately, Comcast Corp. said Wednesday it plans to explore ways with mobile electronics maker Delphi Corp. to send video programing to cars, potentially pitting the top U.S. cable company against Sirius and its bigger rival, XM Satellite Radio in a new battleground for digital entertainment.
REGULATORY ISSUES
The Federal Communications Commission said it would look into the concept of satellite radio companies providing video but Sirius said is not aware of any regulatory issues surrounding its video plans.
Sirius said it is planning two to three video channels with programing aimed at children. At a press conference in Las Vegas, Sirius Chairman Joseph Clayton said the service would debut "late summer 2006," adding that customers would likely pay an additional fee for video.
XM Satellite Radio will show satellite video demonstrations at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week but has no plans for a service so far.
XM Chief Executive Hugh Panero said that the notion of satellite video in cars is intriguing, but that the company was still pondering the viability as a business given the tiny number of cars with screens.
"We have the capability to do video, it is really not beyond our technological reach," he told Reuters at the conference. "When we are ready to announce a product, we will."
Sirius closed up 13 cents at $7.64 on Nasdaq. XM stock was down 79 cents at $34.56.
Collins said the company is currently focused mainly on video for cars but Sirius and Microsoft plan to collaborate further on video for computers and home entertainment devices.
The satellite radio company's former chief executive, Joseph Clayton, said in May Sirius would introduce four and possibly as many as eight video channels for children riding in the back seats of cars.
Sirius lags behind XM in subscriber numbers but attracted widespread attention last year after it signed a deal with controversial radio show host Howard Stern and made media veteran Mel Karmazin its CEO.
At the conference, Karmazin repeated the company's forecast that it would double its subscribers next year and take market share from XM.
THE 2004 INFO TECH 100
Wireless
Finally, serious cell-phone capabilities and services are rolling in. Imagine your next phone as a TV, Radio, and Videocam
It was May 26, and 28-year-old Boston native Greg Robinson was listening to his beloved Red Sox battle their way back from a 2-1 deficit against the Oakland Athletics. But he wasn't using a conventional radio. He was listening to the game with a headset attached to a new multimedia phone from wireless company Sprint PCS (PCS ). The next morning, he used the same pocket-size phone, made by Samsung (No. 11 on the Info Tech 100), to call up and watch video highlights of the game and then a news clip from cable-TV channel CNBC. Robinson pays $10 a month for unlimited video viewing and another $10 for radio. Now he can enjoy the Sox anywhere he wants, without lugging around a radio or laptop. "I'm surprised at how well it works," he says.
Phone Power
A new wave of innovative services is about to turn the cell-phone business upside down. During the past few years, the cell phone has become standard issue for many people. More than 160 million Americans, or 55% of the population, have one. That huge market has convinced media companies and software developers that it's time to get serious about developing new goodies for mobile phones.
In one early sign of what's to come, ABC (DIS ) is offering video news clips for Sprint cell-phone subscribers. National Public Radio is delivering segments of Morning Edition and other shows to AT&T Wireless (AWE ) customers. Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ) is working on ways to make as many as 100 channels of Internet radio service available to cell-phone users. And within months, Walt Disney Co. (DIS ) plans to offer short, animated videos featuring Mickey and the gang.
"We're about to undergo a revolution in wireless," says Scott A. Ellison, head of wireless at researcher IDC (IDC ). The new services being developed promise to be more than just fun and games. Newfangled capabilities have the potential to change industries and boost productivity. The cell phone will emerge as an alternative to carrying cash or credit cards because people will be able to make payments from their cell phone to scanners on cash registers and vending machines.
Tech developers are buzzing about grocery giant Kroger Co.'s (KR ) plan to unveil a service later this year that lets shoppers instantly purchase their Wheaties from a store shelf by waving a cell phone equipped with an infrared port over the side of the box. Instead of going through a checkout line with a cashier, the customer could simply pass the phone over another scanner near the store's exit, confirming the goods have been paid for. And by next year, when faster networks are in place, cell-phone companies will offer four-way video calls on phones, making it easier for people to work while they're on the go.
Delivering these services will be a thorny task. Cell-phone companies don't have a great record when it comes to providing basic voice service, let alone rolling out new technology. Dropped calls and poor coverage are still an issue in many markets. And due to exorbitant costs, the rollout of high-speed 3G networks necessary to carry all this new content is taking a lot longer than people expected. T-Mobile's Nick Sears, vice-president of consumer product marketing, says the industry hasn't figured out how to distribute anything except short video highlights at a price people are willing to pay. "We have a long way to go before we get to nirvana. This won't happen overnight," says Craig J. Mathias, founder of wireless researcher Farpoint Group.
The obstacles are hardly insurmountable, though. The success of wireless TV and music in Korea shows that people are willing to spend money on advanced wireless services when they're delivered over phones with lots of memory and large, bright screens. And the technology that has made Korean wireless a success is coming to the U.S. By the end of 2005, Verizon Wireless (VZ ) plans to cover most of the U.S. with its new fast network that approaches the speed of broadband connections at home. Rivals plan similar offerings.
Wireless services are starting to take off in the U.S. for good reason. Cell phones, cheaper and more powerful than just a few years ago, are developing at warp speed, just the way PCs have been for years. Already, cell phones have screens that display 65,000 colors, up from 256 just a few years ago. Thanks to speedier networks, faster computer chips, and better compression technology, video will flow over wireless networks at 20 frames a second by the end of this year, says Richard Siber, head of consultant Accenture's wireless practice. That's near the quality of standard TV's 30 frames a second.
Beyond Voice
The renaissance in cell-phone services also reflects financial necessity. After years of torrid revenue growth, a withering price war has offset the financial benefits of subscriber growth. Cell-phone companies pulled in $96 billion from voice services in 2003, up 3.2% from 2002, according to researcher In-Stat MDR. And the market is expected to grow just 1%, to $97 billion, this year. Data is a different story. The same research shows that revenue from wireless data services is expected to jump 50% this year, to $4.2 billion.
More powerful video capabilities are going to open up a new world of communications. People will shoot homemade movies in situations where they never would have bothered to lug a camcorder. If someone isn't sure whether their husband or wife should bother to take a look at the house the realtor just showed them, they can send a video of the property. Such changes are coming fast. Motorola Inc. (MOT ) (No. 29 on the IT 100) will unveil a phone in the U.S. this fall that will let users record and store up to three minutes of video, blowing past the current limit of about 15 seconds.
The cell phone will bring big changes to the world of music, too. Say users are out at a restaurant or bar and hear an unfamiliar song that catches their attention. Soon, they'll be able to use their mobile phone to record a brief sample and send it to a wireless service to identify the artist and song. BusinessWeek has learned that AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless are in talks with New York software startup MusiKube to launch the service this summer.
Customer service also may get a boost. The online travel agency Orbitz automatically shoots text messages or voice mails to customers' cell phones with up-to-date information on their flights. If travelers want a report on the weather at their destination, Orbitz will zap that, too. "It takes the stress out of the situation," says Mark Wiktor, an asset management and investment consultant in Chicago who connects to Orbitz via AT&T Wireless.
The most radical change of all may be the rise of phones that can be tracked by the network. Satellite systems can pinpoint the location of today's phones to within a few hundred yards, opening up the opportunity for subscribers to get new kinds of services based on where they are. If a user gets lost on the way to a movie theater, the system will send directions to the phone and help order tickets. AT&T Wireless already offers such services to subscribers for $3 to $20 a month. Patricia H. Char, a Seattle attorney, uses the AT&T Wireless service to track her two teenage boys when they go rafting in the mountains -- or out with friends "until the wee hours," she says. "It's great."
Part phone, part computer, part TV, and part radio, the newest cell phones blur the divisions of technology. "It is truly the one device that people will never leave home without," says Jason Few, vice-president of marketing for Motorola's North American cell-phone unit. With the ability to watch video, listen to radio broadcasts, and buy soft drinks from their cell phone, people might never go back home.
Verizon Wireless Launches Multimedia Service
By Ed Raymond
Wireless NewsFactor
January 7, 2005 4:46PM
A new wireless multimedia service from Verizon Wireless will use the company's EV-DO 3G network to deliver multimedia content to mobile phones. The VCAST system initially will be available in 20 U.S. markets.
Verizon Wireless has announced the launch of a third-generation wireless multimedia service for consumers.
Called VCAST, the service will deliver video, 3-D games, and music straight to next-generation phones that run on the Verizon Wireless broadband 3G EV-DO (evolution-data optimized) network. The service will be available beginning February 1st.
Video on Demand
Customers will be able to use a new generation of handsets to access VCAST's video-on-demand service, viewing current news, weather, sports and entertainment programming. They also will be able to download and play three-dimensional games.
Verizon Wireless has established relationships with a variety of content sources, including MTV Networks' VH1 and Comedy Central brands. A relationship with News Corp. and 20th Century Fox will bring Verizon Wireless customers exclusive programs -- "24: Conspiracy," "Sunset Hotel" and "Love & Hate" -- specifically designed for mobile phones .
A broad offering of content, including newscasts made exclusively for mobile phones, also will be available from NBC.
VCAST runs on the Verizon Wireless 3G EV-DO network, which began commercial operation in October 2003 in San Diego, California, and Washington, D.C.
"When we announced the rollout plans for the Verizon Wireless 3G network one year ago at last year's Consumer Electronics Show," said Verizon Wireless executive vice president and CTO Dick Lynch at the CES in Las Vegas on Friday, "we said we would deploy the technology in areas covering 75 million people -- or one-third of our network -- in the United States by the end of 2004. Promise made, promise kept," he said.
20 Markets
In addition to 20 previously launched metropolitan areas, the company today announced 12 additional markets: Chicago; Houston; Boston; Phoenix, Arizona; Providence, Rhode Island; Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida; Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut; and Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio. Major expansions have been made in many existing 3G markets, including New York City; Newark, New Jersey; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Miami, Tampa and West Palm Beach, Florida; Baltimore, Maryland; Kansas City, Missouri; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Lynch said Verizon Wireless plans to expand its 3G network to cover 150 million U.S. consumers by the end of 2005.
Customers will pay an additional US$15 monthly in addition to their regular Verizon Wireless calling plan to use the VCAST service.
At launch, customers will be able to access VCAST on three new phones from LG Mobile Phones, Samsung Telecommunications America and UTStarcom Personal Communications.
SBC Tips Hand on Home Entertainment Network
By Carol Wilson
Telephony
01/03/05 10:30 AM PT
Customers who subscribe to SBC Yahoo DSL Service and to SBC/Dish Network will be eligible to receive the new home entertainment service, which will allow the customer to access photos and music that are stored on a computer on a television screen and to control DVR and programming functions of the television from a PC.
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Even as it invests billions to upgrade its networks, SBC Communications (NYSE: SBC) has crafted a Home Entertainment Service for the millions of customers who won't get fiber to their neighborhoods anytime soon.
Through a joint venture with 2Wire, and extension of existing agreements with EchoStar (Nasdaq: DISH) and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , SBC announced today that it will offer a service that integrates satellite TV programming, digital video recording, video-on-demand and Internet content, including photos and music, into an in-home entertainment network that connects computers and TV sets.
Jump on CES
The company had been expected to announce the new offering at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, beginning Wednesday. On Monday, 2Wire announced that is has won a 2005 International CES Innovations award for its MediaPortal set top box, and the HES service. The two companies will be demonstrating the service at CES, where SBC Chairman Edware Whitacre is a keynote speaker.
The new service, which will be available in mid-2005, is being developed "on a parallel path" to SBC's Project Lightspeed, the multi-billion dollar effort to increase bandwidth by building fiber to the neighborhood in existing communities and fiber to the home in new developments, according to an SBC spokesman.
Customers who subscribe to SBC Yahoo DSL Service and to SBC/Dish Network will be eligible to receive the new home entertainment service, which uses the 2Wire MediaPortal technology to integrate network computers and televisions, allowing the customer to access photos and music that are stored on a computer on a television screen and to control DVR and programming functions of the television from a PC.
The focus will be on ease-of-use, said the SBC spokesman.
"All the pieces will be tied into an in-home network that will be smoothly and easily controlled without a lot of technical training," he commented. "You'll be able to listen to MP3s that are downloaded onto your computer through a home entertainment system using the remote control and do the same thing with photos stored on a computer."
Details To Come
Many details must still be worked out, including pricing, and installation.
"We don't have actual fees established yet, but we do know there will be a one-time leasing fee customers will pay for the system and other fees for services."
Currently, SBC drop-ships DSL modems to its new customers, but it is highly likely this more complex inside wiring job will be done by company technicians, the spokesman added.
EchoStar, owner of Dish Network , has agreed to ensure that broadcast content works with 2Wires new set-top box service. SBC and Yahoo recently announced an agreement to extend the SBC Yahoo online interface to other products.
SBC customers who do get connected to a fiber network, either in the neighborhood or at the home, will get a "somewhat different set of services" based on the greater bandwidth available, the spokesman said. SBC has not yet chosen a set-top vendor for that service. Eventually, Cingular wireless service will be integrated into the home network, to allow customers to program their DVRs from a wireless handset or to set security levels on home computers remotely.
2Wire has been providing home gateways through SBC for DSL subscribers with multiple PCs. The company also has distribution deals with BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) and CenturyTel (NYSE: CTL) as well as several international carriers.
US companies foresee rapid growth of satellite TV for cars
www.chinaview.cn 2005-01-10 13:47:26
LAS VEGAS, the United States, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Several US satellite firms said Sunday that they plan to feed satellite TV on cars within 18 months after satellite radio grabbed attention at 2005 International Consumers Electronics Show (CES) held here.
DirecTV, a US major satellite TV company, planned to release a special programming package for its mobile TV subscribers, thus the car users, in addition to receiving DirecTV in the cars, can watch 750 movies on 13 channels.
KVH, an antenna company that is leading in the growing car satellite TV market, expected the market will grow quickly as mobile screens in the cars are proliferating. The KVH has a rooftop satellite receiver/antenna system called the Tracvision A5which is sold through 800 retail shops.
Meanwhile, Audiovox announced that it will offer a similar antenna receiver package at a price of about 3,000 dollars. It estimated that about 35,000 to 40,000 car satellite TV units will sell the package this year.
Satellite radio company Sirius said it will offer two to three streaming satellite video channels for mainly children's programming by the summer of 2006.
Moreover, the Delphi company announced a partnership with the leading US cable operator Comcast for developing a satellite videosystem within 18 months.
The 2005 International CES, the world's largest showcase of latest digital technology and products, ran on Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas. Enditem
XM Satellite Radio Selects On2 TrueMotion VP6
Codec Will Power Video Portion of Satellite Video Demonstration at CES
NEW YORK and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- On2 Technologies,
Inc. (Amex: ONT) today announced at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
that XM Satellite Radio will use its TrueMotion VP6.2 video compression
technology in XM's in-vehicle prototype video entertainment system.
The new system will be used to transmit video entertainment to satellite
receivers in automobiles. The video signal will be used primarily for back-
seat entertainment with content that can be either streamed in real time or
and cached for later playback.
After evaluating codecs from several other vendors, XM selected TrueMotion
VP6.2 because of its excellent performance in this kind of environment. In
XM's tests, competing video codecs failed to achieve the same results.
XM and its automotive equipment partners are demonstrating the satellite
entertainment prototype in a new technology showcase vehicle this week at CES
in Las Vegas.
On2 is also attending CES and giving private demonstrations of their new
products in a suite at the MGM Grand hotel. CES attendees who are interested
in visiting the On2 suite can call (917)-865-2143 to make an appointment.
"As XM continues to expand the possibilities of satellite entertainment
technology and content, we have incorporated On2's video technology for its
quality in both streaming and cached playback applications," said Stuart Cox,
XM's Vice President, Advanced Applications.
"The XM deal illustrates once again how TrueMotion excels in diverse
applications where quality is the highest priority," said Douglas A. McIntyre,
On2's Chairman, President, and CEO. "This opportunity opens up the markets for
consumer electronics devices for On2's technology in ways that none of our
previous customer relationships have."
About On2 Technologies, The Duck Corporation
On2 Technologies (Amex: ONT) is a leading technology firm at the forefront
of video compression. The company revolutionized digital media delivery with
the creation of its advanced full-motion, full-screen, TrueMotion(R)
VP4/VP5/VP6 compression and streaming technologies. On2's TrueMotion codecs
are used extensively in the video-on-demand, videoconferencing, Internet
media, surveillance, and store-and-play markets. They operate with On2's own
TrueCast Server and Player software, as well as third-party player and server
products. On2's software is used by such leading companies as Sony, NTT, AOL,
BBC, ABC News, Nullsoft, SeaChange International, China Netcom, NHK, and
Nanwang Multimedia. The VP6 decoder has an installation base of millions
through its inclusion in AOL 9 Media Player, Winamp 5, Viewpoint Media Player,
and others. On2 licenses its software for use in set-top boxes, consumer
electronics devices and wireless applications and offers high-level video
encoding, customized technical support, and consulting/integration services.
Located in New York City, the company has an office in Clifton Park, NY, and
operations in Cambridge, UK. To contact On2 write to sales@on2.com or visit
http://www.on2.com.
About XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR) is America's number one satellite radio
service with more than 3.1 million subscribers. Broadcasting live daily from
studios in Washington, DC, New York City and Nashville at the Country Music
Hall of Fame, XM's 2005 lineup includes more than 130 digital channels of
choice from coast to coast: 68 one-hundred-percent commercial-free music
channels, featuring critically-acclaimed original programming, concerts, and
diverse musical genres ranging from hip hop to opera, classical to country,
bluegrass to blues; more than 40 channels of premier sports, talk, comedy,
children's and entertainment programming; and 21 channels of the most advanced
traffic and weather information for major metropolitan areas nationwide. XM
was named Best Radio Service at the 2004 Billboard Digital Entertainment
Awards. Popular Science recently chose XM products for two prestigious "Best
of What's New 2004" Awards. As the Official Satellite Radio Network for Major
League Baseball (MLB) and the Exclusive Satellite Radio Service for NASCAR, as
well as the Official Satellite Radio Service for ACC, PAC-10 and Big-10
collegiate football and basketball, XM Satellite Radio is the industry leader
in sports radio programming, offering thousands of live sporting events each
year.
XM, the leader in satellite-delivered entertainment and data services for
the automobile market through partnerships with General Motors, Honda, Toyota,
Nissan and Volkswagen/Audi, is available in more than 120 different vehicle
models for 2005. XM also is available in Avis, National, and Alamo rental
cars, and will soon be available on JetBlue and AirTran Airways. Consumers
can experience XM over the Internet through XM Radio Online at
http://listen.xmradio.com. For more information about XM hardware, programming
and partnerships, please visit http://www.xmradio.com.
CES: Satellite video, Internet coming to vehicles
IDG News Service 1/6/05
Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau
Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. plans to offer video content in addition to its more than 120 audio channels in the second half of 2006, the company announced Wednesday at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
The company, chief rival to XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. in the U.S. market, has joined with Microsoft Corp. to use Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 software and collaborate in developing the service. Sirius develops and delivers a service from satellites and works with car makers and auto electronics manufacturers to provide equipment to pick up the service.
This isn't the first time Sirius has made a partnership announcement for an in-car video service at CES. At last year's show, the company said it would work with auto electronics maker Delphi Corp. to deliver live in-car video and make the service available to car manufacturers within 18 months -- by mid-2005. Delivery to auto makers comes before a service is available to consumers, said Sirius spokesman Ron Rodrigues. He declined to comment on whether that would happen by the middle of this year.
Delphi is still actively working with Sirius on in-car video, according to Delphi spokesman John Shea. Shea would not comment on when such a service might be available. Rodrigues, at Sirius, declined to comment on whether the company is currently working with Delphi.
Sirius gave few details about the video service but said it should include two to three channels of video designed primarily for children. It is intended for new 2007-model cars with more advanced future antennas, but the antennas should be about the same size as current ones for Sirius radio, Rodrigues said. Other manufacturers might offer aftermarket add-on systems for existing cars in the future, he added.
In developing the video service with Microsoft, Sirius is responding to the demands of car makers, Rodrigues said.
Also on Wednesday, Delphi began blazing another path to in-car video, announcing a deal with Comcast Corp. to develop a system for downloading video from the cable operator on to a hard disk drive in the car. After capturing cartoons, sports shows, movies and other video over a Wi-Fi network, Comcast subscribers could watch those shows on the road, Delphi's Shea said. Evaluation and development will take six months to 18 months, he said. Pricing for the equipment and service have not been set.
Meanwhile, a current provider of vehicle-based satellite video receiving systems, RaySat Inc., announced a new system that will add in high-speed satellite Internet access that passengers can use via a Wi-Fi transceiver. The SpeedRay 3000 can deliver as much as 2M bps (bits per second) of satellite throughput even in isolated areas, the company said in a statement. It uses a five-inch-high dish antenna housed in an impact-resistant case on the roof. The antenna will ship in the third quarter for $3,495. RaySat did not disclose TV and Internet subscription rates.
Evolving current in-vehicle video systems like RaySat's into a service more like satellite radio could expand the market, said Michelle Abraham, an analyst at In-Stat/MDR, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
"If you can use a similar-sized antenna (to satellite radio) and it's not going to be that much more expensive, then you're going to have a lot more consumer interest," she said.
However, Sirius may be jumping the gun, according to Gartner Inc. automotive analyst Thilo Koslowski.
"I'm not convinced they can pull it off at this time, and I'm not sure consumers want it now," Koslowski said. Both Sirius and XM need to concentrate now on drawing more subscribers to reach profitability, and video would appeal only to a subset of drivers who frequently have passengers in the car, he said. Even those consumers may prefer to buy their own DVDs and use an in-car player.
In addition, Sirius is a newcomer at getting the movies and other content that subscribers would want to watch. "I'm not quite sure yet that Sirius can compete with DirecTV or a cable provider when it comes to programming," he said.
To succeed down the road, both satellite and hard-drive video systems will have to be able to leave the car, Koslowski said. Rather than built-in systems, both Sirius and Delphi will probably need portable devices -- and Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod may get there first, he said. Auto manufacturers themselves have become cautious about new built-in electronics, he added.
"Going forward, the vehicle manufacturers will only offer an interface in their vehicle ... that will connect to devices that you bring into the vehicle," Koslowski said.
Stephen Lawson is senior U.S. correspondent for the IDG News Service.
ck, i wish we had PV on our partners page... they were the first to score everybody, and i mean everybody.
e
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for another board.
c ya
r
3-Nov-2004
Quarterly Report
ITEM 2. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS.
This document contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of
Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and are not statements of historical fact. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "might," "will," "would," "should," "could," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "objective, " "forecast," "goal" or "continue," the negative of such terms, their cognates, or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions, and actual events or results may differ materially. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements, and in all cases, such statements are subject to the Company's ability to secure additional financing or to increase revenues to support its operations. We believe that our existing funds and funds that we expect to generate will be sufficient to finance our operations for the next 12 months. There is no assurance that additional funds will not be required to support our operations. In this regard, the business and operations of the Company are subject to substantial risks that increase the uncertainty inherent in the forward-looking statements contained in this Form 10-QSB. You should consider the material presented in this Form 10-QSB in conjunction with "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations - Risk Factors That May Affect Future Operating Results" in the Company's Form 10-KSB for the year ended December 31, 2003.
The inclusion of the forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that such forward-looking statements will be achieved. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In light of the foregoing, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this report.
OVERVIEW
We are a leading video compression technology firm. We have developed a proprietary technology platform and the VPx family (e.g., VP4, VP5, VP6) of video compression/decompression software ("codec") to deliver high-quality video at the lowest possible data rates over proprietary networks and the Internet to set-top boxes, personal computers and wireless devices. Unlike other video codecs that are based on standard compression specifications set by industry groups (e.g., MPEG and H.264), our video compression software is based solely on intellectual property that we developed and own ourselves.
-12-
We offer the following suite of products and services that incorporate our proprietary compression technology:
PRODUCTS o video codecs;
o audio codecs; and
o encoding and server software, for use with
video delivery platforms
o hardware products on which our
compression and/or server
software have been installed
SERVICES o customized engineering and
consulting services;
o technical support; and
o high-level video encoding
Our customers use our products and services chiefly to provide the following video-related products and services to end users:
TYPE OF CUSTOMER EXAMPLES
---------------- --------
APPLICATION
-----------
Video and Audio Distribution over o providing video-on-demand services
Proprietary Networks to residents in multi-dwelling
units (MDUs)
o video surveillance
Consumer Electronic Devices o digital video players
o digital video recorders
o video-enabled toys
o mobile wireless video units
Wireless Applications o delivery of video via satellite
o providing video to web-enabled
cell phones and PDAs
Video and Audio Distribution over o video-on-demand
IP-based Networks (Internet) o teleconferencing services
o video instant messaging
As discussed in greater detail below, we earn revenue chiefly through licensing our software and providing specialized software engineering and consulting services to customers. We also sell customized high-end hardware on which we have preinstalled our compression and/or server software. In addition to license fees, we often charge a royalty fee based on the number of units of the customer's products containing the relevant On2 software products that are sold or distributed. Some of our agreements with customers also require that the customers pay us a percentage of the revenues that they earn from any of their products or services that use our software. Royalties may be subject to guaranteed minimum amounts and may only apply after a threshold number of per-unit sales has been met. We also sell licenses to third-party resellers. In addition, we generally require that customers pay us if they desire to receive any upgrades to our software (e.g., from VP6 to VP7). We charge a fee for engineering and consulting services, based on an estimate of the time it will take our software engineers to provide the services, or an hourly fee for ongoing services such as product support.
-13-
The primary factor that will be critical to our success is our ability to continue to improve on our current video compression software so that it streams the highest-quality video at the lowest transmission rates (bit rate). We believe that our video compression software is highly efficient, allowing customers to stream comparatively good-quality video (compared with our competitors) at low bit rates (i.e., over slow connections) and unsurpassed high-resolution video at high bit rates (i.e., over broadband connections). As connection speeds increase, however, the advantage On2's highly-efficient codec has over our competition in allowing initial, breakthrough or first-time consumer-acceptable video delivery may be less compelling. Nevertheless, in an increasingly demanding, high-bandwidth world, greater compression rates are seen as having more broadly applicable value, as growing demand and competition drive efforts to maximize efficiency in the use of bandwidth and storage.
Another factor that may affect our success is the relative complexity of our video compression software compared with other compression software producing comparable compression rates and image quality. Software with lower complexity can run on a computer chip that is less powerful, and therefore generally less expensive, than would be required to run software that is comparatively more complex. Increased compression rates frequently result in increased complexity. While potential customers desire software that produces the highest possible compression rates while producing the best possible decompressed image, they also desire to keep production costs low by using the lowest-powered and accordingly least expensive chips that will still allow them to perform the processing they require. In addition, in some applications, such as mobile devices, size constraints rather than price issues limit the power of the chips embedded in such devices. Of course, in devices where a great deal of processing power can be devoted to video compression and decompression, the issue of software complexity is less important. In addition, in certain applications, savings in chip costs related to the use of low complexity software may be offset by increased costs (or reduced revenue) stemming from less efficient compression (e.g., increased bandwidth costs).
One of the most significant recent trends in our business is our increasing reliance on the success of the product deployments of our customers. As referenced above, an increasing number of our license agreements with customers provide for the payment of license fees that are dependent on the number of units of a customer's product incorporating our software that are sold or the amount of revenue generated by a customer from the sale of products or services that incorporate our software. We have chosen this royalty-dependent licensing model because, as a company of only 30 full-time employees, we do not have the product development or marketing resources to develop and market end-to-end video solutions. Instead, our software is primarily intended for use as a building block for companies that are developing end-to-end video products and/or services. Although we are confident that we have adopted the licensing model most appropriate for a business of our size and expertise, a natural result of this licensing model is that the amount of revenue we generate is highly dependent on the success of our customers' product deployments. If the products of customers with whom we have established per-unit royalty or revenue sharing relationships do not generate significant sales, such revenue may not attain significant levels. Conversely, if one or more of such customers' products are widely adopted, our revenues will likely be enhanced.
Another significant recent trend in our business is the emergence of Microsoft as a principal competitor in the market for digital media creation and distribution technology. Microsoft currently competes with us in the market for digital media servers, players, codecs and other technology and services related to digital distribution of media. Microsoft's commitment to and presence in the media delivery industry has increased. Microsoft distributes its competing streaming encoder, media server, player, tools and digital rights management products by bundling them with its Windows operating systems and servers at no additional cost or otherwise making them available free of charge or at a low cost. Microsoft's ability to offer an integrated software package including multimedia compression and digital rights management applications may be attractive to potential customers, especially in the video-on-demand market. Microsoft's practices have caused, and may continue to cause, pricing pressure on our revenue generating products and services and may affect usage of our competing products and formats. Microsoft's practices have led in some cases, and could continue to lead to, longer sales cycles, decreased sales, loss of existing and potential customers and reduced market share. In addition, we believe that Microsoft has used and may continue to use its monopoly position in the computer industry and its financial resources to secure preferential or exclusive distribution, use and bundling contracts for its media delivery technologies and products with third parties, such as ISPs, content delivery networks, content providers, entertainment and media companies, VARs and OEMs, including third parties with whom we have relationships.
-14-
A potential trend that we are currently monitoring is the possible emergence of H.264 as a competitor in the video compression field. H.264 is a standards-based codec that is the successor to MPEG-4. Although we believe our technology is superior to H.264, H.264 may become widely adopted by potential customers because, as a standards-based codec, there are numerous developers programming to the H.264 standard and developing products based on such standard. In addition, there are certain customers that prefer to license standards-based codecs.
The market for digital media creation and delivery technology is constantly changing and intensely and increasingly competitive. We have and continue to take a number of steps to address this competition. First and foremost, we focus on providing our customers with video compression/decompression technology that delivers the highest possible video quality at the lowest possible data rates. To do this, we devote a significant portion of our engineering capacity to research and development. Although we expect that competition from Microsoft and others will continue to intensify, and that additional competition from H.264 may emerge, we currently expect that our video compression technology will remain competitive and that we will continue to innovate in the video compression field. We also address the competitive threats that we face by focusing on developing relationships with customers who do not want to do business with Microsoft and/or do not find the complex and rigid standards-based licenses and fee structures appealing.
CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES
This discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations are based on our condensed consolidated financial statements that have been prepared pursuant to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The preparation of our condensed consolidated financial statements requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenue and expenses during the reporting period. Actual results could materially differ from those estimates. The condensed consolidated financial statements and the related notes thereto should be read in conjunction with the following discussion of our critical accounting policies and our Form 10-KSB filed with the SEC on March 30, 2004. Our critical accounting policies and estimates are:
o Revenue recognition
o Valuation of goodwill, intangible assets and other long-lived assets
-15-
Revenue recognition. We currently recognize revenue from professional services and the sale of software licenses. As described below, significant management judgments and estimates must be made and used in determining the amount of revenue recognized in any given accounting period. Material differences may result in the amount and timing of our revenue for any given accounting period depending upon judgments made by or estimates utilized by management.
We recognize revenue in accordance with SOP 97-2, "Software Revenue Recognition" ("SOP 97-2"), as amended by SOP 98-4, "Deferral of the Effective Date of SOP 97-2, Software Revenue Recognition" and SOP 98-9, "Modification of SOP 97-2 with Respect to Certain Transactions" ("SOP 98-9"). Under each arrangement, revenues are recognized when a non-cancelable agreement has been signed and the customer acknowledges an unconditional obligation to pay, the products or applications have been delivered, there are no uncertainties surrounding customer acceptance, the fees are fixed and determinable, and collection is considered probable. Revenues recognized from multiple-element software arrangements are allocated to each element of the arrangement based on the fair values of the elements, such as product licenses, post-contract customer support, or training. The determination of the fair value is based on the vendor specific objective evidence available to us. If such evidence of the fair value of each element of the arrangement does not exist, we defer all revenue from the arrangement until such time that evidence of the fair value does exist or until all elements of the arrangement are delivered.
Our software licensing arrangements typically consist of two elements: a software license and post-contract customer support ("PCS"). We recognize license revenues based on the residual method after all elements other than PCS have been delivered as prescribed by SOP 98-9. We recognize PCS revenues over the term of the maintenance contract or on a "per usage" basis, whichever is stated in the contract. Vendor specific objective evidence of the fair value of PCS is determined by reference to the price the customer will have to pay for PCS when it is sold separately (i.e. the renewal rate). Our license agreements usually offer additional PCS at a stated price. Revenue is recognized on a per copy basis for licensed software when each copy of the licensed software purchased by the customer or reseller is delivered. We do not allow returns, exchanges or price protection for sales of software licenses to our customers or resellers, and we do not allow our resellers to purchase software licenses under consignment arrangements.
When engineering and consulting services are sold together with a software license, the arrangement typically requires customization and integration of the software into a third party hardware platform. In these arrangements, we require the customer to pay a fixed fee for the engineering and consulting services and a licensing fee in the form of a per-unit royalty. We account for engineering and consulting arrangements in accordance with SOP 81-1, "Accounting for Performance of Construction Type and Certain Production Type Contracts," ("SOP 81-1"). When reliable estimates are available for the costs and efforts necessary to complete the engineering or consulting services and those services do not include contractual milestones or other acceptance criteria, we recognize revenue under the percentage of completion contract method based upon input measures, such as hours. When such estimates are not available, we defer all revenue recognition until we have completed the contract and have no further obligations to the customer.
Encoding Services consist of services that convert video and audio content into formats for delivery to end-users. Encoding services are generally provided under per unit or time and materials contracts. Under these contracts, we recognize revenue when services have been rendered and we have no further interest or obligation in the goods and services, which is generally the date on which the goods or services have been delivered to the customer.
Valuation of goodwill and intangible assets. We evaluate our long-lived assets in accordance with SFAS No. 121, "Accounting for the Impairment of Long-Lived Assets and for Long-Lived Assets to be Disposed Of" ("SFAS No. 121"). Long-lived assets that are not identified with an impaired asset are reviewed for impairment whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the net carrying value of the asset may not be recoverable. Certain circumstances include a deterioration of our financial resources, poor economic trends within the industry, significant changes in our business model or a significant decline in the demand for video delivery solutions. In such circumstances, the net carrying value of the asset is compared to the undiscounted future cash flows of the business segment to which that asset is attributable. As we operate under one business segment, the net carrying value of all long-lived assets are compared to our consolidated undiscounted future cash flows. Impairment losses are measured by the amount in which the net carrying value of the assets exceed the fair value.
-16-
In July of 2001, the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") issued Statement of Financial Accounting Standards ("SFAS") No. 142, "Goodwill and Other Intangible Assets" ("SFAS No. 142"). SFAS 142 requires goodwill and other intangible assets to be tested for impairment at least annually, and written off when impaired, rather than being amortized as previously required. As of September 30, 2004, we had no recorded goodwill or intangible assets. The adoption of SFAS 142 had no significant impact on our results of operations or financial position.
RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
Revenue. Revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2004 was $762,000 as compared with $866,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2003. Revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 was $2,926,000 as compared with $2,976,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2003. Revenue for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2004 and 2003 was derived primarily from the sale of software licenses, engineering and consulting services. The decrease in revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2004 is primarily attributable to a decrease in licenses sold to a third party reseller. For the three months ended September 30, 2004, three customers accounted for approximately 71% of revenue. Approximately 38 % was generated from the license of software and the performance of engineering services for Powerlinx, approximately 16% was generated from the license of software to MCS K.K., approximately 17% was generated from the license of software and the performance of engineering services for Leapfrog and approximately 13% was generated from the license of software and the performance of engineering services for Analog Devices. For the nine months ended September 30, 2004 three customers accounted for 69% of revenue, one customer accounted for 50% of revenue for the nine-month period.
Operating expenses
The Company's operating expenses consist of cost of revenue, research and development, sales and marketing, general and administrative expenses, impairment charges and cost curtailment and restructuring charges. Operating expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2004 were $2,067,000 as compared to $1,467,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2003. Operating expenses were $4,790,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 as compared to $4,300,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2003.
Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue includes personnel and consulting compensation costs, related overhead expenses, certain hardware costs, fees paid for licensed technology, depreciation costs and the amortization of purchased technology. Cost of revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2004 was $399,000 as compared to $410,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2003. Cost of revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 was $1,076,000 as compared with $1,252,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2003. The decrease in expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 is primarily due to a reduction in amortization of purchased technology partially offset by the cost of equipment that was resold, certain commissions paid to E-World for sales made in China and the inclusion of stock-based compensation expenses for the restricted stock grant of $126,000. There was no amortization of purchased technology for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2004 as compared with $150,000 and $464,000 for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2003. The purchased technology became fully amortized in the quarter ended September 30, 2003.
-17-
Research and Development. Research and development expenses primarily consist of salaries and related expenses and consulting fees associated with the development and production of our products and services, operating lease costs and depreciation costs. Research and development expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2004 were $231,000 as compared with $249,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2003. Research and development expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 were $679,000 as compared with $865,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2003. The decreases in expenses were primarily attributed to a reduction in compensation and benefits costs due to a reduction in headcount and a reduction in depreciation.
Sales and Marketing. Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of salaries and related costs of sales, business development and marketing personnel, tradeshow costs, marketing and promotional costs incurred to create brand awareness and public relations expenses. Sales and marketing expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2004 were $123,000 as compared with $158,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2003. Sales and marketing expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 were $354,000 as compared with $350,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2003. The decrease for the three months ended September 30, 2004 is primarily attributable to a decrease in consulting fees paid for certain customer related projects.
General and Administrative. General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries and related personnel costs for general corporate functions including administration, finance, human resources, legal and facilities, consulting, outside legal and professional fees and insurance. General and administrative expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2004 were $1,091,000 as compared with $650,000 for the three months ended September 30, 2003. General and administrative expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 were $2,158,000 as compared with $1,833,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2003. The increase for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2004 was primarily attributed to an increase in legal, consulting and other professional fees related to an acquisition the company was pursuing in the amount of $90,000, costs related to the E World arbitration in the amount of $92,000 and bad debt expense of $125,000 for a sale made in the first quarter of 2004 with related legal costs of collection in the amount of $27,000 and additional stock listing fees of $125,000 covering equity issued in prior periods.
Equity-based compensation During 2004 the company granted restricted stock to its employees and directors as compensation. The Company issued 870,000 shares of its common stock, net of forfeitures of 20,000 shares, with a fair value of $835,000. The restricted stock vests over a period of nine months and requires the employee/director to be employed/affiliated with the company on the vesting date. The related compensation expense of $278,000 and $649,000 for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2004, respectively, is included in the determination of reported net income (loss) for those periods, including $55,000 and $126,000 which is included in cost of revenue.
Interest and other income (expense), net. Interest and other income (expense), net was $388,000 as compared to $(21,000) for the three months ended September 30, 2004 and 2003, respectively. Interest and other income (expense), net was $289,000 as compared with $21,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 and 2003, respectively. Interest and other income (expense), net primarily consists interest earned on our rental security deposits and money market accounts, interest incurred for capital lease obligations and the interest and amortization of debt discount related to the Series A secured convertible debentures. The increase in interest and other income for the three months ended September 30, 2004 was primarily attributable to an unrealized gain on marketable equity securities of $412,000. The increase in interest and other income for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 was primarily attributable to an unrealized gain of $412,000 on marketable equity securities held as of September 30, 2004 and a loss of $83,000 attributable to marketable equity securities that were sold during the third quarter.
-18-
As of September 30, 2004, the Company had approximately 30 full-time employees.
LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES
As of September 30, 2004, the Company had cash reserves and working capital of $2,538,000 and $3,258,000, respectively as compared with $2,963,000 and $3,520,000 at December 31, 2003.
Net cash used in operating activities was $1,189,000 and $1,208,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 and 2003, respectively. Net cash used in operating activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2004 was primarily from a net loss of $1,578,000, marketable equity securities received as payment of license fees of $289,000 and a net unrealized gain on marketable .
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/max2004/articles/gen_session1.html
Maelstrom: The Next-Generation Flash Player
Mike Downey, technical product manager for Macromedia Flash, took the stage—and stole the show—with a sneak peek at the new features in Maelstrom, the new version of Flash Player. He cited "dramatic performance improvements" as the most important aspect of the player. However, there were plenty of applause-inspiring new features as well.
Kevin Lynch introduces Maelstrom, the next version of Macromedia Flash Player
Kevin Lynch introduces Maelstrom, the next version of Macromedia Flash Player
In the performance arena, Downey showed a demo of the improved rendering performance of Flash Player through a new "cache as bitmap" feature, which the player uses to speed playback of vector-intensive graphics. The demo showed thousands of vector-based graphics animating on the Flash Stage. The Maelstrom version played it back dramatically smoother and faster.
This feature will also benefit users of components. Performance of Flash files that use many components will become faster. Downey showed a page with hundreds of components on it, scrolling it first in Flash Player 7, then in Maelstrom. The Maelstrom version was extremely smooth and fast.
Numerous real-time graphical effects are also coming to the player. Downey showed a few of the runtime effects that users will be able to apply, such as drop shadows, glow filters, blurs, and filters on Flash assets. (Downey showed it on live video.)
Text rendering will also improve in the new version, thanks to the new text-rendering engine (codenamed "Saffron").
Downey demonstrated new video features that are going to change completely the way users experience web video. One of the biggest "wow" factors was a new video codec in Maelstrom. Downey showed a video clip onscreen, stopped it suddenly in a high-motion, low-light segment, and showed how much more detail the new codec adds—smoothly rendered details, even in shadow areas.
Downey went on to detail other new effects available through the codec. Alpha channels on video make it possible to layer semi-transparent video over other Flash elements, such as text, graphics, or even other video.
"We're already seeing these amazing experiences coming from early testers that we never thought we'd see," said Downey.
From the looks of the presentation, it seems like we'll be seeing a lot more in the future.
The Maelstrom in Your Future
Over the past year, we have rededicated ourselves to getting broad community feedback on our future development plans and efforts. Some of that is done privately through beta lists, customer advisory boards, and customer visits. Increasingly, some of it will be done publicly.
To this end, we have recently begun showing what we are working on for the next version of the Flash client, code-named "Maelstrom." The effort on Maelstrom roughly falls into three main themes: performance, expressiveness, and standardization.
Performance
Flash has evolved beyond its animation roots to become the leading rich client for complex business applications, an expressive medium for content, and a versatile communications endpoint. This evolution has increasingly put new types of performance demands on the Flash client.
To address this situation, a big part of our development focus for Maelstrom is aimed at improving performance. Accelerated graphics and code execution are all areas that show a lot of promise. For example, with enhanced bitmap image support, you can animate graphics as bitmaps instead of rendering them as vectors in each frame. This dramatically increases the number of objects that can be animated smoothly and preserves processing cycles for other tasks.
Expressiveness
You have told that you would like more expressiveness—a richer palette of options to create powerful effects. We have taken that to heart and are working on a number of new features:
Video: We plan to include an exceptional, new video codec that's comparable to some of the best codecs on the market today. This new codec allows you to deliver exceptional video quality at reasonable broadband rates and at larger sizes. We also plan to support a real-time transparent alpha channel that will enable live composition of non-rectangular video, allowing for the layering of video with text, graphics, and even other video.
Text: We plan to deliver a new text rendering solution that produces text as clear and readable as we have seen. It offers sharp, anti-aliased text and will support precision typographic features such as hinting and kerning. Furthermore, Flash text becomes much more readable, regardless of monitor type, resolution, or character set.
Real-time graphic effects: We're working on a set of killer real-time graphics effects like glows, blurs, drop-shadows, color matrix, and others. You can apply them live to any objects in Flash, including graphics, text, and even video. Because these are applied live, they can react interactively. Because they are dynamic, they reduce author time and file size by eliminating several post-processing steps in Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks that are required to achieve these effects today.
Blend modes and gradients: Professional designers can now create high-quality effects by composing graphics using a variety of blending modes—overlays, lighten and darken, multiply, screen, and more. In addition to more precise control over radial gradients and gradient stops, the possibilities for runtime creative expression with graphic elements are endless.
Powerful new APIs: Lower-level runtime access to graphic objects provides new options for visually tweaking your content, allowing developers to get high-performance, low-level control over graphics objects. By taking advantage of the performance improvements I mentioned previously, developers can create never-before-seen graphics effects and visual experiences in real time. This fine-grained access also enables dramatic performance optimizations and control over runtime performance.
Standardization
As you probably already know, ActionScript is based on ECMAScript, the open standard scripting language. As an ECMA member, Macromedia continues to participate in the evolution of ECMAScript through the standards process. In Maelstrom, we plan to evolve ActionScript toward full compliance with the latest ECMAScript version, called Edition 4. This will bring new power to ActionScript.
Those of you who have seen the demos at Macromedia MAX and other conferences will likely agree with me that Maelstrom has many exciting features to offer and is consistent with where developers and designers using Flash need us to take it.
Showing technology while it is still under development is risky, however, so please keep these key thoughts in mind as you think about Maelstrom or any other technology we show before it is shipping:
When we show you stuff that is still in the lab, that means it's still cooking. There is no guarantee that any of the features we show you or talk about will actually make it into the final shipping product.
The whole point of showing things early is to get your feedback and have that feedback impact our future direction. We maintain a feature request form where you can send us suggestions and thoughts about features you like and don't like. Even though we typically do not respond directly to individual requests, we do read, catalog, and prioritize your suggestions as part of our development cycle.
Please avoid the tendency to jump to dramatic conclusions about how the technology will impact your present efforts. Again, this stuff is still in the lab and could change course by 180 degrees before it ships.
Just because we are starting to show things, no implication should be drawn on the timing of the shipping products.
Maelstrom will be integrated into all of our products that rely on the Flash client. As has always been the case, existing content—regardless of when it was created or for which client version—will continue to be rendered exactly the same as the author intended.
There are many features in Maelstrom that are completely new and will require new code to be written if you want to take advantage of them in existing projects. We will offer more information on how to take advantage of these new features when we're closer to release. We plan to document extensively all the ways customers can take full advantage of what Maelstrom has to offer. We are committed to making this as easy as possible.
Finally, we have conducted download testing for different-sized clients and have concluded that the expected footprint of Maelstrom will not materially impact the historical adoption rate of new Flash client versions. We attribute this to many factors, including the rapid adoption of broadband worldwide.
We think that Maelstrom will be the most significant release of the Flash client ever. Much of it is credited to all the great feedback and commentary that you have given us. Keep that feedback coming!
Those of you who are interested in joining Macromedia beta programs can review our requirements and complete an application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the author
Waleed Anbar's life revolved around Macromedia Flash for four years before he finally came to Macromedia to help build the future of Flash and forge innovations in the world of interface design, graphic art, and information visualization. Ironically, he devotes his time indoors to making computers more effective so that future generations might be able to get outside once in a while.
PACKETVIDEO AND TEXAS INSTRUMENTS EXTEND THEIR COLLABORATION FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE MULTIMEDIA ON MOBILE DEVICES
Joint Development of Broadcast Quality Video Slated for TI’s New OMAP™ 2 “All-in-One-Entertainment” Platform
Atlanta - CTIA - 3.24.2004
PacketVideo Corporation and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) have extended their collaboration to provide handset OEMs with high-performance multimedia solutions for mobile phones to include TI’s newly announced OMAP™ 2 architecture. This collaboration intends to deliver the high-end performance consumers have come to expect from digital consumer electronics, and will enable wireless equipment manufacturers to merge today’s most compelling consumer electronics into smart phones and converged portable multimedia devices.
Building on the success of the widely-adopted OMAP platform, TI’s new OMAP 2 architecture will help re-define mobile entertainment by delivering a state-of-the-art multimedia and gaming experience to the wireless industry. New OMAP 2 chips will support features such as interactive gaming console functionality, up to 6 megapixel cameras, up to DVD-quality video, Hi-Fi music with 3D sound effects, analog and digital TV broadcast reception, high-speed wireless connectivity, greater than VGA resolution-color LCD displays and more.
PacketVideo works closely with leading global carriers to define requirements for multimedia, and works with OEMs to meet those requirements using PacketVideo’s high-performance middleware suite. Embedded multimedia solutions from PacketVideo optimized for TI’s OMAP 2 architecture will enable device OEMs to provide mobile phones that meet the demands of 3G networks for the highest quality multimedia experience.
The new TI OMAP 2 architecture is an influential driver for mobile multimedia, that re-defines mobile entertainment by boosting video performance by 4X and 3D graphics by 40X. PacketVideo will utilize TI’s imaging and video accelerators in optimizing its solutions for OMAP 2 processors. PacketVideo multimedia products include: pvPlayer, pvCamcorder, pvAuthor, MMS client and pv2way videophone (3g-324M). PacketVideo is an early member of TI’s OMAP™ Developer Network, and Texas Instruments is an investor in PacketVideo.
“We have been working closely with PacketVideo on multimedia solutions for the OMAP platform for well over four years,” said Paul Werp, director of marketing for TI’s OMAP platform. “Their intense focus on multimedia development for the new OMAP 2 platform adds tremendous value for OEMs and represents the next phase in our long and fruitful relationship.”
“This is a long-term collaboration with immediate benefits to OEMs, operators and users,” said James Brailean, Ph.D., PacketVideo CEO. "We are delighted to continue our collaboration with TI for high performance multimedia phones. The TI OMAP platform is flat-out powerful, with the ability to handle the most sophisticated and demanding multimedia. PacketVideo software turns that raw power into real world applications for our OEMs and their customers."
About Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and Analog technologies to meet our customers’ real world signal processing requirements. In addition to Semiconductor, the company’s businesses include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing, design or sales operations in more than 25 countries. Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at www.ti.com.
PACKETVIDEO ANNOUNCES TWO-WAY VIDEOPHONE SOFTWARE FOR NOKIA SERIES 60 SMARTPHONE
San Diego, CA - 10.25.2004
PacketVideo Announces Two-Way Videophone Software for Nokia Series 60 Smartphone Platform Person-to-person mobile video communications announced at CTIA Wireless Entertainment and IT
San Francisco, California ¨C October 25, 2004 ¨C Responding to increasing market demand for mass-market 3G handsets, PacketVideo Corporation, the world¡¯s leading supplier of embedded multimedia software for mobile phones, today announced the availability of two-way video software for the Nokia Series 60 smartphone platform. PacketVideo¡¯s software enables users to make person-to-person calls showing live video images of both callers on the screens of their phones.
¡°Person-to-person communication has always been the number one use for mobile phones,¡± said Dr. James Brailean, Ph.D., PacketVideo CEO. ¡°Now we¡¯re combining the increased effectiveness and emotional impact of video communication with the utility and convenience consumers enjoy with their Nokia mobile phones. Handsets featuring PacketVideo software should provide a huge boost to 3G video telephony services for operators everywhere.¡±
Brailean went on to say, ¡°Video telephony is a defining service for 3G networks. The increased traffic and revenues from videophone users is a major reason why mobile operators invested in 3G licenses and infrastructure. Our two-way solution shows that video is no longer just for entertainment. Now it¡¯s a core part of communications.¡±
Company representatives are demonstrating PacketVideo¡¯s two-way real-time video telephony on the Nokia 6630 phone, as well as the capabilities of other PacketVideo-powered handsets from the leading device OEMs at the CTIA Wireless Entertainment and IT show (www.wirelessit.com/).
PacketVideo¡¯s 2Way software is a 324M 3GPP-compliant solution for real-time two-way voice and video conversations and video conferencing. It is based on PacketVideo¡¯s fourth-generation multimedia platform, developed and deployed in millions of mobile handsets worldwide. Two-way video calling has been deployed in mobile networks in Japan, Korea, Italy and the United Kingdom, and is widely regarded as one of the signature services to be provided over 3G mobile networks.
About PacketVideo PacketVideo is the number one supplier of embedded multimedia communications software for mobile phones. Our software enables mobile phones to take digital pictures, record home movies, play back digital music and videos, and make 2-way videophone calls. Our global leadership is proven by unrivaled relationships with mobile operators, dominance in design wins, and the millions of PacketVideo-powered multimedia phones in the market. PacketVideo was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. More information can be found at http://www.pv.com.
PacketVideo, PV, Recorder, pvAuthor, pvPlayer, pvCamcorder, and pv2Way are trademarks or registered trademarks of PacketVideo Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. For further information: PacketVideo Contacts: Dann Wilkens PacketVideo 858-731-5454 wilkens@pv.com Diana Pailthorpe O¡¯Berry©¦Cavanaugh (406) 522-8075 dmp@oberrycavanaugh.com
PacketVideo Announces Two-Way Videophone Software for Nokia Series 60 Smartphone Platform
Posted: 25-Oct-2004 [Source: PacketVideo]
[PacketVideo announces two-way real-time video telephony for the Nokia Series 60 smartphone platform.]
San Francisco -- Responding to increasing market demand for mass-market 3G handsets, PacketVideo Corporation today announced the availability of two-way video software for the Nokia Series 60 smartphone platform. PacketVideo's software enables users to make person-to-person calls showing live video images of both callers on the screens of their phones.
PacketVideo's 2Way software is a 324M 3GPP-compliant solution for real-time two-way voice and video conversations and video conferencing. It is based on PacketVideo's fourth-generation multimedia platform, developed and deployed in millions of mobile handsets worldwide. Two-way video calling has been deployed in mobile networks in Japan, Korea, Italy and the United Kingdom, and is widely regarded as one of the signature services to be provided over 3G mobile networks.
More...
Qualcomm, Microsoft Join to Enable Windows Media Streaming Capabilities for Wireless
September 27, 2004 (HONG KONG) -- Qualcomm Inc and Microsoft Corp announced that Qualcomm has licensed Microsoft Windows Media technology and will integrate the Windows Media Audio and Video Codecs into Qualcomm's Qtv video decoder solution.
Consumers will be able to play back and stream Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) content on wireless devices integrated with the Qtv solution. Support for this capability in the Qtv solution will be available in the first quarter of 2005, beginning with Qualcomm's MSM6250, MSM6500 and MSM6550 Mobile Station Modem (MSM) wideband CDMA (WCDMA) and CDMA2000 1x EV-DO chipset solutions.
"By enabling our Qtv solution to play content encoded with the high-quality compression efficiencies of Microsoft's Windows Media, we are providing operators with access to new revenue opportunities through the deployment of rich multimedia services and our manufacturing partners with fully tested, fully integrated, differentiated solutions," said Luis Pineda, vice president of marketing and product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.
The integrated MSM solutions will enable acceleration of Windows Media Codecs to provide superior decoding performance and lower power consumption, resulting in an enhanced user experience. This agreement leverages the power of the MSM chipsets with the flexibility of Microsoft's Windows Media Codecs to provide faster time-to-market for multimedia-rich wireless handsets.
Yahoo! Message Boards: VWPT
Re: Treasure (PART 1)
by: michael_tzez
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 10/05/04 01:57 pm
Msg: 100053 of 100095
I do not understand why you continue to bring up macromedia flash? This was your opening argument and you continue to hang on to it. Vwpt is not directly competing with flash. Vwpt actually plays and delivers .swf files (flash). I told you and I will say it again the vwpt plugin is far superior to the flash plugin. It is a fact. It is capable of doing so much more. And the autoupdate feature is not easy to come by otherwise flash would be doing this. Not only is it an auto update it is a seemless autoupdate. Not like the other programs that say updates are ready to be installed. It actually does it seemlessly. So quietly that most don't even know that it is on their computer. Like I said you need to learn more about it.
You and who ever else is interested to learn could start here:
http://www.emerging.com/road_show/closeup_viewpoint1.shtml
http://www.designinteract.com/news/10742.html
Understand that macromedia flash is a program that creates .swf files. There are many that do the same. If you want to discuss pure competition you are on the wrong board.
Here are the companies directly competing with your macromedia flash:
http://www.killersites.com/articles/newsletterArchive/Newsletter_Nov24_2003.htm
Like I said you do not know what you are talking about. You came to the board comparing flash to vwpt - Obviously you are clueless to what vwpt does. No offense but it is the obvious. So go and find your bashing post copy it and then go and post it on the adobe board. Go and save them from making the biggest mistake of their lives. lol. You came to this board to bash - you just did not have the proper tools. Sorry man. Do yourself a favor and buy vwpt. You will not regret it. Although that is what I think you were planning to do. You thought you were smarter then everyone and could make the stock price go down. LOL That shit really cracks me up. Bashers & Pumpers really need to smell the coffee. No one on these boards are captains to the ship. We are not even privates. We are passengers that can get on and off the ship when ever we choose. That should be your only focus(when to get on and off). You and no one on this board could sink the ship or sail it. You need money or news to do this. Don't even try to deny that you were being a sneaky fuck - why else post what you posted? Why come to this board to deliver a message like that? "Garbage part 1" please you mental midget you are the garbage - all you are going to get for shit like that is bad karma. Do me a favor do not show me that you are an impulsive idiot and respond to me. Put yourself in check.
HDV vying with EVD to become the next-generation DVD format in China
LR Huang, Beijing; Adam Hwang, DigiTimes.com [Monday 27 September 2004]
HDV (high-definition digital video) is competing with EVD (enhanced versatile disc) to become China’s next-generation national DVD standard, according to the China-based Beijing K-City High Definition Electronic Technology, the leader of the group developing HDV.
In an attempt to promote the HDV standard in China, Beijing K-City produces HDV players and HDV-based movie discs. Currently, Beijing K-City sells its products through Suning Appliance, a large retail chain with outlets throughout China, and bundles its products with FDP (flat display panel) TVs made by Toshiba, Hitachi and local maker XOCEO. Beijing K-City expects to ship 100,000 HDV players this year.
In order to attract consumers, Beijing K-City offers 10 new movies a week on HDV disc, the company indicated. The company has also signed with local movie producers to have more than 1,000 movies issued on HDV. Currently, a pre-recorded HDV movie disc sells for 12 yuan (US$1.45) while a disc with three movies sells for 15 yuan (US$1.81).
Beijing K-City sells its HDV players at a retail price of 1,780 yuan (US$215), which is much more expensive than the 900 yuan (US$109) charged for an EVD player and 300 yuan (US$36) for a DVD player.
Beijing K-City plans to launch an Internet-access HDV recorder, which would enable video downloads onto a built-in 40GB hard disk drive. The company plans to market the product at the end of this year at a tentative retail price of 2,500 yuan (US$302). In order to avoid copyright infringement, the Internet-access HDV will limit playback to a specified number and a stored movie will automatically be deleted after its last playback.
EVD aims expansion, partnership amid challenges
The video compact disc (VCD) player was a spectacular breakthrough in the history of China's electronics industry.
The device, first invented by the Chinese firm Wanyan Electronics Systems Co Ltd in 1993, aimed to meet people's needs of watching video with high quality and ease-of-use, while DVD players were still too expensive to afford.
Shipments of VCD players reached 10 million units in 1997, and their sales amounted to 30 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion) a year in 2000 and 2001, reported China Daily.
Although DVD players began to replace the VCD format from 1999, they have become a legend - forming a huge industry and endorsed by international giants such as Philips.
Now, some Chinese firms are trying to create another miracle in the video disc player market with the Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD).
EVD evolved from audio and video coding and decoding technologies invented by a group of companies led by Beijing-based DAVWorld Co Ltd in 2000.
The format is said to have five times higher image quality than DVD and can be connected to computer networks, a basis for digital homes in the future.
EVD is based on the currently dominant red-ray technology, so compared with other international projects in blue-ray disc formats, EVD does not need disc makers to build new production lines. It also saves the costs of upgrading, although blue-ray technology has bigger capacity in theory.
After four years of research and development with gradually increasing numbers of participants, the EDV Standard Working Group has become an organization with 25 members.
In July, the draft of the EVD standard was put forward by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) for opinions from the public.
The usual practice in standardization is that a proposal will become an industrial standard after three months of public review, if there is no objection.
However, the EVD proposal aroused fierce challenges from two competitive domestic technologies: high-definition versatile disc (HVD) and high-definition digital video (HDV).
MII was said to be holding a contest among the three competitors in September, but there has not been a result so far.
Hao Jie, president of DAVWorld, said he was at ease about the competition and would let the market decide about it.
However, the EVD proposal may be the most favoured in the market.
Hao says four of the top five DVD makers in China - Shinco, Amoi, Malata and BBK have all joined the EVD camp.
Hao estimates that about 200,000 EVD players will be sold this year.
On the content side, four of the top five movie companies in Hong Kong and six of the top eight movie makers have authorized the production of discs in the EVD format.
The EVD group released 14 titles of movies in July and is expected to release another 50 this month.
Major retailing outlets including the country's biggest home appliance chain store, Gome Electronic Appliances have also joined the camp. Gome has begun to sell EVD players, as well as discs at just 8 yuan (97 US cents) per disc.
Besides the 25 members, further organizations are applying to join the EVD group, including three foreign firms.
Hao said the standard working group will release an upgraded version of the EVD disc soon, which will have a storage capacity of 16 gigabytes, more than three times than that of DVD discs.
He said that the EVD group would ultimately migrate to a blue-ray platform, but at the current stage, the red-ray technology would still be the basis for technology upgrading because of its low cost and smooth migration.
Although the EVD proposal may become a Chinese industrial standard, Hao said the standard working group does not intend to make it a compulsory national standard.
Many foreign companies and organizations are worried that China's efforts in developing its own next-generation laser disc standard may exclude foreign players from the market.
On the other hand, the EVD group will strengthen co-operation with international communities.
The EVD proposal, which has been submitted to the International Standardization Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, may be put forward as an international standard or part of one.
Hao said the EVD group is also talking about co-operation with its major international competitors the high-definition DVD (HD-DVD) led by NEC and Toshiba and the Blue-ray Disc (BD).
"We will give you a surprise soon," he said.
The Dutch giant Philips said it understood China could make up its own standard because of its huge market, but its chief executive officer Gerard Kleisterlee says that whatever standards China is setting up, they should be based on market demand and acceptance.
Source: China Daily
from PWLX 10Q filed 8/16/04
OVERVIEW
For the three months ended June 30, 2004, the Company was able to report its
eighth consecutive quarter of comparative sales growth along with several
noteworthy achievements in its quest to execute its business plan which is
focused on growth, profitability, and technological innovation.
Net Revenue increased 103% for the three months ended June 30, 2004 compared to
the three months ended June 30, 2003. It marks the 8th consecutive quarterly
sales increase on a quarterly comparative basis; and for the trailing four
comparable quarters net revenue has increased 59%.
Gross profit increased 211% for the three months ended June 30, 2004 compared to
the three months ended June 30, 2003. It continues the effects of an improved
cost structure generated from the Company's overseas sourcing. The Company has
continued expanding the sourcing of its products beyond China to include Hong
Kong, Taiwan, and Korea. The ability to source product overseas should continue
to be a major strength of the Company in an effort to improve gross profit
margins in future reporting periods.
The Company's patented power-line SecureView(TM) "Camera in a light bulb"
continues to be the primary product sold in the consumer market of our security
segment. The product is aired on a regular basis on Shop At Home Network, LLC
and Home Shopping Network. The airings maintain Secure View's initial success in
the direct television retailing arena and the exposure should provide a
continuing opportunity to educate consumers on the advantages of SecureView and
power-line technology in general. In addition, SecureView continues to be sold
via Internet and catalog retailers. In April 2004, the Company announced a
comprehensive collaboration with Cenuco, Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., to deploy the
first integrated CCTV solution utilizing PowerLinx power line video transmission
technologies and camera systems, combined with Cenuco's mobile software
technology to transmit live CCTV video onto cellular phones, Pocket PC devices,
and remote computers. With an estimated annual $39 billion global security and
CCTV market, the PowerLinx and Cenuco combined offerings will be available for
the residential, small to large enterprise, and Homeland Security/Government
sectors. As part of this relationship, PowerLinx ordered 4,500 licenses of
Cenuco's mobile remote video viewing software, which are inserted into the
PowerLinx SecureView(TM) "Camera in a light bulb" systems. Distribution of this
combined offering will include selected internet, catalog and direct response
retailers. The Cenuco software package includes gateway access from anywhere in
the world to view live video, unlimited off-site digital video recording (48
hour increments), and unlimited access to previously recorded video, for a
monthly service fee of $19.95. PowerLinx will share in revenues derived from the
monthly monitoring fees collected by Cenuco. The revenue sharing arrangement
covers PowerLinx-Cenuco bundled products sold by either PowerLinx or Cenuco in
their respective market segments.
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The Company continued development of its new mid-ware security solution for the
SOHO (Small Office Home Office) market in the quarter. This product, the PLVS
Plus Pro System(TM) and PLVS Plus System(TM) will focus on the
multi-camera/alarm/recording market which according to market research expects
products priced lower than one thousand dollars for a 3-4 node system. This
product will start at a basic system price of approximately $149.00 and will
allow the customer to purchase component system devices such as baby monitors,
sensors, alarms, and outdoor video cameras with recording capabilities all
priced from $49.00 - $199.00. This product will be focused on two levels of
application; the home DIY installation and the professionally installed systems.
The professionally installed system will come with many enhanced settings,
connectivity solutions, and attachment devices while the home DIY installed
units will focus on ease of installation. As previously reported
the research and development began in July 2003 and the initial design drawings
were accomplished in the 1st quarter. The final printed circuit board and
software development was completed in the quarter. The product housing design
and packaging design phase also began in the quarter. In addition, product
sourcing, tooling, dies, and prototype testing have begun and are expected to be
completed in the 3rd quarter along with initial presentations to customers for
the product. Initial deliveries are expected to begin in the 4th quarter.
As previously discussed in the Company's 2003 10-KSB, the Company has
successfully completed the installation and deployment of its first digital
security system. This system comprises 21 total cameras, both fixed and
pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ), operating over power line, twisted pair, and coaxial
wiring. The monitoring-control-storage component allows the user to
simultaneously view, record, and control each of the 21 cameras. The system's
capacity allows storage of up to 30 days of digital recording for each camera.
To move the project forward, the customer has requested that the Company
collaborate with their current digital security provider to provide an interface
to the hard wire digital systems currently deployed to allow for seamless
installations and to eliminate the need for loss prevention personnel training
on new viewing software. The software development to accomplish this
specification began in the quarter. In addition, the Company continued its
research and development of digital products to incorporate coding and decoding
(codec) technology licensed from On2 Technologies Inc. utilizing the license
agreement completed and announced in the fourth quarter of 2003.
Sales and installations of the Company's PowerLine Vision Systems (PLVS) (TM)
continued to grow and gain traction throughout the quarter ended June 30, 2004.
The product is proving to be extremely reliable as there have been no failures
in any Company installed systems to date and loss savings have been significant
as there has not been a back-up accident reported to the Company on any vehicle
with a PLVS system installed since the initial installations began in September
2003. Initially, as communicated in previous filings, truck fleets including
Ryder, Sysco Foods, McKenzie Tank Lines, and McLane Trucking purchased and
installed test units for evaluation of performance and property loss savings. Of
these fleets, Ryder and Sysco have ordered and installed additional units while
the remaining fleets and new customers continue to purchase and evaluate the
systems. In addition to Ryder and Sysco, the Company now has approximately 26
fleet customers who have purchased and installed systems which include McLean
Trucking, US Foods, E-One, McKinsey, Integris, and Perdue. The Company also
expanded selling systems in the recreational vehicle market. Forest River, Inc.
has begun offering the PLVS systems as an option on two of their 2005 Class B/C
models. In addition to approximately 12 dealers, the PLVS system is also being
sold through the following RV wholesale distributors: Aralax (Canada),
Stagparkway, WinnTron Technologies, and RadarBusters.
However, in order to meet increasing demand, the Company enlisted the services
of Velociti, www.velociti.us, to serve as a nationwide installer of our
PowerLine Vision Systems(TM) (PLVS) in the Transportation market segment. Since
1975, Velociti has been a market leader in Transportation and Logistics by
providing mobile installation service throughout the United States. Velociti has
extensive experience in the installation of transportation technology systems
and solutions for large, medium and small fleets. The program to be implemented
by Velociti will initially focus on PLVS installations on mid-to-large size
fleets. Velociti began initial installations in late May for several fleet
customers after completing the necessary installation time studies in late
April. With the addition of Velociti to the PowerLinx Team, PowerLinx is now
poised to accomplish scalability of sales for our PowerLine Vision Systems(TM)
(PLVS) product line. Alcalde & Fay, the Company government relations firm
continues to work on the implementation of a formal study of the rear vision
safety solution. The Company is also seeking preferred vendor status with
several fleets along with continuing sales development with OEM's, distributors
and dealers.
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Also during the quarter ended June 30, 2004, the Company launched the newly
redesigned Web site at www.power-linx.com. The Company's recent name change from
Seaview to PowerLinx, as well as its redesigned Web site, reflects on its
emphasis to continually develop new powerline products for the consumer,
transportation, and commercial security markets. The Web site is very customer
focused, and is expected to greatly facilitate converting visitors to customers.
The Company's products are grouped into six product lines with animated
illustrations to communicate more details about its products. For instance, each
product line has a unique URL that appears as a separate Web site. The customer
can access the product line of interest directly, without navigating to the
corporate home page and layers of menus. At the same time, a visitor can
navigate to any part of the Web site from any product URL. This makes it easier
and faster for visitors to get the information they are looking for and purchase
the product they want. The products are segmented as follows:
o Home Monitoring
o Transportation
o Commercial Security
o Home Networking
o Hotel Connectivity
o SeaView Marine
The investor or potential investor will continue to be able to access PWLX stock
quotes, up-to-date Company news, and our SEC filings. In the future, we expect
to provide access to our annual report and investor registration for our
shareholder database and investor package requests. The architecture makes the
site much more flexible allowing PowerLinx to display new products in
development. The Company expects to introduce several new products and new
product lines this year, and the Web site will easily integrate new products
with existing products. The site will be capable of highlighting new
introductions while fitting them into the overall site in a way that is very
intuitive for users. The new site will add online product registration with a
feature for e-mail capture, supplying PowerLinx with a direct customer care and
marketing program. The Company will be able to communicate with its customers to
increase customer satisfaction and to sell product line additions as well as new
product lines. Additional enhancements planned for the future are expected to
provide easy access and improved service for our dealers and commercial
customers.
The Company launched its Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Unit business segment in
May 2004 with the announcement of the strategic alliance agreement with Choice
Hotels International, one of the largest hotel franchise companies in the world
with more than 5,000 hotels, inns, all-suite hotels and resorts open and under
development in 44 countries under the Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality,
Clarion, Sleep Inn, Rodeway Inn, Econo Lodge and MainStay Suites brand names.
The launch and agreement were facilitated through the hiring of certain
employees of Guest ISP LLC.
The Business: High Speed Internet Access (HSIA) & Video On Demand (VOD)delivery
systems for Hotels and Multi Dwelling Units (MDU's) market.
The Company has developed and designed High Speed Internet Access (HSIA) & Video
On Demand (VOD) delivery systems for the Hospitality and Multi Dwelling Units
(MDU) markets which utilize powerline communications (PLC), Cat 3 & Cat 5 ADSL,
wireless along with hybrids and combinations of these technologies. The Company
also expects to develop a coaxial cable application for our products later this
year.
Principal Products: Hotel & MDU Segment
The Company specializes in providing the most technologically advanced and fully
integrated network (HSIA) solutions for hotels and (MDU's). Power-Linx product
line is as follows:
o Powerline PLC: This system utilizes the existing electrical grid in a
hotel for total high speed Internet (HSI) coverage, anywhere there is
an electrical outlet you can have (HSIA). This can also be used as
backbone for wireless install.
o Cat 3 & Cat 5 ADSL: This system utilizes the existing telephone lines
in a hotel or MDU and uses the two free pairs to deliver ten Mbps to
each room with RJ45 connection in each room. This can also be used for
the backbone for a wireless install.
o Wireless 802.11b and 802.11g: Power-Linx can cover an entire building
with wireless signals including all guest rooms, lobby, common areas,
meeting rooms and administration offices. We use our ADSL or PLC
technology to use existing wiring for the backbone for the wireless
systems to keep our systems very affordable.
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o Hybrid Systems: We can provide wireless and hardwired solutions and
can provide wireless to a hardwired connection by using our (WiFi)
bridges in the rooms that pick up wireless signals and have a RJ45
connection for hard-wired connections.
o Video On Demand (VOD): Power-Linx can provide VOD via the Internet
which until required the hotels to rely on cable providers for this
service. There is no expensive equipment to install. Now hotel
customers can purchase and watch a movie on their laptop in their
rooms. Customers can download movies on computer and watch for a
twenty-four hour period. Set top boxes for in room television are
expected to be available later this year.
The Company entered into a marketing and distribution agreement with
B2 Networks LLC to distribute the new B2 Digital Services Product
Line. The agreement also provides the Company the ability to market
and distribute the Pay-Per-View and Digital Satellite Services of
Telecommunication Products, Inc. ("Telpro") who is a strategic partner
and minority shareholder of B2 Networks LLC. The distribution
agreement complements and enhances the product offerings of high-speed
internet and connectivity to the Hotel & MDU market segment. The
agreement provides for recurring revenue sharing by all participants,
including the hotel & MDU property owner, on the services used and
purchased by customers.
Pursuant to the agreement, B2 Networks and Telpro will be supplying
Point-to-Point Wireless Local Loop internet connectivity in each hotel
room through the B2 Wireless Access Point (B2WAP) which will connect
to the in-room Hotellinktv.com for laptop users and the B2 Digital TV
set top box and handheld remote control for in-room television. These
products allow Powerlinx to market a large variety of in-room digital
services, which include making airline reservations, ordering pizza,
event ticketing, and transportation services, along with delivery of
Hollywood movies, sports and live events, and distinct genres of
Pay-Per-View content. The Company will actively market the B2Wap
service and the B2 Digital TV Broadband Set Top Television System with
our complete Hotel & MDU Connectivity products later this month
through our business-to-business marketing partner, Winn Technology
Group, Inc. These products may be viewed at the web site:
www.hotellinktv.com.
o 24/7 Call Center and Technical Support; The Company bills each
property a monthly maintenance fee on a per day per room and/or unit
basis through a system service agreement. For hotel properties, Tent
Cards are provided in each room with a toll free number for the guest
to use. The Company also utilizes its 24/7 online monitoring system to
check and maintain installed hotel/MDU systems. Franchises like
Holiday Inn, Hampton and Choice Hotels have mandated that hotels
maintain 24/7 support for their guests. This provides recurring
revenues for the Company.
o Internet Service Providers: The Company has negotiated agreements with
these (ISP's) that provide the HSI connections to the hotels to
promote their products such as DSL, cable, T1, wireless point to point
and satellite. Through these agreements the Company earns a percentage
of the monthly ISP charges to the hotel or MDU. This creates
recurring revenue for the Company on a per installation basis. The
Company is in the process of evaluating the creation of a wholly owned
subsidiary to act as an agent for these ISP providers to maximize
income opportunities for the Company. In addition, this would improve
customer service to the property owner or management company since the
Company currently provides the HSI connection specifications with a
referral to several ISP providers for the hotel/MDU to negotiate and
facilitate installation. Having a one-stop shop for the customer
should also improve the entire sales and installation process.
The Company also expects to sell and market PowerLine Security systems which
integrate into the HSI systems the Company installs as it provides a value added
product to the property owners. Further, the Company expects to develop an
installation network similar to that developed in our Transportation segment.
Principle Markets: Hotel & MDU Market
One of the most requested services in hotels today is (HSIA) and there are over
sixty five thousand hotels and nearly 30 millons units in the MDU market in the
United States plus government installations throughout the world. Over fifty
percent of all travel plans will be booked online this year and over 35% of all
travelers
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carry laptop computers. In the next five years most of these hotels will have
(HSIA) in their hotel rooms and meeting areas. Ninety two percent of travelers
who use laptops base their stay on availability of (HSIA) in the rooms. The
Hotel Franchises such as Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn have already mandated their
hotels to have (HSIA) installed in the rooms by January 2005. The Company is a
Choice Hotels Preferred Vendor, which means Choice Hotels International has
certified and recommends that its franchisees do business with PowerLinx. Choice
Hotels will release their mandate to their 4,400 hotels on or about August 16,
2004. Clarion, Comfort Suites, and Sleep Inns will be mandated to have (HSIA) by
December 31, 2004 and Comfort Inns, Quality Inns, Quality Inns Suites and
Mainstay Suites will be mandated by May 31, 2004.
The Company's principal markets are Hospitality, Multi Dwelling Units,
Hospitals, Schools and Government Facilities:
o Hospitality market is excellent because HSI is the number one amenity
asked for by hotel guests. The market is also driven by competition
between hotels and franchise mandates that require hotels to install
systems by a certain date.
o Multi Dwelling Units: This covers apartments, condos, and tenant
housing. Many apartments do not have coax cable or a method to have
HSIA to individual apartments. Half the world's population lives in
apartments. PowerLinx PLC and ADSL technologies using existing wiring
provide a viable economical and secure solution for this market.
o Hospital: Hospitals are budgeting to put in Intranet systems for
maintaining patient's records and more reliable operating systems in
addition to providing HSIA and digital services to patient rooms.
o Schools: As the Internet grows there is a growing demand for school
systems to provide HSIA to the children their school environment.
Using the existing wiring in schools is a viable, economical and
secure solution.
o Government Facilities: The Company expects to develop this market with
the aid of our government relations group, Alcalde & Fay. The United
States government is the largest owner of property in North America.
Distribution Methods: Hotel & MDU Segment
o Direct sales through a highly trained in house sales force that sells
(HSIA) & (VOD) to hoteliers on daily basis.
o Strategic partners such as Winn Technologies that tele-markets to
hotels nationwide and set qualified appointments for the HSIA & VOD
sales force. The process provides for hot leads to be directly
transferred to our in house sales force.
o Choice Hotels International provides in-house marketing that promotes
PowerLinx as a preferred vendor and also transfers those leads to the
Company. We are also listed at Choice.com, Primary Source and all
promotional materials provided by Choice Hotels International.
o The Company entered into a strategic alliance agreement with Choice
Hotels International, one of the largest hotel franchise companies in
the world with more than 5,000 hotels, inns, all-suite hotels and
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resorts open and under development in 44 countries under the Comfort
Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Clarion, Sleep Inn, Rodeway Inn, Econo
Lodge and MainStay Suites brand names in May 2004.
The PowerLinx-Choice Hotels International agreement is an annual,
renewable contract which appoints PowerLinx as a Choice Endorsed
Vendor offering PowerLinx's high speed internet access and
connectivity to Choice Hotels' United States franchisees. PowerLinx
becomes one of only four Choice Endorsed Vendors offering these
products which have been mandated for enterprise wide deployment by
the end of 2007. In addition, PowerLinx and Choice Hotels
International began cooperative efforts for the marketing, advertising
and promotion of PowerLinx's internet access solution to their
franchisees prior to and through the Choice Hotels national
convention, May 12-14, 2004 in San Diego, CA.
o Outside sales partners and agents: The Company is hiring agents across
the country to sell and promote its HSIA & VOD products. We are also
partnering with companies that sell other products to the hotel market
and have previous business relationships with hoteliers such as
communication providers.
Competitive Business Conditions: Hotel & MDU Segment
The hospitality and MDU markets provide the Company a unique opportunity to
create revenues through the sales and marketing of HSIA and reoccurring revenue
from 24/7 technical support, VOD and ISP access to hotels and MDU's. Although
there is significant competition with many companies providing HSI to the
hospitality market through wireless, coax and other hardwired solutions, the
Company is positioned to garner market share. Through use of the Company
patented technologies, ADSL & PLC using existing wiring allows PowerLinx HSIA
products to be very competitive, reliable and economical for the property owner.
Also PowerLinx alliance with Choice Hotels International provides
standardization for the market along with certification of the PowerLinx product
line. The Company is actively soliciting and negotiating similar alliances with
other hotel chains to further solidify a strong market presence and to provide
stable future revenue growth for the Company.
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The Company also continues to hire associates primarily in sales and engineering
to support future sales growth and expanding research and development projects.
The Company now employs a total of 26 employees which includes 13 employees
dedicated to sales. Of these 16, 3 serve as Sales Directors while the remaining
are Account Sales Executives compensated on a straight commission or draw versus
commission pay plan. The Company also continues to add manufacture sales
representatives. To provide the expanding sales team with qualified leads,
enlisted the services of Winn Technology Group, Inc., www.winntech.net, to serve
as the marketing resource to provide business-to-business marketing campaigns,
inbound sales management, first level tech support service, dealer database
management and competitive intelligence research. WTGI has extensive experience
in fielding and processing all types of inbound response to various client
marketing campaigns which includes inbound programs similar in nature to the
program being launched by PowerLinx. WTGI has provided lead qualification
services that included inbound response for clients such as Palm, Gartner,
TruSecure, McDATA, Cisco, PeopleSoft, Siemens CN and MercuryMD. The PowerLinx
program implemented by the Winn Technology Group initially focused on
business-to-business marketing campaigns in our home monitoring, transportation,
marine and recently launched hotel connectivity/MDU business segments. We expect
to generate qualified sales leads for the sales team. WTGI will take
responsibility for managing the daily sales orders to our toll-free order
number, 1-800-POWERLX along with the initial contact for product tech support
questions. In addition, WTGI has the ability to provide PowerLinx with extensive
marketing feedback and competitive intelligence research to continually improve
the process and provide maximum sales productivity.
McIntyre and PWLX
by: whyon2 09/24/04 09:08 am
Msg: 87262 of 87313
from the PWLX board:
This is what I know..
Doug McIntyre is head of ONT. He is now on the board of PWLX (in the wake of the partnership between ONT & PWLX). For those of you unfamiliar with ONT, the company has a powerful technology but for the longest time, struggled for cash. When ONT hit a point where it was gonna run out of money, McIntyre and his officers waived their salaries to keep the company going. That is how much they believe in ONT. McIntyre is very much the cost conservative. He doesn't believe in spending money unnecessarily. PWLX has been on blowing the dough. CW: McIntyre as a board member has influenced PWLX.. helping control the spending while helping drive company towards sales. This contract today is a reflection of that. PWLX is using its powerline driven technology married with ONT's video streaming technology to create a new kind of surviellance system. McIntyre gives PWLX credibility and a conservative spending brain. CW: more contracts to come. Also.. Wal Mart and Target are 'testing' the PWLX system. There was some talk that this contract was actually related to one of those merchandisers..
That's what I know.. no hype and certainly no bashing.. just information.
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=PWLX&read=64504&submit=Go
China To Develop Audio & Video Frequency Standard
September 1, 2004
Zhongguancun AVS Development Base is saying that part of the AVS standard, a technical standard for coding and decoding audio and video frequency has been completed by Chinese scientists and related enterprises at home and abroad.
It is hoped that, with this new standard, domestic enterprises will no longer have to worry about being controlled by foreign enterprises on account of technology and patent costs.
China's developing of the AVS standard has brought about dramatic changes--as early as November 2003, MPEGLA, an agent of the MPEG standard that has been widely adopted in China, declared that it would be changing its strategy, collecting $0.25 for each piece of coding and decoding equipment instead of charging according to time.
Large scale industrialization of the AVS standard has been initiated and AVS technology-based TV top boxes are expected to be produced in large quantities by the end of 2005.
Lawsuits Against Cornice Spotlight Severe Competition Over 1-inch HDDs
August 30, 2004 (TOKYO) -- A patent litigation broke out in the 1-inch hard disk drive (HDD) market. Seagate Technology LLC and Western Digital Corp, leading US HDD manufacturers, successively filed complaints against Cornice Inc, a US venture developing a 1-inch HDD.
Click fig to enlarge: Global shipments of 1-inch HDDs. IBM Corp of the US had been the only manufacturer up until Cornice and GS Magicstor Inc of China entered the market in 2003.
Source: Nikkei Electronics in reference to data provided by Pixie Pinnacle Corp
Behind the lawsuits is the super micro HDD market, which is rapidly expanding due to the great popularity of portable audio players, and these two companies' speculation of its use in mobile phones (Chart 1).
Before the huge mobile phone market, HDD makers, which have developed their products mainly for PC applications, are likely to enhance development in alliance with digital home appliance manufacturers.
1-In. HDD Market Likely to Grow Drastically
Seagate filed a patent infringement lawsuit on six HDD-related patents against Cornice in the US District Court for the District of Delaware on June 22, 2004.
The company sought an injunction that bars Cornice from making, selling and importing the allegedly infringing products in the US, and monetary damages. Just one week later, on June 29, 2004, Western Digital also filed a patent infringement lawsuit on seven patents against Cornice in the US District Court in California. The firm sought to prevent Cornice from illegally using its patented technology and recoup monetary damages resulting from patent infringement by products Cornice had already sold.
The controversial 1-inch HDD market on the volume basis accounts only for 0.1% of the overall HDDs shipped in 2003. However, HDD manufacturers are boosting output because they sell as many as produced.
Click fig to enlarge: Shipment volume of mobile phones is far larger than that of AV equipment. Although shipments to PC manufacturers currently account for more than 90% of total HDDs produced, the profit driver for HDD makers will be highly likely to change, if their use in mobile phones increases.
Source: Dataquest at Gartner Inc of the US, Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) and Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA)
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc (HGST) of the US, which is providing HDDs to Apple Computer Inc, will increase output at its plant in Thailand to several million units per quarter, nearly 10 times larger than the previous production capacity, by the end of 2004. In addition, 1-inch HDDs are expected to be loaded into mobile phones. If embedded in mobile phones, whose market is predicted to reach more than 600 million units in 2004, the HDD market can transform into a huge one at once (Chart 2).
In light of such circumstances, leading HDD manufacturers started to become frenzy. Cornice, GS Magicstor Inc of China and HGST have been the only companies providing 1-inch HDDs thus far, but fierce competition is expected to start when the number of players in the market rise.
The legal battle above is literally a prelude. Seagate had just announced its entry to the 1-inch HDD market and disclosed its 5GB model, the largest capacity in the industry, on June 9, 2004, about two weeks before the lawsuit. Its mass-production is slated to start in the third quarter of 2004. On the other hand, Western Digital currently manufactures only 3.5-inch HDDs and has not announced its 1-inch model yet, but it is highly possible that the company is waiting for the right time to enter the market.
To Eliminate Fledgling Threats Early
Some HDD officials indicate as purposes of the lawsuits by Seagate and Western Digital: (1) to nip upcoming threats like Cornice in the bud, (2) to import Cornice's technology via cross-licensing and a takeover, and (3) to put the brakes on start-up makers planning to participate in the market of 1-inch or smaller HDDs.
Cornice achieved overwhelmingly lower price in comparison with other competitors by using its proprietary interface in their products. Despite the large gaps in the market size between the leading HDD manufacturers, the number of portable audio players to introduce its product exceeds 10 models in less than one year since the firm started marketing its 1-inch HDDs. The lawsuits appear to be aimed at controlling such move and preventing other industry peers from entering the market. Though GS Magicstor is also one of the start-ups like Cornice, most HDD officials consider that "the company seems to be uneasy to take into court for its backup by the Chinese government."
The filing procedures and the patents Seagate and Western Digital pleaded as infringed also show that these companies are serious about their lawsuits. For example, Seagate took measures to quicken the injunction. On July 2, 2004, soon after its lawsuit to the court, the company filed a complaint against Cornice with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), whose deliberation period is shorter than the court's. Seagate sought an order to exclude any systems or products using or containing Cornice HDDs from entry to the United States.
In addition, the total 13 patents on which Seagate and Western Digital filed infringement lawsuits appear to include key basic patents. Both companies explain that these are all technologies concerned with general HDDs, not specialized for 1-inch HDDs. Although whether Cornice actually infringed these patents or not is left to the court to judge, HDD-related researchers estimate that it will be difficult for Cornice to prove its non-infringements, after seeing these patented technologies extend from those related to signal processing and control to others concerned with media, mechanism and chassis. They believe most HDD manufacturers, putting aside Cornice, seem to use these technologies in their products.
Upcoming Installation to Mobile Phones
Click fig to enlarge: One-inch HDDs featuring inventions in view of use in home appliances
Seagate and Western Digital persist with the 1-inch HDD market so much, because they are almost sure that mobile phones will feature a 1-inch or smaller HDD. Though no mobile phone carrier has announced its concrete plan to develop an HDD-featuring handset at the present moment, HOYA Corp, which provides disk substrates to HGST and Seagate, deposed that these firms have initiated their projects to use 1-inch HDD in their handsets.
According to some HDD officials, many other HDD manufacturers seem to be preparing to market 1-inch and smaller HDDs as well. For example, Toshiba Corp is planning to start mass-production of 0.85-inch HDDs in Fall 2004, while Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Ltd admitted it is developing a 0.85-inch HDD, although its marketing schedule is not determined yet.
Of course, the manufacturers need to overcome a lot of hurdles such as reduction of price and power consumption, confirmation of durability against vibration and shocks, and others before adopting micro HDDs in mobile phones. However, such specs are already being polished for use in the existing mobile audio players.
China, Korea Emerging as Mobile Phone Powerhouses
August 23, 2004 (TOKYO) -- The number of mobile phone subscribers in China is the world's largest at 300 million, as of May 2004.
Although subscriber numbers surpassed 300 million, China's mobile phone penetration is still no more than 20.9%.
Also, experiments on third-generation (3G) mobile phone services have been carried out successfully in China, with its proprietary technology "TD-SCDMA" expected to be commercialized soon.
Despite a widespread view that 3G services will not penetrate broadly until handset prices decline to 2G levels, China still has a great impact because its market is immense.
Meanwhile, Korea topped the world with 7.3 million subscribers to CDMA2000 1xEV-DO phone services, its 3G commercial service initiated ahead of other countries in 2002, and its movie contents are gathering momentum, too.
China Absorbed in 3G Service Establishment Aiming toward 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
In China, preparations are underway for the commercialization of 3G services, led by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). Experimental networks called "MTNet" are being operated in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
China has three different 3G technologies. Most expect China Mobile to start W-CDMA and China Unicom to initiate CDMA2000 1xEV-DO commercial services.
The 3G technologies in test phases are W-CDMA, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and TD-SCDMA. This is where European, Korean, Japanese and Chinese manufacturers are highly active. The precise circumstances are complicated, just as in the Three Kingdom Saga, when reflecting intentions of the six telecom carriers in China and the MII (Fig 2).
China Mobile Communications Corp is likely to employ W-CDMA, which is easy to shift from GSM, while China Unicom Ltd is likely to use CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, an advanced version of CDMA2000 1x, telecom industry officials said. China Telecom Corp and China Netcom Corp Ltd, which currently provide fixed-line telephone and PHS services, are also said to be eager to enter the 3G market.
The Chinese company, US UTStarcom Ltd, the largest PHS handset maker in China, is now developing a dual handset that is compatible with both W-CDMA and PHS. Therefore, either of the two companies, or even both are highly likely to introduce W-CDMA services.
Proprietary TD-SCDMA Needs to Cut Power Consumption by Handset Chip
In contrast to the combined 180MHz allotted to W-CDMA and 1xEV-DO, a broad spectrum of 155MHz was granted only to TD-SCDMA.
The third standard, TD-SCDMA, is fully supported by the Chinese government, because TD-SCDMA comprises Chinese technology, whose patents are partially owned by Datang Telecom Technology Co, Ltd of China. The ministry's enthusiasm for TD-SCDMA is evident in the light of its spectrum allocation (Fig 3).
However, TD-SCDMA has not yet reached the level to be a commercial service. Third-generation commercial services actually started within 2003, but the plan was postponed. The majority sees the government and the ministry as waiting for TD-SCDMA to become more technically mature.
If China starts 3G commercial services now, odds are high that the move will end in failure as the technology cannot compete with W-CDMA and 1xEV-DO in terms of handset performance and this is the case China wants to avoid at all costs.
However, the government cannot be so blatantly protective that it approves only TD-SCDMA after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Hence, China is decelerating its overall 3G commercial services.
According to industry officials, the most serious issue for TD-SCDMA is the delayed development of chips. Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co, Ltd of the Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group unveiled its first TD-SCDMA handset called "DTM8001" in March. However, its stand-by mode only lasts for 50 hours because the chip consumes a lot of power.
Nonetheless, development of chips that can be used for commercial applications is just a matter of time. While companies are successively announcing their development of chips for TD-SCDMA handsets, many firms are bidding for handset development.
Korea Marks More Than 6 Million Movie Delivery Subscribers
Korea appears to be ahead of Japan in many respects including the penetration rate of mobile phones, the number of subscribers to CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and the introduction of number portability, as well as movie contents.
The leading company in movie services is KTF Co, Ltd, Korea's second largest service provider. The company commenced its service called "Fimm" (First in Mobile Multimedia) in May 2002 and attracted 3.405 million users as of May 2004. Its rival, SK Telecom, the top service provider in Korea, developed "June," its movie contents service developed exclusively for 1xEV-DO, and obtained more than 2.645 million users.
The firms say that particularly popular contents are terrestrial TV programs encoded for mobile phones. "Such contents account for 40% of our total movie contents sales," according to KTF media contents team senior Sohn Chang Hwa.
"Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting" (DMB) is likely to further fuel mobile movie services in Korea.
Satellite DMB is a service to deliver movie and music from a satellite to mobile phone terminals using a spectrum called S-band. It is a joint project between Korea and Japan's mobile broadcasting, and is capitalized by Japanese firms including Toshiba Corp.
SK Telecom is planning to initiate its service on September 1.
Korea Enhancing its Proprietary Technology Focusing on Global Market
While Korea is pursuing 1xEV-DO, Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication is focusing on further developments. One of such development is W-CDMA, and SK Telecom and KTF started commercial services at the end of 2003.
As SK Telecom and KTF have been successful in 1xEV-DO, they are not very enthusiastic about W-CDMA, whose communication speed shows little contrast with 1xEV-DO. However, W-CDMA is strongly promoted by the ministry. The Korean government intends to establish international roaming before W-CDMA becomes the mainstream technology of the global 3G market, and thus enable companies such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics to build up their technical experience.
Adding to W-CDMA, the ministry is promoting two other proprietary technologies, "Wi-Bro" and "WIPI."
Wi-Bro is a high-speed wireless Internet technology that uses 2.3GHz band, with an aim to achieve data transmission at 50Mbps (maximum) in 2006. Meanwhile, WIPI is a content platform for mobile phones, just like Java and BREW. Both contain Korean original technologies.
Behind the ministry's development of its proprietary technologies was the current circumstance that patents of core technologies such as 1xEV-DO and satellite DMB are held by overseas companies.
According to the Chosun Ilbo, Korean makers have paid a total of about 2 trillion won to Qualcomm Inc in CDMA mobile phone-related licensing fees over the last five years. As for satellite DMB, Toshiba owns a patent for the core technology. The ministry started to aim at the world's most advanced levels in terms of qualities such as next-generation proprietary technologies.
On2 Technologies, CNC International Sign Deal for Satellite Distribution of Video
On2's VP6 to Be Used for Live Streaming
NEW YORK and BEIJING, March 31, 2004 -- On2 Technologies, Inc., The Duck Corporation today announced that it has signed a contract with China Netcom Communication International Corporation (CNC International Corporation, Ltd.) for use of On2's VP6.2 video codec and TrueCast servers for the broadcast of video via satellite and the Internet for educational and cultural projects in China.
CNC International is a facilities-based broadband communications operator that provides a full spectrum of services and solutions to meet the broadband telecommunications needs of businesses and individuals.
"This arrangement expands our footprint in China from EVD, HD TV and surveillance and PVR devices to satellite broadcast of broadband content," said Douglas A. McIntyre, On2 Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are optimistic that this is the beginning of a long relationship with CNC International," he added.
finally, i am beginning to see a
by: posyche
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 08/25/04 01:04 pm
Msg: 84784 of 84808
much clearer picture here.
all of the pieces are not in place, to match the rhetoric.
randy, as usual, has presented this company in a fairly objective light.
the debate between the two of us, is an unanswered question,
and the belief that we will somehow garner the revs necessary to support a stock price we are all looking for, is highly unlikely in my view.
i suspect that macromedia is indeed looking at us for some type of business offering, perhaps cold fusion, in connection with conferencing, or somehing of that ilk...and not flash.
if it is their development tools, then it is possible that we will not be developing anything for anyone in the backend. they'll be doing it themselves, for the price of mx suite.
electronic arts seems to have panned out per yesterdays discovery to the likes of a kit to build your own sims movies, and thus compress with vp6 to fit them into the game.
the revs from that cannot be that great in terms of recurring revenue, and the price up front as well, somewhat prohibitive due to its use i would presume.
the other deals, we have heard nothing about as yet, and as well, macromedia despite my views still remains a big questionmark.
there to date has been no update of revenue guidance for the quarter.
it is almost as if we should be buying back shares to make the cap and float smaller at this point.
the majority of fees thus far has been for liscencing without use, and i think perhaps, engineering.
most of the deals signed seem to be a hedge for including on2 in their products for wider compatibility, should on2 score a major vod deal, or conferencing deal, and to dam's credit, they must be doing a very good job of convincing clients of its future viability.
and that use will not be driven until content is either delivered, or converted in realtime to vp6. i think at the moment, a realtime conversion mechanism would help drive the end user, and put it onto more machines/devices, while trying to develop a feasable mechanism for encoding at the back-end without the necessity to use the mpegs, at the added cost.
the mpegs are of choice simply because everyone can view them, thus they are totally necessary, and on2 royalties turn out to be additional, as opposed to savings.
a plugin for quicktime is totally necessary, and realplayer would be nice as well.
they would solve the back end content problem, i believe, and drive major acceptance.
wmv can compete as it will, and always has, but will always be hated for it's dominance, and strict proprietary adherence.
outside of that, it is advertising through java, and strictly closed loop.
even in videoconferencing, and instant messaging, a closed loop ultimately will not suffice. the need for a broader compatibility will crop up over and over again.
so the share will be there, but i am growing doubtful that in the short term that it will be there to support capitalization to any viable degree.
that said, i feel the stock price currently reflects the lower end of all these factors, with no optimism or speculation whatever.
with that i now officially move ....nah...
i'll stay at a buy...
pos
CNCI Business Overview
Currently, CNCI has already established equal and cooperative relationships with dozens of first-class operators throughout the world, including: Sprint, KDDI, NTT, KT, DACOM, FLAG, C&W, Equant, SingTel, C2C, PCCW, NT&T, CHTI and NCIC, etc. The extent of cooperation not only includes traditional voice service, but also includes more data service cooperation in IPLC, FR/ATM-VPN, MPLS-VPN, IP-TRANSIT and IDC, etc. CNC International jointly established semi-circuit sales and one-stop a sales pattern so as to bring our international service and service pattern closer to the needs of the market.
CNC has not only expanded it¡¯s international network and service capability through equal and cooperative relationships, but also made use of its own advantages in international network to establish service provision point (POP) in regions of relatively large quantities of service and relatively strong service capability. Currently such POPs have basically been established, among those that have service capability are: Hong Kong, United States, and Taiwan; POPs in the process of planning or construction are: dozens of countries and cities across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and Europe, etc.
Regional Development of CNC International Service
Focus of the international service in Greater China (China, HK and Taiwan), North Asia (Japan and Korea), North America (US) and South Asia (Singapore)
Focus of domestic service: Enterprises based in east China, south China, and HK, Taiwan, Japan or Korea-funded enterprises
Telecom investment and business cooperation with the neighboring countries of China
Overview of International Business Cooperation Model
Tier 1 regional operator
International circuit matching and providing OSS service (IPLC)
Tier 2/3 regional operator
a) Bandwidth resale (IPLC)
b) Bandwidth wholesale and small bandwidth splitting (IPLC)
International operator
a) Cooperating to build up product platform and providing OSS service (VPOP/IPLC/FR)
b) Overseas channel distribution (IPLC/IDC/DIA)
Suning Tian - President
Suning Tian is vice president of CNC Group and president of CNC International
In 1994, he set up Asiainfo with a few Chinese students in the US. In 1995, he moved Asiainfo to China by first bringing Internet core technology back to China to be engaged in Internet network system integration and software development. For less than 4 years, Asiainfo quickly grew into a international national hi-tech enterprise with 450 staff members and an annual sales volume of 600 million Yuan. In 1999, it was appraised by Intertional Economic Foreign Forum as one of the Top500 enterprises of the fastest growth; in 2000, Asiainfo was appraised by Forbes as one of the world's Top300 small enterprises. In March, 2000, Asiainfo successfully went public in Nasdaq in the US.
At the invitation of the Board of Directors of CNC, in March, 1999, he became president of the Corporation. With the approval of the State Council and Relevant authorities, China Network Communications Co., Ltd undertakes the construction and operation of high-speed Internet pilot project¡ªCNCnet. At the same time, the Corporation also shoulders the historical mission of ¡°combining institutional innovation and technological innovation, exploring the establishment of pattern of the management, development and competition of China¡¯s new generation communications corporation to strategically serve SOE reform, telecommunications institutional reform and knowledge innovation. On August 20th, 2001, CNCnet was conferred the plate of ¡°National Hi-Tech Industrialization Model Project¡±.
Suning Tian was appraised as ¡°Star of Asia¡± of the year of 2000 by Asia Business Weekly of the US. In 2001, he was also conferred the title of ¡°CCTV2000 Economic Figure¡±. At the same time, Dr. Tian is also director of Sina-US Scientific and Technological Exchange Committee, deputy director of China¡¯s Association of Youth Entrepreneurs, Member of Beijing Youths' Association, member of Beijing Municipal Political Consultative Committee, member of Advisory Board of Harvard Business School, member of Asia Pacific Board of New York Stock Exchange, and member of the World Economic Forum International Business Council.
Suning Tian received a master degree of Ecology in the Postgraduate Institute of China Academy of Sciences, and a Dr. degree for Resources Management of Texas University of the US.
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XINGCHA FAN - Vice President
Dr. Xingcha Fan is vice president of CNC International, has been responsible for formulating China Netcom's business strategy, directing equity financing activities, business development initiatives and overseeing the international operations since he joined China Netcom in April 2000.
Prior to joining China Netcom, Dr. Fan was an Associate Principle of McKinsey & Company in its Shanghai Office. In his five and half years with McKinsey, Dr. Fan helped many multinational and local Chinese companies to develop their growth and market strategy, design and implement new organization structure, turn around and improve their operational performances. As a leader in McKinsey's Asia and Pacific telecom and high-tech practice, Dr. Fan served a number of Asian and Chinese telecom, high-tech and internet/e-commerce companies. Dr. Fan also assisted two large Chinese companies to prepare their overseas IPO.
Dr. Fan received a Ph.D. degree of Computer Science from the Flinders University of Australia, and a master degree in Electrical Engineering from Southeast University in China in 1987.
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Ruoqi Guan - Vice President
Ruoqi Guan is vice president CNC International.
1978 to 1982, he studied as a major of telecommunications engineering in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications; 1993 to 1996, he studied in Hawaii University and acquired the degree of MBA.
1982-1989, she worked for Telecommunications General Bureau of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications; 1989-1993, he became deputy director of the Office of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. 1996-2000, he was director of Plan and Engineering Department of China Posts and Telecommunications Bureau. 2000-2002, he was General Manager of International Optical Cable Department of China Telecom. 2002-2003, he was General Manager of the Overseas Development Department of CNC.
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Ling Sui - Vice President
Ling Sui is vice president of CNC International.
1978-1982, she studied in the Department of Finance in Liaoning Institute of Finance and Economics. 1982-1992, she was engaged in financial management, corporation financing, accounting report, tax and insurance, etc. in China National Offshore Oil Corporation, and had been staff member, deputy director and manager, etc.
1992-1993, she became Financial Manager for NCH Chemicals Co., Ltd of the US.
1993-1999, she worked for Motorola (China) Co., Ltd and had been senior Financial Manager of the Department of Cellular Mobile Phone and Senior Customer Service Manager and Customer Service Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Cellular Mobile Phone. She had been responsible for the establishment of financial accounts and the financial system; responsible for collection and analysis of the financial report, budget preparation and control; and had been responsible for the design and management of workflow. When she worked for Motorola of the US, she had joined in the design of financial system, acquisition system, stockpile management system and international control system and their implementation, and these had passed the first international control auditing of the Corporation.
During her work for Motorola (China) Co., Ltd, she had won the prize of excellent staff member of Motorola Asia region, in 1995 and 1996, she won the contribution price of the Department of Motorola Global Cellular Mobile Phone, in 1998, she won the prize as excellent management personnel of the Department of Cellular Mobile Phone of Motorola Chinese region, etc.
In1999, she joined CNC, and has been vice president for finance and vice president of shared service to be responsible for financial sharing service, human resources, information system, property management and the auditing department.
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Fan Zhou - Vice President
Fan Zhou is Vice President of CNC International, Master of Financial Management of Maryland University. In Oct.2001, he joined CNC Broadband. Previously he had been working for Citicorp as Vice President for international operation and risk management. 1993-1997, he worked for Financial Group of General Electrics, and had been Asia-Pacific investment management and auditor of the Group, etc. During his work in the US, he succeeded in the M&A of large-scale corporate assets and capital in the US, Britain, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Porto Rico and India, etc., and had been chief officer of the Department of Strategic Planning of Pambaty (v) Financial Corporation of Canada, and risk investor of Hass Investment, and risk fund of the US.
China Netcom Joins the List of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Official Sponsors
(27 July 2004, Hong Kong) ¨C China Network Communications Group Corporation (¡°China Netcom¡±), a major fixed-line telecommunications services operator in the PRC, has been officially appointed by The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) as the sole partner of offering fixed-line telecommunications services in 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (¡°Beijing 2008¡±).
Boasting advanced telecommunications infrastructure, high quality telecommunications services, vast experiences in the industry and an outstanding partnership proposal, China Netcom captivated the favour of BOCOG and won the bid in becoming an official partner of fixed-line telecommunications services in Beijing 2008.
According to the cooperative agreement, China Netcom will provide high quality fixed-line communication products and relevant services for Beijing 2008, 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games, BOCOG, Chinese Olympic Committee, and also for Chinese athletes participating in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games and Beijing 2008.
Mr. Liu Jingmin, Deputy Mayor of Beijing and Executive Vice President of BOCOG, said, ¡°The cooperative agreement which BOCOG and China Netcom entered into marked our successful marketing efforts in lining up China Netcom to join the list of Beijing 2008 sponsors.¡± Mr. Liu continued, ¡°As a backbone enterprise offering telecommunications and network services in the PRC, China Netcom has immense potential in contributing to the modernisation of the telecommunications and information technology industries in the PRC.¡±
Mr. Zhang Chunjiang, General Manager of China Netcom said, ¡°Based on its present network and business resources, China Netcom will establish 4 core platforms, namely service provision platform, network supporting platform, service security platform and collaborative development platform, after it becomes a partner of the Beijing 2008. These platforms will provide high quality and professional communication services for Beijing 2008, ensuring 100% synchronisation of all communication services and 100% user satisfaction.¡±
China Netcom is also seeking to expand its investment in other Olympic cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Qingtao, Shenyan and Qinghuangdao, providing better network, technology, capital and manpower assurance. China Netcom pledges to strive for achieving ¡°Digital Olympics¡±. Its aim is to provide an affordable, diversified, multilingual and personalized data services for everyone, everywhere via a safe, convenient and highly accessible network, making the first ¡°Broadband Olympics¡± a reality.
Photo Caption: Signing Ceremony of Cooperative Agreement between China Netcom and BOCOG
CNC International formally established
The China Netcom Group International Communications Co., Ltd (CNC International)£¬held an establishment Conference on Nov. 6th, 2003 , at the same time as the Telecom Operators Summit, at the HQ of CNC International in Yizhuang, Beijing. The establishment of CNC International signifies that CNC Group has made a key step in accelerating internal integration and reorganization as well as establishing a modern corporate system. Also, it is a key strategic step by CNC in realizing their national strategy of ¡°Global Expansion¡± and institutional reforms in telecommunication. Zhang Chunjiang, General Manager of CNC Group, Yan Yixun, Chairman of the Board of CNC International and President Tian Suning delivered speeches at the meeting. Leaders of MII and the State Council¡¯s Assets Supervision and Management Committee also attended the meeting to extend their congratulations.
The Telecom Operators Summit was also held on the afternoon of the day. Representatives of Equant, NTT, MCI, Chunghwa Telecom, Asia Netcom and CNC International jointly discussed the development and cooperation of the international telecommunications market under the general heading of economic globalization.
As one of the most powerful telecom operators in China, after a certain period of planning and adjustment, and under the guidance of key the State Council documents, CNC Group decided to establish CNC International Communications Co., Ltd to comprehensively operate corresponding international network assets and operate all international business.
CNC International is a corporation that is organized with the assets, network, business and personnel related to international communication of CNC Group and CNC Holdings. Co., Ltd and dedicated to the operation of an international telecommunication service. It is one of the three major business corporations that integrates the best talents and powerful resource superiority of the CNC Group and the former CNC Holdings. It is the first and sole domestic telecom enterprise that is dedicated to the development of all international businesses. The establishment of the CNC International opened a whole new window for the operation of the CNC Group¡¯s international services. Its duty mainly lies in the operation and management of the international network asset of the CNC Group, and the operation of all domestic international services and all overseas international services targeted at international operators and overseas enterprise customers. It operates a domestic and overseas international infrastructure, all overseas international services, all data business initiated overseas and finishing in China, all international incoming calls, all international operators and overseas enterprises, all data service initiated in China and l finishing overseas and the settlement service for all international outgoing calls.
CNC International has Tian Suning as its President. It also has personnel from the Department of International Service from the HQ of CNC Group, Beijing Communications Corporation and CNC Holdings. These personnel constitute the backbone of CNC International. This promotes the management and operating system that is required by a modern corporation.
In his speech, Zhang Chunjiang, General Manager of CNC Group said, ¡°I believe, with the considerate care of CPC Central Committee and the State Council, and under direct leadership of the State Asset Committee and MII, and with the vigorous support of all social circles and the joint effort of the staff members, CNC will surely not fail in its mission and will develop a whole new basis for the reform and development of the CNC Group. I also believe that the establishment and operation of CNC International will make a greater contribution to the comprehensive construction of a well-off society!¡±
Yan Yixun, Chairman of the Board of CNC International said, ¡°The establishment of CNC International signifies that the reorganization of the CNC Group has taken another new step forward. We will continue to work hard and explore new paths for the development of China¡¯s telecom service under the conditions of opening up and reforms.¡±
Tian Suning, President of CNC International said, ¡°We know very well that the development of CNC International in the future is a very long process. We have already established the development strategy. This will use a China-centered regional network that links all major cities in Asia to provide an integrated solution to large enterprise customers, become a leading regional operator in the Pan-Asian area, and realize the strategic aim of China telecom operator¡¯s Global Expansion.
China Netcom International Corporation Ltd. (hereafter CNC International), a subsidiary of China Network Communications Group Corporation (CNC), provides international telecom services. CNC International consolidates the international assets, networks, businesses, and personnel of CNC and China Netcom (Holdings) Co., Ltd. (CNC Holdings). With China Network Northern Communications Co., Ltd. (CNC North) and China Network Southern Communications Co., Ltd. (CNC South), these are the three major subsidiaries of CNC.
Incorporated on November 6, 2003, CNC International becomes CNC's exclusive one-stop shop for international services; and centrally manages CNC's international network infrastructure and businesses. It is the entity to execute CNC's "go-out" strategy and to form joint ventures and partnerships with foreign companies.
In addition to the international systems and overseas subsidiaries owned by CNC and CNC Holdings, CNC International consolidates all the network assets of CNC, the subsidiaries in ten northern provinces, and CNC Holdings that support international services. Such supporting infrastructure and resources includes international gateways, interconnect resources, border stations, landing stations of submarine cables, and terrestrial extensions. These combine with CNC International resources and Points of Presence (POPs) outside of China to provide a reliable, one-stop, international solution.
CNC International operates its international network infrastructure inside and outside of China; offers comprehensive services to international carriers and enterprises outside of China. These services include: data services that originate outside China and terminate inside China; international inbound voice; data services that originate inside China and terminate outside China; and international outbound voice settlement.
CNC International commits to fully implement modern governance, management processes and systems. Key staff and management team have been selected from CNC, Beijing Communications Corporation, and CNC Holdings.
China Netcom Corporation Limited ("CNC" or the "Company") is a facilities-based broadband telecommunications operator in China. The Company provides a full spectrum of services and solutions to meet the broadband telecommunications needs of businesses and individuals. Its core business includes providing Internet broadband access and integrated telecom services to residential and corporate customers, and building the infrastructure for China's New Economy. Its comprehensive collection of telecom licenses, including the license to operate international gateways out of China, puts it in peer with incumbent operators such as China Telecom.
In August 1999, China Netcom was founded by four entities affiliated with the Chinese government: (i) the Chinese Academy of Sciences ("CAS"); (ii) the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ("SARFT"); (iii) the Ministry of Railways ("MOR"); and (iv) the Shanghai Municipal Government. The company closed its first round of private equity placement in February 2001, raising US$325 million from a group of high-profile international investors, including News Corp. Digital Ventures, Goldman Sachs Private Equity, and other leading Hong Kong and Chinese financial institutions.
CNC's core competence lies in its strong shareholder support, a new generation of modern management, and best-of-breed technology. In 2000, CNC has finished the first phase construction of a nationwide fiber optic backbone network, CNCNet and metropolitan access network, which pioneered the deployment of advanced IP over DWDM transmission technology in the world. The company recently extended its last mile broadband access network to cover residential users using Fiber LAN technology.
CNC's business strategy is to:
Offer a world-class network and services.
Focus on communications-intensive corporate customers.
Differentiate with quality services and execution.
Build a solid and loyal customer base.
Become a global telecommunications player by partnering with world-class leaders.
Built a strong telecom brand and establish a reputable corporate identity.
CNC offers a unique and scarce strategic alliance opportunity for international companies who want to gain access to the China telecommunications and Internet markets and partner with an integrated facilities-based telecommunications operator in China. With regional offices in Beijing, HongKong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc., China Netcom is poised to benefit from the rapid growth of China's telecommunications and Internet sectors.
Mark Cuban blog..HDTV, DVD, Hard Drives and the future
I love looking for ways to screw up conventional wisdom. Right now in the entertainment world, the conventional wisdom is that both sides on the HD DVD vs Blue Ray DVD will battle it out and a standard for HD on DVD will emerge. No one is trying to rush to a compromise because the big media companies want to squeeze as much money as they possibly can out the current DVD business cycle.
Good. The longer it takes, the less chance any format of DVD has of having a place in the future of home entertainment. Don’t look now, but the price and size of hard drives have fallen like a rock, while capacities have soared, with no slowdown in site.
Which leads to the question — What is the best way to distribute content? DVDs which will be limited in capacity to 9.4gbs on a single DVD for another year, and then after that 50gbs on a single disk for years to come after that, or rewritable media that can hold 2gb already in a device half the size of a pen, or in a hard drive that can hold 200GBs plus in a drive the size of your cell phone?
Which device should content distributors like HDNet invest in ? DVD, knowing that the future standards will be locked for 7 to 10 years, or these storage devices that will grow in capacity, and shrink in size and price, not to mention the additional flexibility of being able to erase and rewrite the drives?
It’s not a question being asked in many places, but it is something we are talking about at HDNet. The choices we and others in the industry make can have a big impact on the future of your home entertainment.
Personally, I like putting content on rewritable drives. Let me tell you about how I personally made the USB Flash Drives work for me.
I had a couple DVDs that I had PURCHASED, that I hadn’t had the chance to watch. I had a couple 512mb Flash Drives that I had bought specifically to test them out for video. I took the first movie, and using an encoder with compression (not going to tell you which one, don’t want to play favorites), I encoded the movies at DVD quality and saved the output onto each of the 512mb Flash Drives. I popped those tiny little puppies into my pockets and off I went to the plane. Keys, some money and my keychain flash drives in one pocket, phone in the other. No hassle, no fuss no muss.
On the plane, I popped the first keychain drive into the USB Port. Got the ready signal, got prompted to open my video player, and watched a nice movie right from the keychain drive. On the way home, did the same thing with the other movie. I loved it. Far less space than DVDs. Could put them in my pocket instead of filling up my briefcase. I immediately went out and bought a 1gb keychain drive so I could hold 2 movies on 1 drive, in addition to my first 2 drives.
After having such a great experience with putting my DVDs on the keychain drives, I decided to test HDNet content in HD. The keychain drives, even the 1gb didn’t have enough capacity to hold a full movie, so I tried just some of our promos. They were short enough that they would fit in 512mb, but long enough to let me see if it worked.
I used a standard HDTV MPeg2 transport stream. The keychain drive wasn’t fast enough to allow me to pull the video directly. I had to copy it to my hard drive on my laptop, where it played with no prob, as it should.
Since I was getting fired up about the possibility of putting HDNet content in a format that could be transportable and work easily with MediaCenter PCs, and in the not to distant future, USB or FireWire enabled TVs, PVRs and Setop boxes and even DVDs (yes, tvs with hard drives are right around the corner, and yes, all your CE devices with a future, will have storage and expansion ability), I decided to buy a portable 20gbs USB 2.0 drive that was about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. Cost me 150 bucks. I also bought an external 80gbs FireWire Drive for under 100 dollars. I loaded a full 2 hour movie on the cig sized drive, and all the episodes I had of our HDNet Word Report.
Connected to my laptop, the cig drive couldn’t quite keep up. It had a couple hiccups, but it was close. If I had used any compression at all on it, no doubt it would have kept up no prob. After copying to my laptop hard drive, it played no problem at all.
I connected the 80gb firewire drive to my HP Media Center PC and to my PC, it was fast enough to play without any problems. I loved it.
I loved it, for a ton of reasons. Let me name a few.
I know that the price per GBs of an external hard drive is now down under 50c. That price is going to fall further. A lot further as capacities increase. This time next year we should be talking about 1TB (that’s 1,000GBS) drives at 25c per GB or less. The increased capacity means not only that I can stick more HDNet movies or TV shows on a drive and sell them to consumers, but it also means that I can increase the quality of the picture substantially.
What few people realize is that when we shoot something in HD for HDNet, the quality we capture the content at is far, far better than the picture quality that you see on your HDTV. We have to compress it to fit in the bandwidth defined by broadcast standards. That compression reduces the quality of the picture you see. Your TV can handle the quality we capture it at, but we don’t have a way to get it to your TV at that quality level — yet.
Bigger cheaper hard drives gives HDNet the ability to use that additional storage to hold our content in uncompressed quality and increase the picture quality that you can see on your TV. A bunch. We can take advantage of new cameras to capture at better and better qualities, and of new compression schemes that approach future camera capabilities, only because we have ever expanding storage. That’s something DVDs will never have. So by delivering content on Hard Drives rather than DVDs, we will be able to continue to increase the picture quality for years to come.
The other cool part is that the video playback devices that will be in your home over the next couple years will have the ability to connect via USB or Firewire to these drives. PVRs, Set top Boxes, Media Center PCs,even DVDs designed to play today’s DVDs and whatever future DVD standard is settled on, all will have the ability to connect to Hard Drives in some shape or fashion, or people wont buy them. There is going to be a big, big war to host your content in your house. Whoever does it the best, provides the most flexibility, and expandability at the best price, will win.
Next on my reasons to love this approach to distribution is that it basically kills off the “Piracy is going to kill us” threats from the big movie companies. Hard Drive storage is expanding far more quickly than upload or download speeds to our homes. The ability to use that hard drive storage to increase the quality and file size of a movie, makes it practically impossible to distribute it over the net. I have a question I always ask at speeches, and have asked for the last several years. I ask if anyone in the room has ever downloaded or uploaded a movie or TV show in HD quality to or from a P2P network. No one has ever raised their hand. That is in spite of the fact that HDTV has been in the clear, over the air since 1998. EVERY SINGLE SHOW that has ever been broadcast over the air, and continues to be broadcast today, could be picked up and copied by any of quite a few different, now under 200 dollar HD encode/decode cards and then put on the net. It hasn’t and won’t happen, because shipping around 18gbs per 2 hour movie isn’t going to be fast anytime soon. Make the file sizes bigger to accommodate better quality, and forgettaboutit.
When we get to TB hard drives for under 250 dollars, we will be able to fit 50 movies in HD quality on that drive. More than ONE THOUSAND movies in DVD quality on that drive. The keychain drives will be able to hold an entire HD movie and cost under 20 dollars. That same keychain drive I talked about earlier, in the next 2 years or so, will be able to store a DVD and cost under 10 dollars. So which is the better way to deliver a movie or movies? On a DVD with a boring, lifeless future, or hard drives?
Once the prices of a keychain drive get to a couple bucks for storage enough for a DVD quality movie, then it will be easy to distribute and sell to consumers. (Of course they will still be packaged in pain the ass plastic that no normal person can open right when they buy it, but that’s another issue.) The question will be who other than HDNet will be selling it that way. Will companies stick to DVDs because that’s the way they feel comfortable, or will they support a new medium?
That’s a little question. The bigger question, the Billion Dollar question is how to deliver content on or to hard drives, regardless of size and capacity, in a way that consumers will enjoy it, and do it cost effectively today?
Realize, that whatever happens in the next couple years, that you won’t be able to buy the newest releases and the biggest hits this way. There is no major media company who is going to disrupt their DVD cash cow to take a chance on a new business like this. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentally is big. But again, that’s a good thing for entrepreneurs with content. While they hope it won’t break, we can be out there trying to break it, and then they usually can’t fix it.
So without the biggest hit movies, what is the best way to deliver content to homes and for travelers?
We are looking at kiosks. Walk up to an airport kiosk, or a kiosk at a retail location. Pick the movies or shows or music they have available, pay for it via credit card, and wait a couple minutes while the content is copies from a server right there on the premises.
We are looking at customizing it per user. Go online, pick the content you want. Pay for it, the next day your hard drive with all the movies, shows, music, whatever, shows up on your doorstep. You plug it in your MediaCenter PC, your DVD, PVR, whatever, and watch, listen and play.
There is also the Netflix rental approach that could work as well. Pay 100 bucks for the first 200gbs external drive. Pay us 20 bucks a month, and we send you a new drive with the new goodies, and you send us back the one you just watched — Easy and breezy. Well, that is if consumers like working that way.
Probably the best short term solution is to work with high end home theater installers. The best belong to CEDIA (www.cedia.org). They are the folks that are most capable of integrating Media Center PCs, Hard Drive based storage systems , HDTVs and all the media devices in your house. I can only guess that they would have a field day selling hard drives full of HD quality or better movies to their high end customers who want to truly enjoy their home theater systems.
There are a lot of open ended questions and challenges in this, but that’s what makes business fun. What kind of device will be the content server in the home? Who will sell it? How will content be delivered, and by who? What will the pricing be? What will the business model be?
A ton of questions. The good news is that none of the solutions involve good ole’ fashion DVDs, other than as an interim solution. That means there is one hell of an opportunity out there for HDNet and others — as long as we can execute.
I also wanted to add just a couple of comments, questions, remarks.
1. Why haven’t the Media Center PC companies and the cable and satellite industry gotten together to put set top box capability in mediacenter PCs? People who buy media center PCs, might want to use them as media centers, and given that cable and satellite deliver the media, doesn’t it make sense to combine the two? It would cut customer costs for all involved significantly.
2. Why aren’t Media Center PCs promoting the fact that they can play HD files and shipping with Demo and samples to show them off? All of them can. I just bought a new HP Media Center PC, and it didn’t come with squat to show off what it can do. It works great, but I had to figure out all of its capabilities. A showcase would make it a far better solution.
3. The biggest decision facing HD cable and satellite distributors today is quality vs quantity. Right now most are looking at using compression to squeeze more channels into the existing space they have rather than squeeze a better picture into the same bandwidth that channels take today. The reason it’s a huge decision is that once they decide to fit in more channels, they can’t go back. You can’t all the sudden decide you need 15mbs per channel to deliver a picture that compares to a competitor’s better picture after compressing down to 6or 8mbs per channel.
4. In a world of multiple Terrabye drives, is VOD a good business? One of the things I learned at broadcast.com is that when you give thousands of choices on demand, people go to the little things that they couldn’t find anywhere else. The sailing fan will choose the show about sailing over the blockbuster movie because they can’t get the sailing show anywhere else. Or maybe they choose both. The problem is that when people all choose different things at the same time, its a huge bandwidth hog. Thousands of choices, thousands of people using different movies, particularly when the expectation is for HD quality, and there is a huge problem. The cost of delivery per movie if the system is used a lot is incredible. Unicasting DVD or higher quality video is an incredibly inefficient business. (Unicasting is where there is one connection per user to the movie being shown. Each user has to have his own bandwidth, they cant’ share streams) It’s why movie delivery over the net will never be a big business.
I know bandwidth on your own network is cheaper than the net, but when hard disk storage costs 25c per GB, and falls fast from there, unicast won’t be the best way to go.
The real solution for VOD is TIVO/PVR from the main office. PVR customers are becoming trained that when you fill up the hard drive, you have to delete something to get something. Put some PVR software on the front end, and allow users to pick from a menu of content that they can add. Then overnight, they are multicast the content , whether its via cable or satellite, it’s saved to the hard drive. If they watch it, they get billed for it and everyone is happy, and distributors maximize their revenue per bit.
Ok, I’m HD worn out — for now. Thanks for letting me core dump some of the things that have been on my mind re HD and the future.
Sims2 info
by: randy_cooper2000 (39/M/Atlanta)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 08/24/04 01:29 pm
Msg: 84719 of 84724
Hello all,
I try to keep up on the board, but not sure if someone might have already found this or not. To date, I haven't seen anyone with a straight answer about what On2 is doing inside the Sims 2 specifically.
An earlier post by Kevin70 regarding Sims 2 going Gold. I checked out the link and was intrigued by the section about filming Sims movies in the game (cut here):
"The Sims 2 also opens up endless new creative possibilities. Make your own Sim films with the new movie making feature. Create the cast, set the stage, take control of the camera and capture your own screenplay in action. Zoom in close with the new camera to see every last detail."
That caught my attention as a critical function that looked like something On2 could be involved in. So I did a search on Sim2 and VP6 and found the following:
http://www.simsstop.co.uk/content/view/11166/2/
excerpt:
"Codec News
Written by Barry (S ADMIN)
It appears that The Sims 2 will not save uncompressed AVI video files when creating a movie, it has turns out that EA has licensed On2's VP6.2 codec for use in The Sims 2. That means movies created from The Sims 2 will need that codec. On2 claims that their codec provides better video quality than Windows Media 9, Real 9, or H.264. You can find the trailer of The Sims 2 on the VP6 samples page. It's very likely that the necessary files will be included with the Sims 2 when you install it."
So this is very interesting. It brings up a real question for me. It sounds like in Sims 2, the player can create movie of his Sims to share with anyone else in the Sims world - sitcoms, movies, whatever. Then there would obviously be a place where other Sims users could look at all of the available movies and watch what they want - kind of like a Kazaa type place.
So here is the strange part that has me scratching my head. It's easy enough to see the VP6 codec packaged with each Sims game for decoding movies, but how do the movies get in VP6 format to start with? That would imply each game would also include a "movie producer" component that would have the VP Encoder embedded in it.
Now, did On2 give EA an open license to their encoder and decoders for one flat license fee? I sure hope not. Guess we won't know that until sales of Sims2 get moving and we see if there is a residual royalty stream that starts coming in.
Regards,
R
Curt Marvis, CinemaNow - the IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews
Fraser Lovatt
06 August 04
We interviewed Curt Marvis, a key player in IP-based video delivery and CEO of CinemaNow.
CinemaNow have the distribution rights to the largest library of on-demand feature films available on the internet. CinemaNow's distribution model is one of the most flexible in the industry: films are available with pay-per-view, download or subscription licenses.
The company's library comprises content from more than 150 licensors, including 20th Century Fox, Disney, MGM, Miramax, Warner Brothers and Lions Gate Entertainment.
CinemaNow have not restricted themselves to films, however – their catalogue includes music concerts, shorts and television programmes.
CinemaNow's technology platform is essential to their business, and so they have developed their own proprietary content distribution and DRM system: PatchBay. They've also turned PatchBay into a product, and has licensed the platform to other content distributors. PatchBay allows distributors to manage, track and syndicate content whilst enforcing DRM solutions and territorial restrictions. CinemaNow's entire business is built around the Windows Media 9 platform, which has simplified their business model somewhat, whilst at the same time allowing them to take advantage of the sophisticated features built into Microsoft's platform.
Curt Marvis has been CEO of CinemaNow since the company was created in July 1999, arriving there from 7th Level. He was also a founder of Powerhouse Entertainment, and in the 80s and early 90s was CEO of The Company, the Los Angeles production organisation.
Digital delivery of video has been slower to arrive than many industry players predicted in the mid-90s, but with the adoption of broadband and improvements to codecs and DRM systems, it looks like mainstream is around the corner. There are still many hurdles – broadband isn't quite broadband enough, consumer rights over moving content to other devices is unclear at best, content can be lacklustre and customers are confused by the many competing codecs, DRM schemes and formats in the market.
We spoke to Curt about CinemaNow and his hope for the future of digital content delivery, and the advantages of Windows Media 9.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of the visitors to Digital Lifestyles might not know about Cinema Now. Can you give me some background on that for our readers?
CinemaNow has been around for five years. We started the company in mid-1999, which of course was during the dot.com hayday. We started the company then do to the same thing that we continue to do today, which is to offer movies and other video content on demand over IP Networks.
What do you think has kept Blockbuster out of the part of the market in the US for so long?
Blockbuster is actually a small investor in our company and I think Blockbuster feels that when they get into a new marketplace they look for a market which is very, very big which the IP on demand marketplace still is not.
I think their philosophy is that they will enter the marketplace at a moment in time when they feel there is a sufficient amount of revenue.
You have to keep in mind as well that Blockbuster do not own the rights to distribute content in this window yet, so they have to negotiate that through a studio.
They are sort of dabbling with it in the UK, but not in a very high profile way.
Yes, I know Steve Middleton and they have had that trial in Hull. So I'm familiar with that. They are actually doing more in the UK than they are in the US market.
Tell me a little bit about your IBC session. What sort of things are you going to be covering?
We have a sort of technology platform we call PatchBay. PatchBay is the sort of central nervous system of CinemaNow, and it's a completely Windows based platform.
We deliver our movies exclusively in Windows Media format, but that's not to say that couldn't use other codecs or other players, but we chose that as our primary platform when we started the company.
We used the installed base for that choice as well as the specific functionality of the platform, for purposes of what we can do to add additional delivery and content.
Could you tell us a bit more about your Patch Bay product?
Patchbay is a versatile, user-friendly, API and tool for managing all facets of online content distribution. With Patchbay, you can manage six major tasks for successfully distributing content online including: Content Management and Distribution; Content Syndication; Rights Management; User Profiling and Ad Targeting; Pay-Per-View, Subscription and E-Commerce Management; and Comprehensive Reporting.
It's a tested, real-world application currently being used to manage millions of streams per month over disparate networks. With Patchbay's scalable infrastructure, CinemaNow maximizes its revenues while protecting and retaining control over its assets, even those syndicated to third-party websites.
Windows Media 9 it has been a terrific platform for delivering and viewing and protecting your content. What excites you most about it?
That is a big question. Is there something that Windows Media excites me?
The Windows Media Platform is directly compatible with the dominant operating systems and you know, EU concerns and other concerns notwithstanding we felt that having a player that was most used with the operating system it was running on was best. We also frankly think that beyond that specific issue the Windows Media Platform and Windows Media Player are the superior player and platforms for digital delivery. That is why we chose them.
Who is the typical Cinema Now subscriber? Who are you actually reaching?
We definitely have a male dominated audience – over 75% of our users are male. They tend to be slightly older than you might initially think. Our typical user is probably between 25 and 40 years of age. Generally speaking they have a higher than average income, higher than average education – you know that sort of thing. That is the kind of profile that we have in general, although it is changing all the time, as we have more and more of the mainstream business.
You have 455 films in your library at the moment. How many are you aiming for?
That's what you're seeing in the UK. We have territorial rights which protect our content from being viewed outside of the US for films that we do not have rights to – for example the collection of movies that you see in the UK is significantly inferior to what we offer in the US. In the US on our website right now we have almost 2000 films available. By the end of this year that will grow to probably close to 4000/5000.
In the UK, I am hopeful that we will be up well over 1000 films by the end of the year including the films from major studios.
How long do you think it is going to be before digital delivery becomes mainstream then?
Well, I think there are a number of factors that are sort of the driving part right now. One is the problem of availability; one is broadband penetration; one is hardware device availability and penetration in terms of everything from portable devices, media centre devices etc. etc.
I think there has got to be an alignment if you want to drive fast market adoption. When we started the company in 1999, we thought that by 2004 that time would have arrived. I can tell you now that is just the beginning and we will probably see this become a mass market over the course of the next two to four years – somewhere in that timeframe.
You mentioned that you don't have the rights to distribute all of your films in all territories - what kind of problems are you facing in getting rights clearances for content in different markets?
No real problems, but rather an issue of needing to be set up in these countries with strong distribution partners before it is worthwhile to spend money acquiring local content and preparing it (encoding and storage) for distribution. Keep in mind that content is distributed on a territory by territory basis and with each version comes new contracts, payments and prepping.
Are you considering a global pricing model or will you be pricing the same content differently on a market by market basis?
We will try to keep it as consistent as we can, but we will definitely need to follow pricing schemes that are consistent with differences in the traditional distribution businesses.
Many content providers are getting excited about supplying content for mobile phones -- when you do see serving media to mobiles becoming a mainstream business? Will there be a point when consumers will want to watch long media streams like films on their mobiles? Is there a maximum length that consumers will watch?
I think mobile distribution is really a business in the next few years for portable devices such as tablet PC's, Portable Media Centers, etc. Cell phones for full length content seems a long ways away, if ever.
What of the content that is being delivered to people the films and content that they are buying has quite often incompatible DRM schemes behind it. What do you think is going to happen in that space over the next four years?
Windows Media has DRM that has been adopted by a lot of different people. I think there will be a shake-up in the market very shortly and one DRM system will be adopted by 95% of the content delivery industry.
What worries you about the future of digital delivery? What keeps you awake at night?
Well, I think, I sleep very well actually. I think the biggest concern is that people will jump into the marketplace prematurely – before there is a high quality user experience to be had, and that consumers will be turned off on the concept if it doesn't work properly at first or it is not a compelling product offering.
I hope that companies recognise that this is still very much a virgin market, and that when it really begins to take off I think it'll dwarf the size of what is happening in the DVD industry, and it'll open up avenues for huge amounts of libraries, great content opportunities etc. I think you will see people consume more and more content and I think there will be plenty of room for a lot players to get into the business.
Curt is a panellist in the 'Understanding the Range of Platforms - A Multitude of Destinations' session between 14:00 and 15:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here
Movie Makers, Tech Firms Ink DVD Copying Pact
By John P. Mello Jr.
www.TechNewsWorld.com,
Part of the ECT News Network
07/15/04 9:02 AM PT
In an announcement late Tuesday, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers and the Walt Disney Company said they would develop a DVD copy-protection scheme that will allow consumers to make backup copies of movies as well as share DVD content on portable devices.
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In an apparent move to avoid the mistakes made by the recording industry in managing digital forms of its intellectual property, two movie studios have cut a deal with several major technology companies -- including Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) -- to develop a scheme that will allow limited copying of next-generation DVDs.
"They're trying to be wiser than the recording industry," Vamsi M. Sistla, director of broadband and residential entertainment technologies for ABI Research in Oyster Bay, New York, told TechNewsWorld.
Sistla explained that "In the present marketplace, consumers prefer to use their content on multiple outlets. If consumers aren't given that choice, it will backfire on the content providers' business."
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In an announcement late Tuesday, Microsoft, IBM, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) , Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers and the Walt Disney Company said they would develop a DVD copy-protection scheme that will allow consumers to make backup copies of movies as well as share DVD content on portable devices.
That scheme, dubbed AACS for Advanced Access Content System, isn't expected to be developed until the end of this year at the earliest.
While the brief announcement by the AACS alliance of companies raised questions in the minds of many industry observers, analysts, by and large, praised the move.
Critical Development
"This is the first significant multi-industry effort in this area," Ted Schadler, a principle analyst with Forrester Research in Boston, told TechNewsWorld. "Thumbs up on the effort," he said.
"This development is critical to the growth of the industry," Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst with the Enderle Group in San Jose, California, noted.
"It's critical for the growth of the merged PC-consumer electronics industry, which is going through a painful birthing process right now," he told TechNewsWorld, "and it's also critical to the movie industry as well because otherwise they're going to lose a substantial amount of revenue to piracy."
Different Notions of Portability
Finally, some of the content creators and copyright holders are reaching across the table to the technology providers, Mike McGuire, a research director for the Gartner Group based in Stamford, Connecticut, observed.
"That's a great first step," he told TechNewsWorld from his office in San Jose, California. "However, both parties have to be cognizant of what consumers are going to expect," he advised.
"We're going to see very different notions of portability between a movie and a song," he predicted. "But we have to give these studios some credit for being a little more forward looking than the music industry," he said.
Positive Development
"If the technology companies and the movie studios can reach a common ground that allows consumers to do what they want to do, that's a positive development," Jeff Joseph, vice president for communications for the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Virginia told TechNewsWorld.
However, not everyone saw the announcement in a positive light.
Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, labeled the AACS Alliance a new Digital Right Management (DRM) "cartel."
Bad Cartel
"A new DRM cartel is going to be bad for innovation, bad for competition and in the long run, bad for consumers," he told TechNewsWorld. He maintained that the ultimate aim of the alliance was to restrict what types of products consumers can have and the features those products can offer.
Although the movie industry argues that copy-protection schemes are needed to combat digital piracy, von Lohmann scoffed at that contention.
No Stopping Pirates
"The reality is that none of these content protection systems has had any success in stopping digital piracy," he said. "There's no reason to assume that this will be any different," he asserted.
"If this system is quickly defeated by pirates, then the only people that are going to be paying the price are legitimate consumers and innovative companies shut out by the cartel," he said.
Hollywood still wary of Microsoft
Monday, August 16, 2004 Posted: 10:41 AM EDT (1441 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- CinemaNow Inc., the Internet-based movie service, is a rarity in Hollywood -- a company that eagerly embraces Microsoft Corp. technology and relies on it exclusively to transmit, protect and display the movies it rents to customers.
Then again, Microsoft is a major investor in the company, which is also owned by independent studio Lions Gate.
The majority of entertainment companies, unsure of Microsoft's motives and wary of its cutthroat tactics in the battle for the computer desktop, have preferred to maintain an arm's-length relationship with the software Goliath.
But these days, studios fear digital piracy more than they fear Microsoft and have slowly begun to make deals to use its software tools, albeit on a non-exclusive basis.
For its part, Microsoft has tried to calm Hollywood's anxiety, revealing a portion of its proprietary code for compressing large media files to a standards-setting group and offering longer-term deals to assuage fears it would hike the price of each new software version.
"They are being subtly aggressive, not like in the PC industry where they used strong-arm tactics," said Michael Wolf, principal analyst at research firm In-Stat.
Microsoft also is starting to see limited success in its efforts to work with Hollywood in the still nascent online movie market. Last week, Microsoft's MSN Internet division began linking to Blockbuster Inc.'s online rental service. MSN also offers a limited number of pay-per-view movies through CinemaNow.
At a time when studios are seeking to make higher-quality versions of movies and television shows available on everything from computers to cell phones, dealing with Microsoft has become almost unavoidable.
"Microsoft wants to be the sticky stuff in the middle between the studios and all the different platforms consumers will use," said American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy. "They have the chance to really enable business models that we have heard about over the past five years."
But at what price?
Two fears
Microsoft has long dallied with the media business, forming the MSNBC cable network with NBC and launching its own video game console to take advantage of the burgeoning game market.
It formed the online magazine Slate, which it recently said it would sell, and launched a number of other forays, not always successful. Its MSN service still lags America Online and it has closed a number of other ventures, including Mungo Park, an adventure travel Web site.
It has also amassed a huge amount of cash and a reputation as an aggressive and relentless competitor, willing to use its virtual monopoly power in computer operating systems to crush would-be competitors.
That power made studios highly suspicious when Microsoft came calling in the 1990s seeking to persuade Hollywood to make content available in digital form on computers and home networks.
"There was an assumption that we were out there to screw them," said Kurt Buecheler, a former executive in Microsoft's digital media division whose job included approaching studios for possible deals.
"There were two fears," Buecheler said. "One was that Microsoft could buy the companies. The reality of that was just silly. Microsoft knows how to do technology and software. They don't know how to tell a story.
"Second, they (studios) looked at the PC as a device that was almost the murder weapon of the music industry when, in fact, it wasn't."
Those suspicions still linger, even as Microsoft has struck deals with several studios to protect movies and TV shows from piracy.
Microsoft recently announced a number of licensees for its latest Windows Media digital rights software, dubbed "Janus," including The Walt Disney Co., AOL, Dell Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Movielink LLC, an online movie company owned by five of the seven major Hollywood studios. The licensing agreements are not exclusive, though. Movielink, the biggest Internet film provider, also offers films in RealNetworks Inc.'s format.
In July, Microsoft joined a cross-industry effort aimed at protecting content on different networked devices, including a new class of portable media players that are expected to be hot holiday season sellers.
That consortium includes Sony Corp., which promotes its own proprietary technology for viewing entertainment, including the movies and TV shows produced by its studio arm.
Microsoft views these deals as thawing its icy relations with Hollywood and eradicating old stereotypes about Microsoft software being buggy.
Yet Microsoft can't quite shake fears that its real intention is to use its monopoly position to charge Hollywood outrageous fees to access the computer desktop.
In March, the European Union fined Microsoft $613 million, finding the company guilty of abusing its Windows monopoly to squeeze out rivals in related markets for digital media players. The EU ordered Microsoft to sell a version of Windows without its media player. Microsoft is appealing.
While Hollywood needs tools that compress huge computer files -- especially digital files that contain next-generation, high-definition images -- small enough to put on a DVD or send over the Internet, studios say they need to encourage competition so they won't be held hostage by one company.
Microsoft says it has learned from its earlier, sometimes heavyhanded, dealings with Hollywood.
The company recently plucked a Hollywood veteran to run a new division to develop relationships with the entertainment and media industries. Blair Westlake, a former chairman of the Universal Television and Networks Group, will be responsible for bridging the gaps between Hollywood, consumer electronics companies and government regulators.
Amir Majidimehr, who runs Microsoft's Windows digital media division, said he understands that Hollywood is wary of ceding any of that power to a technology company like Microsoft. But he adds that recent agreements to work with Disney and Warner Bros. have helped allay Hollywood's fears.
He also notes that Hollywood holds the power in the relationship. He noted that Hollywood as kingmaker crowned the DVD format and MPEG-2 as the favored tool to compress large video files.
And now, he said, the content creators will lose if they are overcautious while ever-growing broadband Internet connections make swapping a two-hour movie as fast as a two-minute song.
"Our strategy is very simple -- we make money selling Windows and we want to sell more copies of it. The way we sell more is to add new applications to it," said Majidimehr.
"What we're trying to do is be very true to our intentions, which is to drive PC sales. We've got to play fair, we've got to play open and frankly, we think we're doing it better than any competitors."
China Emerging as a Key Player in Shaping Global Technology Standards
CHINA, Aug. 12 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- China is no longer content with just
being the world's pre-eminent manufacturer: it is increasingly active in the
development of global technology standards, Deloitte finds in a study released
today. The report, "Changing China," details how China's standards
initiatives will shape global competition in the technology, media and
telecommunications (TMT sector) for years to come.
China's current position as the leading consumer and producer of many
technology products -- along with its healthy long-term growth prospects --
puts it in a strong position to influence standards in both its own and global
markets. As China's standards become more widely accepted, Chinese firms will
increasingly direct the global technology sector.
"China is able to use the lure of its massive markets and spectacular
growth as leverage in the standards war. Global technology and
telecommunications companies need to review China's standards initiatives and
collaborate, where appropriate, with Chinese companies in standards
development," says Charles Yen, TMT National Leader for Deloitte in China.
In the report, Deloitte identified three practical strategies for China to
go about promoting its unique technology standards:
-- Offer a lower cost substitute to a standard that already exists
-- Establish a new standard in its home market, then export that standard
after achieving critical mass and economies of scale
-- Join an international coalition, using the appeal of its domestic
market as leverage
Chinese government agencies and companies are undertaking all of the above
strategies. "China's big push into standards is not without risk. Its effort
will be most effective when its standards initiatives align with market forces,
international standards, and the interests of multi-national coalitions," said
Mr. Yen.
"Technology vendors that misjudge the impact of China's standards
revolution could find themselves at a significant disadvantage, with their
position in the market increasingly over-taken or encroached upon."
Practically there are four strategies for technology firms to consider as
China's technology standards are being shaped:
-- Collaborate with standard setters
-- Compete selectively, focusing on areas where standards are harder to
mandate
-- Innovate specifically for the Chinese market
-- Seed emerging markets to encourage growth and establish early control
"Firms with a strong base of support among Chinese companies and consumers
are in the best position to promote their own standards. Those lacking
widespread support would be wise to co-operate instead of competing,"
continued Mr. Yen.
From operating systems and software applications, to storage media,
wireless communications and satellite positioning, Chinese government agencies
and companies are working to shape new technology standards for economic
advantage. Deloitte expects Chinese manufacturers to begin by building
critical mass of support at home, then exporting their technologies to
emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
"Technology companies must carefully monitor China's actions, assess the
implications of Chinese standards, and amend their strategies accordingly,"
added Mr. Yen. "Companies that don't may find themselves locked out of the
world's largest and fastest growing marketplace, which is increasingly defined
by standards that originate in China."
Examples highlighting China's impact on standards include:
Technology:
Operating systems
-- The Chinese government recently announced a major commitment to Linux
and announced it was drafting a new "standard" specifically for the
Chinese market that might be made compulsory for all IT vendors and
service providers.
-- The Chinese software industry is still in its infancy and China wants
to source software or create its own software that is affordable to the
masses.
RFID
-- China established a working group to draft and develop national
standards for RFID tag technology. Some reports indicate the group is
adhering to international standards, while others suggest the group is
planning to go its own way. An incompatible RFID standard could pit
the interests of China's emerging IT industries against the interests
of major purchasers of Chinese products.
Media:
EVD
-- Chinese companies are trying to promote a successor to the DVD optical
disk standard, called Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD), which has better
sound and picture quality than DVD.
-- Chinese companies are constrained by hefty DVD royalties, which range
from $15 to $22 on players that today often retail for less than $60.
A consortium of China's leading makers of DVD players holds the EVD
patents, and collects royalties.
Audio video coding
-- China is developing its own standard technology for compressing audio
and video. The new standard, calls AVS, is competing with MPEG-4 and
H.264 to replace the current worldwide compression standard, MPEG-2.
-- EVD is currently based on MPEG-2, but a switch to AVS is expected --
allowing Chinese manufacturers to produce state-of-the-art video
players based entirely on Chinese technology standards.
Telecommunications:
Cellular networks
-- China has its own globally approved standard for 3G and as the world's
largest market for mobile communications, is well positioned to take a
lead role in defining the 4G standard.
Satellite positioning systems
-- China recently chose Europe's Galileo system over the U.S. military's
Global Positioning System. The push into satellite positioning systems
has significant commercial and geopolitical ramifications.
About Technology, Media and Telecommunications
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by thousands of other professionals dedicated to helping clients evaluate
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of the TMT companies in the Fortune 1,000. Clients of global TMT practices
include the world's top software company, computer manufacturer, wireless
operator, satellite broadcaster, advertising agency and semiconductor foundry
-- as well as leaders in publishing, telecommunications and peripheral
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understanding and promoting the TMT sector, generating world-class insight via
Deloitte Research; identifying upcoming industry leaders through the
Technology Fast 500 programs and polling leadership opinions via our Global
CEO survey.
About Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is an organisation of member firms devoted to
excellence in providing professional services and advice. We are focused on
client service through a global strategy executed locally in nearly 150
countries. With access to the deep intellectual capital of 120,000 people
worldwide, our member firms, including their affiliates, deliver services in
four professional areas: audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory. Our
member firms serve more than one-half of the world's largest companies, as
well as large national enterprises, public institutions, locally important
clients, and successful, fast-growing global companies. For regulatory and
other reasons, certain member firms do not provide services in all four
professional areas.
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a Swiss Verein (association), and, as such,
neither Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu nor any of its member firms has any liability
for each other's acts or omissions. Each member firm is a separate and
independent legal entity operating under the names "Deloitte," "Deloitte &
Touche," "Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu," or other related names. The services
described herein are provided by the member firms and not by the Deloitte
Touche Tohmatsu Verein.
About Deloitte's China national practice
Deloitte's China national practice is one of the nation's leading
professional services providers with nearly 3,000 people in 10 offices located
across the most vibrant economic areas in China including Beijing, Dalian,
Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Suzhou and Tianjin.
As early as 1917, we opened an office in Shanghai. Backed by our global
network, we deliver a full range of audit, tax, consulting and financial
advisory services to national, multinational and growth enterprise clients in
China.
We have considerable experience in China and have been a significant
contributor to the development of China's accounting standards, taxation
system and local professional accountants. We also provide services to around
one-third of all companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.
Our China national practice entity is a member of the global organisation
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu which is one of the leading professional services
organisations delivering world-class audit, tax, consulting and financial
advisory services with 120,000 people in nearly 150 countries. Deloitte
Touche Tohmatsu is a Swiss Verein, and each of its member firms is a separate
and independent legal entity.
Issued by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in Hong Kong. For further information,
please contact:
Dickie Luk, Hong Kong
Tel: +852-2852-1243
Fax: +852-2541-3726
Email: dluk@deloitte.com.hk
China Is Using Its Mass Markets To Create Standards, Report Says
August 12, 2004 (1:57 p.m. EST)
TechWeb News
China is utilizing its rapid growth and massive captive markets as a means to influence next generation standards across a broad range of technologies, according to a consulting company's report.
China's policy of using standards for its own economic advantage is already evident, said Charles Yen, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's national leader for China. For example, China is drafting a policy that could lead to Linux becoming compulsory in the country and has established a RFID working group that could likewise recommend compulsory use of a unique Chinese tag technology, he said.
“China is able to use the lure of its massive markets and spectacular growth as leverage in the standards war,” Yen said in a statement. “Global technology and telecommunications companies need to review China's standards initiatives and collaborate, where appropriate, with Chinese companies in standards development.”
Additional areas where Chinese interests are having some success in setting standards include the EVD (enhanced versatile disc) standard, which has improved sound and picture quality over DVDs, and a Chinese successor to MPEG-H.264, which Chinese interests claim represents an improvement over that older technology. China's new compression and video standard is called AVS and it could become a global replacement for earlier MPEG standards, the report stated.
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