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DataPlay email and MPMan remote control earphone:
Dear XXXX,
Thank you for your interest in DataPlay.
To answer your question from your original email, 'remote control earphone' is MPMan's fancy description for the volume slider control on the cord of the phones.
Products will be available by 2Q of this year--unless one of our OEM partners makes it to market before April. We are coordinating a product launch with several partners for 2Q. Once we have received commitments, we will issue information on our site regarding the launch. The launch will also include nation-wide television advertising.
To answer your query in this email, we are not aware of any of our OEMs working on a DataPlay-enabled media server. However, once DataPlay products launch and gain momentum, I'm sure more OEMs will jump on board and the sky will be the limit on possible devices.
If you are visiting CES this year, see the Imation booth. We are sharing their space and you will find an assortment of DataPlay-enabled products on display there to include devices by Digisette, MPMan, Imation and Reincom.
SanDisk Introduces 256 Megabyte SD Card At CES [for$199]
New Memory Card Gives Consumers Enough Capacity to Store Large Amounts of Digital Images, Music or Video; First SD Card Using 1-Gigabit NAND Flash Chip With Multi-Level Cell Technology
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 9, 2002-- SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK - news) today introduced the 256 megabyte (MB) SD Card, a removable, postage stamp-sized flash memory card capable of storing up to eight hours of digital music, more than 80 minutes of MPEG-4 video or more than 250 high-resolution digital images. The announcement, made at the Consumer Electronics Show, doubles the capacity of SanDisk's highest capacity SD Cards currently shipping. SanDisk is demonstrating the new 256MB SD Card at its booth (No. 11511) and the SD Pavilion (No. 10536).
Bo Ericsson, vice president of OEM product marketing at SanDisk, said, ``The growing popularity of consumer electronics devices that require considerable storage capacity such as digital video camcorders, digital cameras, handheld computers, audio players and cells phones is expected to fuel the demand for high capacity SD Cards. Indeed, the SD Card is already emerging as a universal mechanism to store and transfer images, video, audio and data between these various platforms.''
Richard Wawrzyniak, director of non-volatile memory at Semico Research Corp., said, ``The robust consumer electronics market continues to drive demand for higher capacity storage cards in applications such as digital video camcorders which require considerable storage. These cards are becoming so much more cost effective that eventually consumers will be able to store as many audio, video and data files they want at a very reasonable price.''
The SD Card is a flash memory storage device with built-in security functions designed to facilitate the secure exchange of content between devices and the card. It is 32 millimeters (mm) long, 24mm wide and 2.1mm thick. More than 100 products with slots for the card have been introduced.
The 256MB SanDisk SD Card uses a 1-gigabit (1Gbit, or 1024Megabit) NAND flash memory chip, the next generation of flash memory that effectively doubles the amount of storage capacity in these flash memory cards. It is based on the patented multi-level cell (MLC) technology pioneered by SanDisk that allows two bits of data to be stored in one memory cell, doubling memory capacity. The commercialization of NAND MLC flash is a critical step to expand existing markets and enable new markets for flash memory data storage.
SanDisk is currently shipping 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128MB SD cards. The 256MB SanDisk SD Card will be available in this quarter and is expected to sell for approximately $199.
SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, CA.
The matters discussed in this news release contain forward looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as described under the caption, ``Factors That May Affect Future Result'' in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies assume no obligation to update the information in this release.
Sony Unveils Cool New Vaio [instead of a slot for a memory stick, imagine a slot for a DataPlay disk]
Updated desktop PC takes up less space, featuring fold-down keyboard and fewer cables.
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Unveiling its first new personal computer of 2002, Sony has taken the wraps off a cool new design for its Vaio desktop computer.
The Vaio W series is built around a 15.3-inch wide-screen thin-film transistor LCD with 1280-by-768 pixel resolution. The guts of the computer are built into a box behind the monitor, which keeps the unit looking thin. The keyboard is integrated into the package and folds down from in front of the monitor, a position it can be kept in when not in use.
The machine has a 1.2-GHz Intel Celeron processor with 256MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM optical drive, a built-in Ethernet adapter, a TV tuner, and a slot for Sony's Memory Stick memory cards.
Software Side
On the software side, Microsoft's Windows XP Home Edition operating system and Sony's GigaPocket LE are bundled with the machine. The Sony application allows the computer to be used as a digital video recorder, storing up to 18 hours of television in MPEG2 format at a 3-megabits-per-second data rate and 352 by 240 pixel resolution.
The company's MovieShaker video editing software, DVGate software for working with DV format camcorders, and three original packages for working and manipulating digital still images are also included.
Desktop personal computers that pack a flat-panel display and the computer into a single case have been becoming more and more popular in recent years as LCD panel prices fall to make the machines more affordable. For consumers, the main attraction of the machines, beyond their good looks, is a reduction of the cable-spaghetti usually found behind more desktop computers and a more desk space because of their small footprints.
The Vaio W101 will go on sale in Japan on February 2 at a price of around $1200. The company said it has no plans to sell the device overseas.
On2 Expects Q4 Revenue Growth of 75% Over Q3 2001 and 125% Over Q4 2000; Operating Expenses Expected to Be Consistent with Q3 2001
BusinessWire, Thursday, January 10, 2002 at 08:04
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 2002--On2 Technologies Inc., The Duck Corporation (AMEX:ONT), the industry leader in compression technology, announced today that it expected its revenue for the fourth quarter of 2001 to increase at least 75% over the $495,000 of revenue in the third quarter of 2001. This would be the Company's largest revenue quarter since its inception. Operating expenses are expected to be consistent with the previous quarter, thus, sharply improving the Company's loss per share.
The Company also expects full year revenue for 2001 to be more than double the $1 million of revenue in full year 2000.
The Company attributed its growth in the second half of the year to the increased number of clients utilizing its VP4 video compression technology in set-top boxes. VP4 was ported to Equator Technologies' MAP-CA digital signal processor and is currently being used to power Video-On-Demand initiatives in Japan and Korea. Additionally, the Company has ported VP4 onto Texas Instruments' fully programmable C6000 DSP, thereby creating processor options for potential clients. As set-top box and consumer device deployment increases throughout 2002, the recurring licensing fees have the potential to generate significant revenues for the Company.
Fiscal year 2001 also saw the addition of several products that will enable On2 to further serve clients. The Company's Audio for Video Codec (AVC) works seamlessly with its VP line of video codecs to provide a full-service solution, and the recently released TrueCast 7.0 is the first server software from On2 to conform to the RTSP/RTP standard.
"Streaming video over the Internet no longer seems to have a promising near-term future, but video delivered to devices that connect broadband to the television is a business that is growing rapidly in Asia and we believe these devices should find their way to North America and Europe later this year," said Douglas A. McIntyre, President and Chief Executive Officer.
In an effort to help create a common, freely available video compression standard, On2 made its recent-generation VP3 codec available to the open-source community in September. Since then, the number of people and companies who have registered to download the VP3 source code has exceeded 10,000. Downloads accelerated late in the fourth quarter, after Intel's website recognized VP3 as the potential video counterpart to MP3.
The company also plans to build on its base of important customers like MCS/SGI Japan/NEC, Equator Technologies, RealNetworks, QB, K.K, and Texas Instruments.
"Broadband penetration in the U.S. rose from 11% of Internet users at the end of 2000, to 20% at the end of 2001, and there are over 21 million high speed unique users according to Nielsen," added McIntyre. "Broadband is becoming a mass medium, and is continuing to grow rapidly which puts us in a position to move what we have deployed in Asia to the U.S."
Year 2002
The Company's goal in 2002 is to keep quarterly expenses relatively consistent with those incurred in the second half of 2001.
The company has already hit a couple of important technology milestones in the first week of the new year, including the release of On2's VP4i codec for real-time encoding and support of television based interlaced content. In the first few months of 2002, the company expects to release a new version of TrueCast 7, with multiple bandwidth capacity and Linux support, as well as the new VP5 codec.
The company also stated that its goal was to continue the rapid revenue growth rate the company had the second half of 2001.
"Demand for our products remains strong in Q1, and we expect to add new DSP and platform integration clients in the fairly short term," continued McIntyre. "We continue to focus on only two goals: 1) being broadly accepted as the most powerful, efficient codec in the world, and 2) having the company be consistently profitable. Anything less would be considered a failure by our management."
About On2 Technologies, The Duck Corporation
On2 Technologies (AMEX:ONT) is a leading technology firm at the forefront of video compression. The Company revolutionized video encoding with the creation of its advanced full-motion, full-screen, video compression and streaming technology (TrueMotion(R) VP3/VP4). On2 licenses its high quality video codecs for use in set-top boxes, electronic gaming devices and wireless applications. In addition, On2 offers a suite of products and services, including high-level video encoding, hosting, streaming, customized technical support, and consulting services. Headquartered in New York City, the Company has an office in Albany, NY, and operations in London, UK, and Seoul, Korea. On2 may be reached at 145 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013, telephone 917-237-0500 or info@on2.com. Investor inquiries should be sent to invest@on2.com.
remember: Toyota and Universal Studios Form Alliance
July 31, 2001
Toyota and Universal Studios today announced a global partnership that represents the largest-ever marketing alliance between an auto manufacturer and an entertainment company - if you don't include NASCAR.
The long-term agreement positions Toyota as the Official Car of Universal Studios, and grants Toyota opportunities to establish a presence and create business opportunities with all of Universal's businesses, including theme parks, motion pictures, television, consumer products, online, interactive games, and music. This agreement is in addition to the already existing multi-year agreement in Japan where Toyota Motor Corp. is the exclusive automobile of Universal Studios Japan.
"We're on the threshold of another Golden Age for the automobile, and this alliance provides Toyota with expanded marketing opportunities to increase our sales and customer satisfaction," says Steve Sturm, vice president of marketing at Toyota Motor Sales. "We're excited to be partnering with Universal Studios, the entertainment company that we believe will help take our brand to new heights."
Among the plans are: Toyota's exclusive sponsorship of theme park attractions, such as "Back to the Future - The Ride" at Universal Studios Hollywood, "Men in Black: Alien Attack" at Universal Studios Florida, and "Adventures of Spider-Man" at Islands of Adventure; year-round vehicle placement in Universal's theme parks -- including Port Aventura in Spain -- and at CityWalk Hollywood and Orlando.
The agreement also includes first-look opportunities for product placement and promotions in Universal-produced motion pictures, home video, and DVD releases; the use of various Universal properties -- including characters, as well as film and music library titles -- for advertising, premiums, displays, and many other consumer incentives; sponsorship of "Cinema 13," a programming block on the 13th Street channel in France, Germany, Spain, Latin America, and Brazil, as well as advertising and branded programming sponsorship opportunities on Universal's branded channels in Europe, Latin America, and other key markets across the world; placement in interactive games like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon; and music opportunities -- such as customized compilation tapes and CDs -- focusing on a variety of retail, marketing and distribution programs.
BLUE-TOOTH VOICE CONTROLLED EDIG DATAPLAY MUSIC PLAYER
the e.digital dataplay MPMan MP-D200 music player will be blue-toothed enabled, have a remote control earphone (sounds like voicenav}, w/ an FM transmitter
http://www.dataplay.com/jsp_files/en/whatsplaying/products.jsp?action=details
By: jimc1997 $$$$$
09 Jan 2002, 04:51 PM EST Msg. 876515 of 876529
All - I just received a call from Fred Falk in response to an e-mail that I sent to him regarding the Bloomberg article.
He was livid over the blatant slam that the reporter took against e.Digital and its shareholders.
He said that rather than insulting the shareholders he went out of his way to praise them and gave numerous examples of extraordinary assistance by various shareholders to the company over the years.
His point was completely twisted by the reporter and the many, many accomplishments of the company over the past year that he cited were ignored.
Fred said that the reporter gave the impression that he was going to write a very positive piece on the company, but then put in nothing about any of the exciting new developments which should have been the focus of the story.
The company and its public relations firm are reviewing their options for response at this point.
JimC
By: debeer $$$$$
09 Jan 2002, 03:59 PM EST Msg. 876372 of 876383
I just received call from Mr. Putnam who is at CES. He staees e.Digital through F&H is preparing a statement for today in regard to the Bloomberg piece.
poboy--no joke, pepsi
Broadband Beat: Broadband Strives To Make Its Mark In 2002
Dec 01, 2001 (VIA Satellite/PBI Media via COMTEX) -- For the broadband satellite sector, "it is unlikely that 2002 will experience the same level of negative trends faced in 2001," says consultant Christopher Baugh. "The market is much smarter, and the focus is now rightfully placed on revenue generation and execution." In addition, Baugh believes that 2001 may have been the bottoming-out year in a cyclical business.
With many of the business models used in 2001 for broadband satellite now in the dumpster, the list of companies and applications to monitor for broadband progress has changed substantially. No longer is attention focused on ambitious ventures like iBeam, Panamsat's Net 36, Teledesic and Skybridge. Instead it is redirected at startups and smaller suppliers like Wildblue, Viasat, Skystream, Harmonic and iDirect. DeTeSat, Globecast and BTSat--the middlemen between the operators and broadband users--also are worth watching.
The term broadband satellite covers a lot of territory, but the foundation beneath it all is the number of users. Fortunately, those figures climbed steadily in 2001, particularly in the United States, which leads the world in broadband use. On the other hand, satellite companies did not get more than the tiniest sliver of the pie. Users overwhelmingly chose traditional terrestrial access methods like cable or telco DSL broadband access technology. about 9 percent of online households, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, but only 300,000 of those connections were provided by satellite--and Jupiter's satellite numbers appear to be on the high end. By 2006, the penetration rate will be 41 percent or 35 million households, Jupiter says. By then, satellite broadband will have 900,000 users, still a low figure. Both satellite and fixed wireless missed their chance to get residential market share, Jupiter says: "Expensive equipment and unsatisfactory early results of early commercial deployments--Starband and Direcway--make those technologies non-competitive in areas served by either cable or DSL."
Wildblue Communications, based in Denver, CO, will set out to prove Jupiter wrong in 2002 as it works to start Internet access services to U.S. consumers by mid-year using its first Ka-band satellite, scheduled to launch in the second quarter. Roger Rusch, a consultant who heads Telastra, says Wildblue has a credible shot at achieving its milestones but expects all Ka-band satellite projects to have problems getting financed in 2002 due to the shaky start of digital satellite radio services in 2001. The volatility in satellite radio investment came directly behind the disastrous mobile satellite investor losses of 1999-2000, proving to many potential broadband investors that technical achievements like building solar arrays or payloads are hardly enough to remove the risk from a business plan.
The effort of Wildblue and others to add financing in 2002 will be a key indicator of how satellite broadband is doing, Rusch says. The apparent demise of the Lockheed Martin/TRW-sponsored Astrolink Ka-band satellite project in late October, after its initial sponsors declined to put any more money into the venture, had an immediate ripple effect on other companies. The stock of Viasat, for example, which had anticipated a $500-million-value terminal contract for Astrolink, sank 20 percent in the days following. "Lockheed's action forewarned us that other potential broadband ventures will be delayed," William Pitken, Merrill Lynch analyst says in pushing out his brokerage's projections for other broadband initiatives as well.
While many of the big satellite operators have deferred their big broadband projects as they wait for the market to catch up, the smaller companies that sell broadband equipment for use with current satellites may be the best indicator of actual progress.
For example, iDirect, in Reston, VA, entered the scene in late 2000, selling a high-speed, two-way satellite router to enterprise customers with a need for fast Internet access in locations not reached by fiber. The startup, which has financial backing from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has announced winning $150 million in multi-year contracts to put its routers into corporate networks. In addition, iDirect says Eutelsat, New Skies, Verestar and Telesat were evaluating the routers. These are remarkable numbers in a market that otherwise has failed to shine. The company predicts a huge burst in its sales next year.
"We are looking at a five-time increase in sales and installations between this year and next," says Ian Dix, iDirect CEO. Much of the growth will be in international markets. In the United States, Dix says satellite will be accepted in 2002 as a viable medium for IP access by businesses, leading the rest down the path of satellite.
Another key supplier with at least a few more years in the business is Skystream Networks, which sells broadband satellite edge routers and software to its 150 customers. Broadcasters will put broadband overlays on their networks in 2002, predicts Chandy Nilakantan, CTO of Skystream. He too looks for healthy non-U.S. sales in the year ahead, pointing to India and China as good broadband markets due to their changing regulatory regimes.
If anything, satellite broadband appears to be a riskier bet in 2002 than it was a year ago. However, industry officials and investors both are far savvier about the technologies and business approaches today, as a result of the difficulties of the past year. A smarter industry combined with a better- developed user community for broadband could help satellite broadband projects make their mark in the months ahead.
Theresa Foley is Via Satellite's Senior Contributing Editor
SkyStream to Co-Market Its zBand Content Delivery Platform with HP
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 10, 2001--
Enterprises and Broadband Service Providers to Benefit from Availability of zBand Software on HP's Extensive Line of Servers
SkyStream Networks, the leading provider of networking solutions for broadband media delivery, today announced that it will be co-marketing with Hewlett-Packard Company to provide affordable content delivery solutions to domestic and international enterprises and broadband service providers. SkyStream also intends to make available the newest version of its zBand (TM) Content Delivery Platform (zBand 4.0) to run on HP's extensive line of HP-UX (HP UNIX), Linux and Microsoft Windows-based servers.
Northern Sky Research forecasts the worldwide enterprise content delivery solutions market will grow from $150 million in 2001 to an estimated $2.1 billion by 2006. "Through SkyStream's alliance with HP -- one that combines SkyStream's leading content delivery technologies with HP's solid reputation, customer service and consulting capabilities -- the two companies are well-positioned for industry leadership and rapid expansion of market share in this space," said Christopher Baugh, principal analyst for Northern Sky Research.
The companies intend to work together to drive market adoption for next-generation content delivery services such as business TV and corporate data delivery through a series of marketing activities, including joint solutions seminars to demonstrate the capabilities of zBand 4.0 running on HP infrastructure. SkyStream will contribute its expertise in zBand software, as well its industry-leading source and edge media router platforms, while HP will provide solutions built around its multi-platform HP-UX, Linux and Windows servers and world-renowned consulting and services for broadband and enterprise service providers.
"SkyStream is proud to work with an industry-leading technology company such as HP to make content delivery fast, efficient and affordable to enterprises and broadband service providers worldwide," said Jim Olson, president and CEO for SkyStream Networks. "Over the following years, SkyStream will continue to aggressively drive the development and global distribution of its leading networking infrastructure equipment and content delivery technologies. Such strong relationships will be invaluable to our efforts."
"Through our combined resources, HP and SkyStream have a powerful offering that will help enable enterprises and network service providers to aggressively pursue and rapidly expand market share in both satellite and terrestrial network infrastructures," said Nigel Ball, vice president and general manager, HP e-Services Partner Division. "Central to our initiatives are technology solutions that ensure reliable, affordable and secure content delivery for new and exciting revenue-generating services and that help enterprises achieve their business goals while reducing IT information costs."
About Skystream Networks
SkyStream Networks is an international networking infrastructure company whose products enable service providers and broadcasters to deliver digital services like content delivery, satellite broadband delivery, corporate communications and enhanced television. SkyStream's media routers and content delivery software allow service providers to deliver media-rich content with a consistently high level of performance and quality to millions of people or multiple locations closer to the user, leveraging the global reach of digital television, satellite and cable networks. SkyStream's customers are satellite, content distribution, Internet and cable companies around the world, including Clear Channel, DotCast, EchoStar Communications Corporation, Europe Online, Gilat, Granite Broadcasting, iBlast, NewSkies Satellites, Pacific Convergence Corporation, SpeedCast and Telefonica. SkyStream Networks' Website can be found on the Internet at www.skystream.com.
SkyStream's the limit
Charles Dubow, Forbes.com, 12.14.99, 6:00 AM ET
General Instrument Corporation (GI) gi (nyse: gi - news - people) and Internet broadcast equipment maker SkyStream are announcing today that they will be working together to provide an integrated in-band data broadcasting solution for the cable market.
Together the two companies will be able to make broadcast-quality video available for the Internet to cable users on either televisions or PCs.
In-band data broadcasting sends high-speed data over cable bandwidth normally reserved for sending video programming. It also allows cable operators to maximize their bandwidth and effectively broadcast data and video more effectively on their networks.
"Cable networks face the problem of getting filled up so they are often forced to restrict the amount of data they can transmit," according to Jim Olsen, president and CEO of privately held SkyStream. "We allow cable operators to offer unlimited scalability and take advantage of 100% of their bandwidth."
GI, which recently agreed to be acquired by Motorola mot (nyse: mot - news - people), is the world's largest set-top maker. SkyStream's media routers will be integrated with GI's digital cable headend system to enable cable operators to deliver IP-based data in-band, enabling it to offer a wide variety of video content and rich media without limits.
SkyStream, based in Mountain View, Calif., has already been working with the satellite industry but the announcement with GI is its first foray into the cable market. "We are designed to be platform agnostic," says Olsen. "We can work with any kind of broadcast media, from satellite uplinks to cable head-ends to digital TV stations."
"We see data broadcasting as a critical part of the new generation of cable infrastructure technologies," said Kevin Keefe, director of product marketing for GI's Digital Network Systems business unit. "With so many cable customers now able to access both video and data programming, cable operators must begin to deploy techniques such as in-band data insertion to deliver information more efficiently. The DCT 5000+ advanced set-top terminals and digital network systems are designed to deliver this convergence of video, voice and data over a MSO's [multisystem operator] broadband network."
SkyStream has already deployed its hardware and software with Echostar dish (nasdaq: dish - news - people), Switzerland's Cablecom, Loral Orion lor (nyse: lor - news - people) and Spain's Telefonica tef (nyse: tef - news - people).
The three-year-old company has raised $27 million from its backers, which include Intel intc (nasdaq: intc - news - people), the Mayfield Fund, IVP and Norwest Ventures, and plans to go public in 2000.
SkyStream, Microsoft join to deliver Internet content to set-top box
Mountain View, Calif.-based SkyStream Networks and software giant Microsoft today announced plans to collaborate on enabling content-rich Internet services to be broadcast to digital set-top-box customers. SkyStream's zBand Internet-content-distribution software will be integrated with the Microsoft TV platform. The firms say this will allow cost-effective broadcasts of high-quality streaming video and Internet content for television set-top boxes, which can also be connected to PCs and other Internet-enabled devices. The integrated product is said to allow service providers to deliver high-performance streaming media and Internet video through fast, broadcast channels, which SkyStream and Microsoft say is the most efficient way to distribute to a large number of viewers rich, large-bandwidth content that can congest traditional cable-modem or Internet-access networks.
SkyStream's technology united with Microsoft TV is said to allow cable operators to create additional Internet-content-delivery services by effectively using the in-band broadband channels to deliver content simultaneously to many users for bottleneck-free viewing or caching applications. As the technology for delivering Internet content has matured over the past few years, cable service providers have typically used the out-of-band, or DOCSIS, channels to deliver Internet data into consumers' homes via PC cable modems. The DOCSIS spectrum represents a finite amount of bandwidth that must be shared between every user on a network and can quickly become bottlenecked by users attempting to access very high quality streaming content, among other things. The integrated solution will leverage the untapped "in-band" broadcast spectrum of a cable network, augmenting the bandwidth-constrained "out-band" channels. By using the in-band portion of the service provider's spectrum to deliver enhanced-TV services, service providers can deliver data to receiving devices, such as digital set-top boxes, that can be viewed instantaneously.
zBand's file-delivery module will be integrated as a feature working with client and server components of the Microsoft TV platform. This module allows service providers to deliver high-bandwidth files, such as software updates, directly to the users' set-top boxes or receiving devices over the in-band spectrum, which adds to the enhanced TV content running on the Microsoft TV platform. Service providers can also add additional SkyStream zBand modules, such as those that enable IP-based streaming-media channels, branded-content portals, packaged Internet content (e.g. Disney movies or Atom Films) and downloadable music services, by purchasing the software upgrade directly from SkyStream Networks. The IP-based content is inserted into the in-band channels using networking equipment, such as SkyStream's Source Media Routers (SMRs), which are installed into the cable operator's head end or hub network. SkyStream's SMRs have been deployed into more than 100 cable, satellite and DTV networks around the world.
Oct 31, 2000
SkyStream Networks
Enabling Web and digital video to be delivered over broadcast networks
As a leading provider of broadband networking products, SkyStream offers broadcasters an easy way to deliver media-rich Internet content over satellite, cable and digital TV networks.
Have you ever tried to attend a live Webcast on your PC and run into technical jags that made it less than fun? Relax, it's not you. According to Jim Olson, CEO of SkyStream Networks, the network is the force--and the right one just wasn't with you that day.
Live web events, such as the broadcast of Victoria's Secret Fashion show have been technically challenged, claims Olson. "They didn't reach most people, since most couldn't access the web site. And those that could often found the audio didn't work or the video wasn't synched with the audio, or something else was amiss..."
The problem? It's in the network, says Olson. The Internet is built to communicate between individuals and small groups in a transactional sense. "It is a lot different when we're trying to watch a live web event, or run a movie trailer on the web--or we're trying to add video to e-commerce applications."
Broadcast networks become transport for rich content
While bandwidth-thirsty content aimed at a wide audience to millions simultaneously may not fly on today's Internet--there is a solution, says Olson. "What if we look to another network--one that has been in place delivering "live video and audio" for decades, that's quickly going digital?"
It was 1996 when SkyStream's founders saw that the broadcast network held great promise for transporting rich content--and that broadcast network providers would soon need to add Internet data services to their offerings. Yet, to move media-rich Internet content over a broadcast network would require a new breed of product.
In response, SkyStream set out to pioneer a new standards-based technology aimed at the converging Internet and broadcast markets, says Olson. The result is SkyStream's source media router product line, a set of broadband networking products that allow broadcasters to inject Internet content into a secure, broadcast transmission stream, using the existing network of a satellite, cable and/or digital broadcast provider.
Intel Capital Invests in SkyStream
While SkyStream was putting its broadband networking products in place, Intel Capital was also exploring the broadband Internet arena. "In fact, in 1998, Intel and SkyStream did a trial project with a PBS station. We broadcast a 90-minute Frank Lloyd Wright documentary over SkyStream equipment to PCs for a digital television network," says Olson.
From this collaboration, the relationship blossomed, says Olson, "Intel Capital was interested in how our technology could help enable a broadband Internet, and saw SkyStream's solution as one of many exciting ways to do that," says Olson, "We were also interested in Intel. For one thing, SkyStream uses Intel processors in our product. Also, being a small company then, we thought Intel could give us introductions to more broadcasters."
After meeting with the SkyStream team, Intel Capital saw that SkyStream's technology could increase the reach of broadband data communications to enable new forms of rich data broadcast applications and services. For this reason, Intel Capital invested in SkyStream in 1999.
A Good Investment Match
SkyStream officially released its first products in January 1998, enabling broadcasters to move media-rich content through the world's largest broadcast networks, including those of Colorado-based Echostar, New York's Granite Broadcasting, Switzerland's Cablecom and Australia's TPG Internet.
According to Olson, Intel Capital has been a good investment match, offering SkyStream some great connections. "They've introduced us to many potential customers and technology partners, and have helped us build a close relationship with PBS and other television stations. They've also introduced us to ATVEF (Advanced Television Enhancement Forum), an important industry standards body forum in our space."
Intel has also given SkyStream useful feedback on its products and technologies says Olson, who adds that Intel has purchased many of SkyStream's products for its labs to explore the benefits and promise of data broadcasting. "They've given us feedback on what their customers are saying, and the types of technologies we need to add to our current product family. We've adopted many of these suggestions."
In addition, Intel Capital has given SkyStream the impetus to move more aggressively into the digital broadcast television arena. Says Olson, "When we met Intel we were making products for the satellite broadcast and digital TV industries but needed assistance to build relationships with the Internet and television businesses -- Through their connections and the help they've provided, Intel and Intel Capital were very instrumental in helping us build momentum into these marketplaces." Intel has also gained much insight from the relationship with SkyStream, says Olson. "From working with us and with our products, Intel has learned a lot more about native broadcast technology and how a broadcaster can move into the Internet content delivery business..."
"Intel Capital has been a very good match for SkyStream. Because we share a similar vision--which is to bring the power of the Internet to broadcast networks and to bring the power of broadcast networking technology to the Internet--we've had a very cooperative relationship. We've collaborated, shared ideas and introduced each other to industry players to help make this vision a reality. And Intel Capital has given us great feedback. Overall, both companies have benefited tremendously."
Jim Olson
CEO
SkyStream Networks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT A GLANCE...
SkyStream Networks
CEO:
Jim Olson
LOCATION:
Mountain View, CA
FOUNDED:
1996
INTEL INVESTED:
1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, contact SkyStream Networks, Intel Capital.
Last updated: May 2000
* all names and brands are the property of their respective owners
The Fortune Tellers re reporter David Evans
Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation
By HOWARD KURTZ
At 2:15 P.M. on Friday, March 17, 2000, a little-known reporter blew a sizable hole in the stock of a high-flying, high-tech outfit called the Xybernaut Corporation.
The company, which makes miniature computers that can be worn as accessories, had been on an incredible tear, the likes of which had somehow become breathtakingly routine in the dizzying atmosphere of Wall Street. Its stock, which had been selling for $1.31 a share the previous October, had hit nearly $30 two weeks earlier — a more than twenty-fold increase for a firm with just eighty full-time employees — before settling back to $23 a share.
But the situation changed dramatically when David Evans, a reporter in the Los Angeles bureau of the Bloomberg News service, got online to examine Xybernaut's filing that morning with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Evans found some troubling language that he quickly filed in a terse report for the Bloomberg financial wire.
"Xybernaut Corp.'s auditor warned there's 'substantial doubt' about the maker of wearable computer systems' ability to continue as a going concern, citing its continuing losses and need for more capital," the story began.
Xybernaut stock dropped precipitously until the market's 4:00 P.M. closing bell, and again in after-hours trading, to 14 15é16. In the space of a few short hours, the company, based in Fairfax, Virginia, had lost more than a third of its market value. The power of a single journalist to puncture the helium balloon of soaring stock prices had never been greater. But the lightning speed of modern technology also gave corporate executives the tools to fight back.
John Moynahan, Xybernaut's chief financial officer, was on vacation in Florida and had turned off his cell phone about fifteen minutes before the Bloomberg report hit. He was extremely upset when he belatedly learned of the story. The warning by the company's accounting firm was, in Moynahan's view, mere legal boilerplate. The company had included it in every one of its SEC statements since going public in 1996, and raising the needed cash had never been a problem. The reporter had simply put the most alarmist spin on the story, describing Xybernaut as though it were in dire financial straits. Moynahan also thought the timing of the article, late on a Friday, was suspicious, and wondered whether investors who had shorted the stock — betting that its price would decline — had something to do with the story.
At 9:40 on Saturday morning, Moynahan opened his laptop and signed onto a message board on Yahoo!'s Website that was devoted entirely to Xybernaut. Moynahan had founded the club, which had nine hundred members and drew as many as eleven thousand "page views" a day, and served as the site's moderator. He quickly planted his flag in that stretch of cyberspace, declaring that "in my six years with Xybernaut, the future for the company and its shareholders has never been brighter than it is today."
Many club members, who actively traded the stock, were sympathetic. "The Bloomberg piece was a hit job, more or less," one person said.
"The article and the timing smelled very fishy!" said another.
Moynahan spent the rest of the day helping the company draft a press release assailing the Bloomberg piece. A company attorney had already complained to Bloomberg executives, who stood by the story. On Monday morning, Xybernaut said in its statement that the plunge in the stock price "was based on reaction to an article released late Friday afternoon and was not based on any fundamental change in our operations....The article did not accurately nor fairly describe our current position...or our future opportunities."
David Evans was unperturbed by the conspiracy theories, since no one had prompted him to check the SEC filing. This was what he did for a living, digging out the fine print that companies declined to put in their press releases. Evans was accustomed to being deluged with angry e-mail from investors who blamed him when their stocks tanked, who viewed him as the evil messenger. But he was simply using government documents to tell the full story.
On Tuesday morning, March 21, company executives issued another release that would prove even more important. Xybernaut said that the company and its products would be featured that evening on CNBC, the business network that carried immense clout with investors. The mere announcement of the upcoming segment helped boost Xybernaut's stock 24 percent, to just over $21 a share, or slightly below where it had been when the Bloomberg piece hit the wires.
At 5:39 P.M., Evans moved another damaging story on the Bloomberg wire. Weeks earlier, Xybernaut had trumpeted a "buy" rating on its stock from a research firm called Access 1 Financial, which had predicted that the price would double within six months. Indeed, the price doubled within a month. What the company did not disclose, Evans had found, was that Mark Bergman, the president and founder of Access 1 Financial, was a former Xybernaut executive who still owned options to buy shares in the company.
But Evans's report was immediately overshadowed. At 6:21, CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth introduced the segment on Xybernaut by saying: "You can wear just about everything else, why not your computer? It turns out that you can....A small company called Xybernaut has already made big strides in the hands-off computer sector." The story was punctuated by upbeat comments from Moynahan, and reporter Mike Hegedus posed in the studio with a computer attached to his belt and a futuristic-looking headset that enabled him to see the monitor by peering into a small mirror dangling before his right eye. Shortly after 7:00 P.M., CNBC's Business Center reported that Xybernaut stock had gained another dollar in after-hours trading. In the space of five days, the company's stock had been decimated and then magically revived, thanks to the media power-brokers who wielded such enormous influence on Wall Street.
When journalists cover politics, their outsider role is clearly defined. No single reporter can affect White House policies or a candidate's campaign through mere analysis or commentary. True, if several news organizations pound away in unison, they can put an issue on the national agenda or throw a politician on the defensive. But such efforts can be measured only roughly, through the fleeting snapshot of opinion polls. Much of the public distrusts the press, muting the impact of a concerted editorial attack on the president or other national figures. In this realm, journalists are scorekeepers and second-guessers and naysayers, and their influence is ephemeral and diffuse.
In the business arena, however, financial journalists are players. They make things happen instantaneously, and their impact is gauged not by subjective polls but by the starker standard of stock prices. A single negative story, true or not, can send a company's share price tumbling in a matter of minutes. A report about a possible takeover attempt can immediately pump up a stock, adding billions of dollars to a company's net worth. The clout of financial journalists affects not just the corporate bottom line but the hard-earned cash of millions of average investors. In business, unlike politics, the reporting of rumors is deemed fair game, since rumors, even bogus ones, move markets. And in an age of lightning-quick Internet reports, saturation cable coverage, and jittery day traders, moving the market is a remarkably easy thing to do.
Journalists, of course, don't spew out information and speculation in a vacuum. They are used every day by CEOs, by Wall Street analysts, by brokerage firms, by fund managers who own the stocks they are touting or are betting against the stocks they are trashing. These money men are as practiced in the art of spin as the most slippery office-seeker, measuring their success not in votes but in dollars, not in campaign seasons but in minute-by-minute prices.
Amid this daily deluge, there's one inescapable problem: Nobody knows anything. These are savvy folks, to be sure, but all of them — the journalists, the commentators, the brokers, the traders, the analysts — are feeling their way in a blizzard, squinting through the snow, straining amid the white noise to make out the next trend or market movement or sizzling stock. They traffic in a strange souplike mixture of facts and gossip and rumor, and while their guidance can be useful, they are just as often taken by surprise, faked out by the market's twists and turns, their piles of research and lifetime of learning suddenly rendered irrelevant. They talk to each other, milk each other, belittle each other, desperately searching for someone who knows just a little bit more about the stock that everyone will be buzzing about tomorrow. They are modern-day fortune tellers, promising untold riches as they peer into perpetually hazy crystal balls.
Still, they wield great influence. In a confused world where everyone is jockeying for advance intelligence on what to buy or sell, information is power. The ability of a single analyst to drive investors in or out of a particular stock, once his views are amplified by the media echo chamber, is nothing short of awesome. Some reporters, to be sure, manage to ferret out useful stories amid the blurry landscape. But there is no real penalty for being wrong; the journalists, the commentators, and the analysts blithely chalk up their mistakes to the market's unpredictability and quickly turn to the next day's haul of hot information. It is a mutual manipulation society that affects anyone with a direct or indirect stake in the market, which is to say nearly everyone in America.
Ever since the southern tip of Manhattan became a fledgling financial center in the 1790s, much has hinged on the speed of information. The original brokerage houses had to be near each other so that messengers could race back and forth with the latest prices. Before long, men with telescopes and flags stood on hills and buildings so they could relay information by semaphore code between New York and Philadelphia. The launch of Samuel Morse's telegraph in 1844, followed by the invention of the stock ticker twenty-three years later, proved ideal for rapidly transmitting data around the country. The New York Stock Exchange installed its first telephone in 1878. Over the next century, radio, television, fax machines, and computers each kicked the financial markets into new and ever-faster territory.
Over the past generation these changes, and the evolving culture of financial news, have been nothing short of startling. In the first weeks of 1971, Irving R. Levine, returning from two decades of overseas reporting, had lunch with NBC's Washington bureau chief to figure out what he should do next. Levine wanted to cover the State Department, but only two backwater beats — business and science — were available. He chose business news, a subject deemed so specialized that no other network had bothered to assign a full-time correspondent.
The bow-tied Levine would offer pieces to NBC Nightly News when the monthly figures on unemployment or inflation were released, but the producers were rarely interested. "It's not a story," they would say.
In those days, when most American households considered the stock market foreign terrain, the business world was covered largely for insiders. The Wall Street Journal was a single-section newspaper. Business Week, Fortune, and Forbes were generally considered trade publications. There were no computers in the office, no cable television, no programs devoted to business. It was, Levine realized, a third-tier assignment.
Things began to change on August 15, 1971, when Richard Nixon stunned the nation by imposing wage and price controls. Now the Today show wanted a weekly spot from Levine. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the federal bailout of Chrysler in 1979 also boosted the visibility of business news. Louis Rukeyser launched his PBS program Wall Street Week, and the birth of CNN in 1980 produced the first nightly business report on national television, Lou Dobbs's Moneyline. Levine began getting invitations from business groups for paid speeches. He was summoned back from Denver, where he was giving a speech, when the stock market plunged by 22 percent in October 1987. Financial news was now indelibly part of the media mainstream.
By 1989, Levine was such a recognizable figure that the network begged him to become a contributor to its new cable business channel, CNBC. There was no money in CNBC's meager budget to pay him, but Levine reluctantly agreed to do a weekly commentary. Several years later, as CNBC became more glitzy, the straight-arrow Levine found himself abruptly disinvited. Soon afterward, he retired from television.
The business world of the twenty-first century moves with a lightning quickness that would have been unimaginable when Irving R. Levine entered the fray: online investing, global trading, an increasingly volatile stock market. And the media play a vastly more important role in pumping and publicizing the money machine. In the 1980s, an entrepreneur named Michael Bloomberg made a fortune by sending out streams of complex financial data and news reports through leased computer terminals that became mandatory on trading floors and in newsrooms. Online news operations like TheStreet.com and CBS Marketwatch.com, and investor chat rooms on such Websites as Yahoo! and Silicon Investor, exploded in the late 1990s. In fact, the money and media cultures have reached a grand convergence in which corporate executives boost their companies by trying to steer the nonstop coverage, while news outlets move stocks with an endless cascade of predictions, analysis, and inside dope.
Nearly everyone, it seemed, was paying attention. A decade ago, those chronicling the ups and downs of Wall Street spoke to a narrow audience comprised mainly of well-heeled investors and hyperactive traders. But a communications revolution soon transformed the landscape, giving real-time television coverage and up-to-the-second Internet reports immense power to move jittery markets. This mighty media apparatus had the ability to confer instant stardom on the correspondents, the once-obscure market gurus, and the new breed of telegenic chief executives. CNBC was now as important to the financial world as CNN was to politicians and diplomats, and like Ted Turner's network, it had the power to change events even while reporting on them. This was America's new national pastime, pursued by high-powered players and coaches whose pronouncements offered the tantalizing possibility that the average fan could share in the wealth. Like the fortune tellers of old, they gazed into the future where unimaginable riches awaited those who could divine the right secrets.
The fortune tellers began 1999 bursting with confidence. The bulls had been running strong for four years, the Dow improbably surging from 4,500 to over 9,000, and that doubling of investor wealth tended to obscure the mistakes of the media and market gurus. Everyone was making money and feeling good. Of course, any other business with such an erratic track record would have felt a bit humbled. The Dow's nearly 2,000-point decline the previous August and September had sent much of the media into growling bear mode. "The Crash of '98: Can the U.S. Economy Hold Up?" asked Fortune magazine. "Is the Boom Over?" wondered Time. Walter Russell Mead wrote in Esquire that if the world's economic ills reached the United States, "stock prices could easily fall by two-thirds — that's 6000 points on the Dow — and it could take stocks a decade or more to recover." In the same issue, writer Ken Kurson declared: "This market will crash hard and stay crashed."
Only it didn't. In an extraordinary turnaround, the Dow was back above 9,300 before Christmas. The warnings of a few weeks earlier quickly faded. Optimism was again all the rage. The commentators and the Wall Street analysts were back on the bandwagon. Yesterday's blown predictions were fish wrap. Back in the summer of 1997, Money had used big red letters on its cover to scream: "Sell Stocks Now!" The Dow was then at 7,700; anyone who had taken Money's advice would have missed another year and a half of a spectacular bull market. All that counted in this hyperventilating atmosphere was: What's the stock market gonna do tomorrow? And how can I get in on the action?
Everyone, it seemed, was playing the market, from the New York hairstylist who kept a twelve-hundred-dollar quote machine next to his barber's chair to the day traders at the computer-equipped Wall Street Pub in Delray Beach, Florida, to the retired bureaucrat buying on his home computer through E*Trade. Some folks were becoming millionaires, others losing their student loans and second mortgages. There were 37,129 investment clubs in the country, compared to 7,085 in 1990. More than $230 billion a year was being invested in stock mutual funds, compared to less than $13 billion in 1990. Nearly half of American households had some stake in the Wall Street boom, either through 401(k) plans or fund shares or hastily acquired stocks. Some eleven million people were trading online, a phenomenon that was less than three years old.
But more than mere money was at stake. The market was now an integral part of American pop culture. All the cable news channels now displayed little boxes at the bottom of the screen showing the latest score of the Dow and the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite, whether the president was being impeached or bombs were falling on Baghdad or Belgrade. In New York, the 11:00 P.M. newscast on WCBS-TV provided updates on the Hang Seng, the Hong Kong stock market, right after the murders and fires and rapes. Mobile phones on airline seat-backs flashed liquid-crystal updates on the Dow and the Nasdaq. Vanity Fair featured stock guru Abby Joseph Cohen in a spread on hot commodities, along with the Lexus LX 50 and thong underwear. Sam Donaldson kept CNBC on in his office. Don Rickles and Lily Tomlin did TV ads for Fidelity Investments with superstar strategist Peter Lynch. Basketball coach Phil Jackson pitched the online brokerage T. D. Waterhouse, while Star Trek's William Shatner hawked the discount services of priceline.com. Barbra Streisand and the "Fonz," Henry Winkler, searched for promising Internet firms, and found that their celebrity helped them to obtain stock at an insider's price. Mike Doonesbury, the comic-strip character, launched an Internet IPO that soared and crashed. Time asked porn star Jenna Jameson for her stock tips. The New York Observer found a woman who listened to stock reports on her radio headset while making love to her husband. Howard Stern mused about buying a stock, touting it on the air, waiting for the price to surge, and flipping it for a quick profit. Wall Street was hotter than sex in the sixties, disco in the seventies, or real estate in the eighties. And that meant the market soothsayers were reaching a wider audience, a voracious audience, each day.
No matter that some of these prophets had been spectacularly wrong. Barton Biggs, a veteran sage at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, had warned in the early days of the Clinton presidency, back in 1993: "We want to get our clients' money as far away from Bill and Hillary as we can. The president is negative for the market." The Dow had risen nearly 8,000 points since Biggs uttered those words. But he remained one of the most quoted strategists around.
Every so often, some trader whispered the truth. Ted Aronson, a Philadelphia broker who managed more than $2 billion, admitted to Money magazine that he invested his own family's money in Vanguard index funds because, with their automatic-pilot approach and rock-bottom costs, they almost always beat the managed funds. But few others publicly acknowledged that most mutual funds were laggards, and the media outlets peddling financial wisdom had little reason to encourage them.
The endless swirl of market advice was built upon the notion that a get-rich-quick scheme was always just around the corner. An exploding number of mutual funds — from 2,599 in 1993 to 5,183 in 1998 — beckoned from every stall in the media marketplace. The magazine covers of early 1999 fervently hawked such wares. "The Best Mutual Funds," said Business Week. "Best Buys," said Forbes. "The Best and Worst Mutual Funds," said SmartMoney. "Secrets of the Stock Stars," said New York magazine. "Hot Picks from America's Best Analysts," said Money.
But the advice proved ephemeral. Money magazine had run its annual cover story on a dozen hot stocks in 1992. A year later, only one of the previous year's dozen had made the list. And by '95, not one of Money's previous forty recommendations had made the cut. Each month, each week, the media needed something new to sell, and Wall Street operators were only too happy to comply.
The thriving casino in the narrow streets of lower Manhattan created a hunger for information and a growing belief that amateurs could gain access to sensitive data as quickly and as thoroughly as big-time institutional traders. The explosion of financial intelligence itself became a growth market for the media, and for professionals determined to influence the media. One result was the spectacular rise and huge cult following of CNBC, whose programming consisted mainly of middle-aged white guys in suits talking about market trends.
A network such as CNBC, or a magazine like Fortune, or a newspaper like The Wall Street Journal, needed a steady parade of experts, analysts, and wise men to fill air time or column inches and convey the appearance of authority. It needed a nonstop flow of tips, touts, picks, and pans to lure consumers with the idea that they just might get in on the Next Big Thing.
But the whole contraption resembled a house of cards, a sustained illusion that both sides had a vested interest in perpetuating. Much of the media hype surrounding the stock market was essentially an orgy of pontification and speculation that pretends it is possible to know the unknowable. A single Wall Street analyst, his voice amplified by the media megaphone, could send a stock soaring or sinking with opinions that might well turn out to be wrong. A columnist could goose a company's stock with takeover talk that often proved to be nothing but gossip. While vast sums were riding on the latest pronouncement from the fortune tellers, they often had blurry tarot cards and cloudy crystal balls.
Nearly nine out of ten fund managers failed to beat the Standard & Poor's 500 in 1998, the culmination of a five-year trend; 542 even managed to lose money. Yet they were still trotted out by the press as the purveyors of financial wisdom. A boring, buy-and-hold strategy generally yielded greater profits over the long run than trying to time an unpredictable market. But admitting that fact would hurt the industry's quest for new investors and the media's quest for new readers and viewers. So everyone played The Game.
Few paused to notice that those dishing out the advice often had a vested interest in the outcome. Outright corruption was rare; the most notorious case involved R. Foster Winans of The Wall Street Journal, who had been sentenced to prison in 1985 for selling advance information from the influential Heard on the Street column he helped write in exchange for his share of $30,000 in payoffs. Yet the web of incestuous relationships was in some ways just as troubling. Market gurus touted stocks in which their firms were heavily invested. Brokerage analysts were under internal pressure to be upbeat about corporations that might hire their houses for investment-banking services; a few had even been fired for their pessimism. Fortune, Forbes, Money, SmartMoney, Business Week, Barron's, CNBC, and CNNfn made media stars of brokers whose investment companies they courted for lucrative advertising.
"PETER LYNCH & friends uncover THE BEST STOCKS to buy NOW," blared the cover of Worth magazine; inside was a full-page ad for Lynch and Fidelity. This was hardly surprising, since Fidelity owned the magazine.
"Mexican Stocks May Finally Look Appealing," said the Journal's Heard on the Street column. Who said so? Eduardo Cepeda, managing director of J. P. Morgan in Mexico City, who declared that "it's time to buy at least a few top names in Mexico." And his firm would be happy to sell them.
In Business Week's Inside Wall Street column, Gene Marcial was bullish on Inktomi, a software provider whose stock had just dropped 20 points because Microsoft was phasing out its Internet search engine service. "Is it downhill from here?" Marcial wrote. "No way, say some pros." One of the "pros" was John Leo, head of Northern Technology Fund, which, the column noted, owned Inktomi stock and was buying more.
Seth Tobias, head of Circle-T Partners, used his slot as guest host of CNBC's popular morning show Squawk Box to talk up AT&T and MCI WorldCom as companies that were well positioned to benefit from the Internet boom. They are, he added, "our largest holdings."
Conflicts seemed to be lurking everywhere. When mutual fund manager Garrett Van Wagoner appeared on CNBC's Street Signs in January 1999, he touted an online company called OnHealth Network. Its stock, which had opened at 81é4, surged as high as 21 7é8 before closing at 18 1é2. Anchor Ron Insana had prodded Van Wagoner into admitting that his company owned more than 10 percent of the shares, but that didn't seem to matter to those bidding up the stock. Insana was furious when The Wall Street Journal discovered weeks later that OnHealth had sold Van Wagoner Capital Management a big chunk of stock in a so-called "private placement" for just $5.50 a share, a fraction of its market price. Van Wagoner, who now owned 16 percent of the company, insisted that there was nothing wrong with telling CNBC's viewers what he liked.
The financial media, with CNBC at the forefront, seemed to specialize in stoking the flames surrounding white-hot Internet stocks, which increasingly were driving the rest of the market even higher. After all, Net companies were sexy and fascinating to journalists, compared to, say, the Exxon-Mobil merger, which was important but dull. Even the ever-cautious Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said he understood that buying Net stocks was like playing the lottery. And millions of people wanted to know which tickets were most likely to hit the jackpot.
"Could Yahoo! merge with CBS? How about America Online with Disney?" asked the Journal's Heard on the Street column in February 1999. But the writers quickly acknowledged that "the chatter hasn't yielded much" and "it's all speculation at this point." Such speculation, of course, invariably moved the market. And the market for tech stocks was already so overheated that it was starting to resemble the Dutch tulip craze of the 1600s. Some investors even called themselves Tulipheads. The tulips, of course, wound up nearly worthless.
USA Today ran a remarkably upbeat cover story the same day on eBay, the Net auction site that was trafficking in everything from Beanie Babies to Elvis signatures, reporting that the company's "volcanic success looks unstoppable...nothing, it seems, can slow eBay." Recent "embarrassments" — system crashes and a consumer fraud investigation — were dismissed as minor. The fact that the stock had dropped more than 39 points the day before, to 239, was brushed off as "almost humdrum." The day the piece appeared, eBay's stock dropped another 18 points. But who cared? The dramatic swings simply made for better copy. Fifty key Web-related stocks had jumped 187 percent in 1998, and another 55 percent in the first days of 1999, before dropping by 20 percent.
This, then, was the dilemma facing the fortune tellers as the turn of the century approached. The old rules didn't seem to apply. The old valuations didn't seem to matter. Investors were tripling and quadrupling their wealth in weeks or months, despite the cautionary warnings of the more traditional experts, and the media were breathlessly trumpeting the bull market as one of history's great events. It was, in short, one heckuva roller coaster. But the ride down could be rather scary.
(C) 2000 Howard Kurtz All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-684-86879-2
SkyStream Networks
Corporate Fact Sheet Profile
SkyStream Networks is a worldwide networking infrastructure company that empowers service providers and broadcasters to create new revenue streams by delivering branded digital media services like TV-quality Internet video to PCs or TVs over linked broadband and broadcast networks. SkyStream makes high-performance media routers and software to help service providers deliver a consistently high-quality Internet experience to millions of people. SkyStream's routers are the intelligent links of converged broadband and broadcast networks at the core of the Internet, joining networks of satellite providers, cable providers and broadcasters with those of traditional Internet bandwidth owners of fiber and ATM networks.
Market Overview Challenge:
Internet content developers are creating media-rich content that is intended to be viewed by stadium-size audiences. At the same time, today's networking technologies for the core of the Internet today fall short of delivering high quality Internet content simultaneously to millions of people. Multicasting techniques over the land-based Internet have not solved this problem. Broadcast networks such as cable, satellite and digital television networks with their global reach and reliability needs to be incorporated into the core of the Internet. A new solution to connect these broadcast networks with broadband ones is needed.
Solution
SkyStream's Source and Edge Media Routers enable service providers to intelligently connect broadband networks with broadcast ones – creating a converged network that is perfect for delivering rich Internet content like video and web pages to thousands of people or locations such as the network edge at the same time. SkyStream's zBand Internet content distribution software then empowers service providers to create and brand new services to bring high-quality, reliable content to their service provider, enterprise and consumer customers.
Customers
SkyStream's products are deployed at over 100 of the leading satellite, service provider, Internet, cable and DTV companies in the U.S. and around the world. SkyStream customers include Cablecom, EchoStar Communications, Geocast Network Systems, Granite Broadcasting, iBEAM Broadcasting, Loral Cyberstar, Pacific Convergence Corporation and Telefonica.
Funding SkyStream is a privately held company and has secured funding from Intel, IVP, Mayfield Fund and Norwest.
Awards
'Hot 100' Private Companies for 2000 — UPSIDE Magazine
Best Data Technology of the Year (1998) — Satellite Communications Magazine
The Herring 100 Readers' Choice Award (1999) — Red Herring magazine
Investors' Choice Award at Technologic Partners' Technology Outlook Conference (1998)
Products
SkyStream offers a full-scale networking solution for service providers that includes networking routers and content distribution software to meet their individual needs.
SkyStream Source Media Routers (SMRs) enable broadcasters, satellite and digital cable providers to add/inject Internet content into a secure, broadcast stream, using their existing networks and reliably deliver the content to stadium-size audiences.
The partner to SkyStream SMRs, SkyStream Edge Media Routers (EMRs) reliably receive data in MPEG-2 transport stream format and cost-effectively deliver streaming IP-multicast content to remote servers and networks - and ultimately to massive numbers of consumers.
zBand content distribution system software features server and client components that enable service providers and broadcasters to create and deliver Internet services such as regional news channels, streaming content and corporate training videos to millions of consumer and businesses. zBand enables service providers to deliver this content over broadcast and broadband networks, resulting in a consistently high-quality Internet viewing experience. zBand can be used in conjunction with SkyStream networking hardware or other standards-based broadband equipment.
Headquarters - Sunnyvale, California, USA
Employees 150
Management
Jim Olson, President and Chief Executive Officer
Susan Ketcham, Chief Financial Officer
Chandy Nilakantan, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President
Clint Chao, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development Operations
Claude Dupuis, Vice President of Engineering
Roger George, Vice President of Legal Affairs and General Counsel
Michelle Greer, Vice President of Human Resources
David Olson, Vice President of Operations
For more information visit Skystream's website at http://www.skystream.com or e-mail us at: info@skystream.com
E.Digital Paying 49% Interest on Loan to Finance New Products
By David Evans
Las Vegas, Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- E.Digital Corp. is paying an annual interest rate of 49 percent on a $1 million, 15-month loan to finance marketing of a new line of Internet music players it displayed this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
In a November 14 letter to the San Diego company's 80,000 shareholders, President Alfred Falk disclosed the financing, though not the interest rate.
On Monday, E.Digital's shares touched $1.91, giving the company's 131 million shares a market value of $250 million. That was more than 500 times their book value. The stock closed Tuesday at $1.58.
``It's a cult following,'' said Falk at the company's booth at the trade show. ``I can't tell you how many people I've met who bought our stock who don't know what we do.'' He said many first discovered the company on the Raging Bull Internet message board.
``It sounds like a phenomenon that I'd thought had ended with the dot-coms,'' said Martin Fridson, managing director of global high-yield strategy at Merrill Lynch & Co. ``Hope springs eternal.''
He said the rate was ``about double'' the interest paid ``by the riskiest companies issuing straight debt with warrants'' and tends to occur when lenders believe a default is possible.
Falk explained at the trade show that the money was borrowed soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. ``If we had said no to the terms, we might not have been able to get any money,'' he said.
`Effective' Funding
``In the current capital environment, this is an effective means of funding inventory, with a minimum of dilution and financial risk to the company,'' Falk wrote to shareholders in November. The actual terms were buried in the company's 10-Q report, filed the same day with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The loan, secured by inventory and receivables, was for more than double the company's net worth of $445,324 on Sept. 30, according to its 10-Q.
E.Digital has lost more than $54 million since it was founded in 1988. For the six months ended Sept. 30, its loss widened to 2 cents a share from 1 cent, or to $2.1 million from $1.3 million in the year-earlier period. Sales were flat at $1.2 million.
Fans of the company's stock, which trades on the OTC Bulletin Board, are more confident about the company's future than its lenders. They have posted more than 870,000 messages discussing the company on the Internet message board. Thousands were posted in the days before the show began.
Discreet Lenders
E.Digital's stock has at least doubled in January each of the past two years around the time of the Consumer Electronics Show, after issuing press releases about its music player designs, only to decline in subsequent months.
In 2000, the shares soared from $2.92 to an all-time high of $24.50 on Jan. 28, after E.Digital displayed a prototype of its music player at the show, and announced that it licensed its design to Maycom Co. Ltd. of Korea. By yearend, they were trading below $2.
E.Digital borrowed the $1 million on Sept. 28, agreeing to pay 12 percent interest in addition to 750,000 five-year warrants to buy its stock at 75 cents a share, which the company valued at $496,770. That amounts to an interest rate of 49 percent per year on the loan, which is due on Dec. 31.
The four individuals who lent the $1 million don't want their names disclosed, said Robert Putnam, E.Digital vice president for investor relations. He said they've provided funds to the company before.
Customers
E.Digital markets music players to consumers on its Web site. The products compete with players from much larger companies, including Apple Computer Inc., which sells the iPod, and Creative Technology Ltd. of Singapore, which sells the Rio line of portable players.
E.Digital also licenses its designs to companies including Bang & Olufsen A/S of Denmark and Musical Electronics Ltd. of Hong Kong.
E.Digital's contract to provide digital recorders to its largest customer, Lanier Healthcare -- which accounted for 67 percent of the company's business for the six months ended Sept. 30 --ended on Dec. 31.
As of Sept. 30, E.Digital had $985,428 in accounts receivable, which amounted to eight months of revenue. Bills unpaid by Lanier amounted to 80 percent of the total.
``They're slow, but they're paying their bills,'' said Falk.
8/28/00 Skystream Unveils Content Distribution Software Suite
By John Townley
SkyStream Networks Monday unveiled a new software suite called "zBand" that will help streamline content distribution systems for broadcasters and service providers.
The zBand software suite enables service providers and broadcasters to create and deliver media-rich, branded Internet services such as regional news portals, MP3 jukeboxes and corporate training videos to consumers and businesses.
Other companies' products like Fantastic.com's SmartCaster and KenCast.com's Fazzt Digital Delivery System do deliver similar functionality. But, according to SkyStream's director of corporate marketing Christine Yum Lenz, competitive offerings would need to be patched together to match zBand's all-inclusive nature.
As such, the pricing reflects the full breadth of zBand's capabilities. Pricing for the basic server software package begins at under $100,000 and client software pricing varies depending on type of client system used. The software package is custom-tailored to fit in with SkyStream's router systems, which recently captured the Chinese market, among other deployments. The suite will also perform in a variety of other server/router systems.
"For service providers, the next 'killer app' is the reliable delivery of Internet services such as TV-quality Internet video and live webcasts to stadium-size audiences. To do this, service providers need a full-scale software solution that empowers them to brand their own content and build a competitive portfolio of services," said Jim Olson, president and CEO, SkyStream Networks.
"With this announcement, SkyStream reinforces its technology innovation leadership by developing products like zBand which allow service providers, broadcasters, and content distribution networks to deploy revolutionary value-added services over broadcast and broadband networks," he added.
Broadcast and Internet service providers can use zBand server software to create, schedule and deliver Internet content (e.g., websites, music videos and movies) to cache servers, PCs and digital set-top boxes equipped with zBand client software. The server software features a graphical guide to schedule and manage multiple Internet services, channels and programs. The zBand server software can be installed in network operator facilities, including satellite uplinks, digital television stations, cable headends and Internet points-of-presence (POP).
The zBand client software is integrated at locations where content is delivered, cached or viewed. For caching at the network edge, zBand client software can be installed at cache servers located at network edge locations (e.g,. ISPs, DSLAMs and enterprises). zBand client software can also be installed on users' personal computers, wireless devices and digital set-top boxes where the content can be viewed by consumers or business users. With the zBand client software, consumers can designate which Internet-based services and media content they want delivered.
Broadcasters can also use zBand to deliver media-rich Internet services through either broadband or broadcast networks (e.g., satellite + fiber) in conjunction with SkyStream Source and Edge Media Routers.
SkyStream Networks of Mountain View, CA., announced July 10,
2000 that China Education Television (CETV) has selected its networking equipment as the primary broadcast networking technology for a nationwide infrastructure that will deliver multimedia-rich Internet content and video to students in 800,000 schools and five million teachers throughout China. Using SkyStream's DBN-26 Source Media Routers (SMRs) integrated with Lucent Technologies' WaveStar (TM) DVS MPEG-2 Digital Video System, IBM's storage and media management system, CETV will offer integrated Internet and television programming to improve training for teachers and ensure that students from primary schools to universities -- in even the most remote regions of the country -- enjoy a high-quality education.
http://www.china2thou.com/0007p8.htm.
Samsung Electronics to accelerate business in China
Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of memory chips, plans to step up its advance into the Chinese market this year.
The company yesterday said it intends to conduct aggressive management and boost its image as a top brand in China to increase its sales there to $4.5 billion-$5 billion from last year's $3.7 billion.
In particular, the company will expand the sale of thin film transistor-liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) and semiconductor products.
Samsung said that it is seeking to set up a TFT-LCD module assembly plant early next year in Suzhou, where it operates a semiconductor factory.
The electronics giant will expand its marketing of semiconductors in China via its Shanghai sales unit, which was established at the end of last year.
Samsung will focus on the sale of high-priced products in China's major cities, including its cellular phone brand Anycall, monitors with color displays and its digital refrigerator brand, Zipel. (Yonhap)
2002.01.05
Samsung Unveils Phone PDA, Media Center
CEO's CES keynote highlights multimedia tools, toys for the networked home.
Douglas F. Gray, IDG News Service
Tuesday, January 08, 2002
LAS VEGAS -- Following the home-networking emphasis Microsoft's Bill Gates put on his opening keynote here, Daeje Chin, president and chief executive officer of Samsung Electronics' Digital Media Business unit, announced two upcoming products for the networked home in his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Chin gave the audience a glimpse of the NEXiO, which he termed "a PDA phone converging with a PC," and of a media center for the home.
The NEXiO device, which looks like a handheld PC crossed with a tablet PC, features a 5-inch VGA (800-by-480 pixel) display, a built-in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 module for high-speed wireless voice and data access, and a USB port, according to information from Samsung.
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The NEXiO, which runs Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 on Intel's 206 MHz StrongARM processor, features 64MB of Synchronous Dynamic RAM and 32MB of ROM. The NEXiO also includes a handful of applications, among them Pocket Word, a spreadsheet program, and a PowerPoint Viewer. It also comes with voice recording and MP3 playback software.
Additional options include a camera, Global Positioning System (GPS), and wireless LAN modules. The NEXiO will be available "in a few months," Chin said.
Media Center Shown
Chin also demonstrated the Samsung Home Media Center, a box for the living room. Samsung expects the Home Media Center to be available within 12 months, Chin said.
It will contain media files, including digital photos, MP3 audio files, and video, Chin said. The Media Center is designed to also allow users to surf the Internet from the living room and send information to networked displays throughout the home. The device will be able to communicate with analog television sets equipped with an additional digital-to-analog converter, he said.
The Home Media Center will be based on FreeStyle, a technology that was announced by Microsoft's Gates Monday night. The FreeStyle software turns the Windows XP interface into a control panel format that can be operated using a remote control-like gadget. Various icons represent different devices the user can control through the FreeStyle interface.
Actel moves to buy TI's FPGA business [1995]
by Brian Fuller
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- The programmable-logic market went through yet another consolidation last week, as field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) vendor Actel Corp. agreed to buy Texas Instruments Inc.'s FPGA business.
While the deal has the effect of Actel's buying back the antifuse FPGA technology it had licensed to the Houston-based company seven years ago, it has other ramifications. Actel gets TI's $50 million customer base, giving it a market-share boost, and it gets additional foundry capacity from TI, a manufacturing issue with which fabless Actel has struggled for several years.
The deal--which marks the pullout of yet another large company from the half-billion-dollar FPGA business--also returns the Actel architecture to a sole-source position.
Actel will pay TI $10 million in cash at the deal's close and give TI new preferred stock that can be converted into 2.6 million shares of Actel common stock, which traded when the deal was announced for about $9 a share. That would value the deal at $33 million.
No TI employees will be affected by the deal.
Panel debates merits of embedded FPGA megacells
By Ron Wilson
Integrated System Design
(03/20/01, 2:25 p.m. EST)
MUNICH, Germany—At least one analyst has predicted that within a few years most SoC-level designs will include some programmable logic. The growth will be driven by the ability to adapt to changing standards, to span a range of peripheral environments with one chip or simply to fix errors without a new and vastly expensive mask set, according to enthusiasts.
This prediction and its implications received a good wringing out at a Friday (March 16) panel at DATE (Design Automation and Test in Europe), titled "Managing the SoC Design Challenge with 'Soft' Hardware."
Leading off the discussion, designers from two systems vendors, research scientist Paul Boca of Sharp Laboratories Europe (Oxford, England) and Jari Parviainen, senior research engineer at Nokia Mobile Phones (Oulu, Finland) offered only cautious support for the concept of embedding FPGA cells in a system-level IC.
Boca, whose current work is in system-level modeling and synthesis, emphasized that flexibility begins not with programmable hardware, but with the ability to model and explore a design at the behavioral level. He described internal tool development at Sharp that had led to an SoC methodology "that can require only a quarter the time of conventional design."
The Sharp approach uses C-derived language and tools to permit system description, exploration and rapid translation to RTL. But Boca mentioned two significant impacts of the approach.
First, the emphasis on structure places a premium on the ability to think about algorithms, tasks and data flows at a system level—for example, to render parallel algorithms in a sequential language. This ability, Boca said, can come more naturally to software engineers than to traditional chip designers. In one instance, the same chip design was given to both a hardware team and a software engineer at Sharp. The software engineer using the tool set produced a significantly better design.
Another important concern is that the chip not make use of hardware that is too difficult for the tools to understand. Boca expressed concern about fitting FPGA structures into an inventory that already included compiled hardware, microprocessor cores and various types of memory.
Nokia's Parviainen offered a different view, based not on tools but on end applications. He welcomed the notion of bringing increased flexibility to an SoC design, but pointed out that there are many ways to achieve such flexibility, of which embedding an FPGA is only one. "One solution is to design circuits that are inherently scalable, so that one design can cover a wide range of performance requirements," Parviainen said. Another is to implement processors not as monolithic blocks, but as pools of resources. For example, a pool of small DSP cores could be configured to handle one 32-bit computation and then several 8-bit ones. While not ruling out FPGAs, Parviainen cautioned that when writing HDL code for a chip with both cell-based and FPGA-based logic, the designers would have to fully understand the impact of coding style on synthesis into each medium.
Yankin Tanurhan, director of the embedded FPGA effort at Actel, offered his perspective as a vendor that licenses FPGA cores. After reviewing the arguments in favor of including the core on an SoC, Tanurhan said, "The fact is that the trend toward FPGA on SoC has already started and it will continue. Eventually, SoC integration will routinely include FPGA cores." He said that Actel is engaged with customers and is seeing requests for from 2.5 K to 50 K equivalent gates of programmable logic on-chip. But he emphasized that the FPGA cores would have to fit into the existing customer-owned tooling (COT) design flows and not impose process or test problems on the user.
Equally enthusiastic was Balough, founder and director of strategic planning at Triscend. Balough described his company's product line, with combines standard processor cores with a rather specialized array of programmable logic on a standard-product chip.
Balough said that Triscend's success and the growing number of vendors entering the market demonstrated the viability of the processor-plus-FPGA concept. But in another cautionary note to designers looking to do their own combinations, Balough warned that Triscend's efforts had been substantial and included a great deal of work on tools, support and test. "Make no mistake: When you ship a chip with FPGA on it, you are an FPGA vendor," he said.
Bhusan Gupta, research manager at ST Microelectronics Berkeley (Calif.) Labs, concluded the panel with a look "a little further into the future." He agreed that FPGA cores offered significant promise in the areas cited by other panelists. But he added that in the long run, reconfigurable computing could become an important reason for embedding the cores as well.
In the meantime, Gupta suggested, practical considerations would bound the range of applications for embedded FPGAs. These included area--with FPGA being at least an order of magnitude less dense than standard cells--power and speed, in both of which FPGA circuitry also lags behind that of standard cells.
Gupta also warned that even with a common tool flow, the techniques for getting good implementation out of an FPGA are quite different from optimization techniques for cell-based design and that ASIC designers are generally not skilled FPGA users. He estimated that embedded FPGA would only be used in applications where the array made up less than 25 per cent of the die area. "Otherwise, you should be looking at an off-the-shelf FPGA with an embedded processor," he said. "You can only think of embedding an FPGA in terms of an end application--for instance, if the chip is implementing a moving target," Gupta concluded. "I think the number of such designs will always be small."
hybrid silicon solution:
A conversation with Robert Putnam….8/16/00
Q: When Fred has spoken of EDIG's goal of becoming this ''standard'', what does the company believe this means, in terms of market share, units sold, or any other metric?
A: The goal is to have the products containing the MicroOS be publicly recognized as "products of excellence", meaning the MicroOS will become in demand from OEM's who wish to embed it into DSP's and other technologies. It's clear that the MicroOS is not essential for simple flash products at this time, but as devices begin to sport more complex flash memory feature sets, the MicroOS will offer a more efficient solution to OEMs. RP stated that there is a wide misconception out there that the EDIG reference design is a set of generic features which OEM's choose from. The fact is that each OEM comes to EDIG with specific and unique feature set requests, often with proprietary technology not appearing in the reference design, and asks EDIG to integrate the whole into a seamless working model. The EDIG reference design merely shows the extent to which EDIG is able to provide flexible solutions, encompassing a whole range of system features. In my view, it is more Marketing for EDIG than it is a specific solution for any OEM. RP believes the goal of having the microOS embedded into a DSP or SOC is attainable, and he mentioned something different was on the way. He said that there was new silicon technology coming soon which will be optimized for mulitple system management, and that the MicroOS was fully compatible with it. He called it a "hybrid technology". He would not say who it was coming from, but mentioned that several companies are working on solutions other than DSP's and SOC's. Again, I got the feeling EDIG might be announcing something in confluence with this "hybrid". He said "soon", but declined to define the term. LOL Robert also said the hardest thing about his job was not saying what he knew!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Programmable logic takes tough step into ASICs
By Anthony Cataldo
EE Times
(02/15/01 17:58 p.m. EST)
MONTEREY, Calif. — Hybrid ASICs with programmable logic cores are about to get their first big break as Actel Corp. seeds leading foundries with programmable logic cores and as LSI Logic Corp. gears up to manufacture its first ASIC/PLD hybrids early this year.
The benefit of adding on-the-fly programmability to otherwise fixed-function chips is clear: flexible systems-on-chip with sufficient wiggle room to allow changes — say, to an I/O interface — after a part has been fabbed. One compelling denouement of the exercise could be the creation of a class of system-on-chip platforms that could be deployed across multiple products.
But hurdles remain to be cleared before that goal is attained. They include logic density penalties, meager logic performance and high power consumption, according to a panel of experts speaking here at this week's FPGA 2001 conference.
"The question," said Actel president and chief executive officer John East, "is how you get programmability without defeating the very reason you go with ASICs in the first place."
Actel (Sunnyvale, Calif.) appears willing to pursue the answer. This week, the company announced it had licensed a set of FPGA cores, called Varicores, to foundries Chartered Semiconductor, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp. East, who earned his stripes while working at Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1960s, said the move to embedded programmable cores might be bumpy but is as inevitable as the move to CMOS was in the 1970s.
"CMOS was well-understood and seen as inevitable. But it was too tough to make the n channel, the die size was big and the yield was low," he reminded conference attendees.
East isn't alone in his thinking. Another company whose founder is a Fairchild alumnus — LSI Logic Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.) — has folded programmable logic cores developed by partner Adaptive Silicon Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif.) into its ASIC process. So far, it has received orders from about half a dozen customers for the hybrid chips, and the company expects to ship the devices in the second quarter, said Peter Gasperini, LSI Logic's ASIC product marketing manager.
As the first orders come through, Adaptive Silicon is expected to articulate its road map next month. Adaptive Silicon's president and chief operating officer, Tim Garverick, hinted that Synopsys Inc. and Synplicity Inc. — both investors in Adaptive Silicon — plan synthesis tools specific to the company's embedded programmable cores. Synthesis is one area that LSI Logic has indicated could use some streamlining.
The notion of embedding programmable logic cores into standard-cell ASICs has been bandied about for roughly four years, but progress has been stymied by the unpalatable prospects of bolting slow and fat programmable logic cores next to ASIC cells optimized for speed and density. Now Actel, Adaptive Silicon and others say they are narrowing the density and performance gap.
Late alterations
If they succeed in that endeavor to designers' satisfaction, the market could see the arrival systems-on-chip that could be altered after fabrication. Actel, for one, thinks the capability could apply to any device with a microcontroller or digital signal processor.
More important, it could lead to SoC platforms that are applicable across multiple products. The designer of an LCD controller for a printer, for example, would be able to designate an area where the printer head drivers could be programmed after production, thus making the device as applicable to a copier as to a printer, said Yankin Tanurhan, director of Actel's embedded FPGA program.
"We're helping shield ASIC and ASSP suppliers against market shifts," Tanurhan said.
Indeed, some see little choice but to move to reconfigurable SoC platforms because the spiraling nonrecurring engineering charges and other costs of designing and debugging complex, multimillion-gate ASICs are having a chilling effect. "We're already seeing a decline in the number of ASIC starts for a given year," said Adaptive's Garverick.
The approach taken by Actel and Adaptive is to offer scalable programmable logic cores. Adaptive said its customers can integrate between 1,500 and 25,000 programmable ASIC gates, which are configurable at the gate and register-transfer levels. Actel's programmable cores range from 5,000 to 40,000 ASIC gates.
Actel's cores comprise 2,500-gate building blocks based on a three-input lookup table structure. The largest 4 x4 array includes 4,096 registers, 8,194 lookup tables, 640 I/Os and RAM modules. Actel offers five Varicore configurations — 4 x 4, 4 x 2, 4 x 1, 2 x 2 and 2 x 1 — which vary by layout and gate count.
Actel said it designed the arrays to consume a minimal die area. At 0.18 micron, the Varicore array consumes about 2,000 ASIC gates/mm2, or about one-third the die area and power of a typical field-programmable gate array.
Die area comparisons
Compared with typical ASIC logic densities, a Varicore takes up about 10 times more area for a given process technology. But Actel executives noted that ASIC gates are typically 50 to 100 times more dense than standard FPGA blocks.
Garverick said Adaptive Silicon's programmable cores can also get to within 10 times the density of ASIC gates for register-intensive functions that require heavy use of flip-flops. "In our case, the basic building block can be done in two ways: as a truth table, as with a traditional FPGA array, or as an array of 4-bit ALUs. You can get closer to 10x if it's pure random logic. We think there's validity in both views."
The gate densities of the embedded FPGAs may indeed be better than discrete devices, but many observers said the arrays still have a long way to go. Scott Hauck, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, argued that it's not enough just to plunk down standard programmable "tiles"; users should be able to reconfigure the innards of the tiles themselves.
"What we need is a Tensilica of FPGAs," said Hauck, referring to the reconfigurable processor company. "We like post-silicon customization, but we want a 2x to 4x [density penalty] rather than the 10 to 100 with predefined tiles. Yes, there will be FPGA-plus-SoC, but we need to optimize for the domain of that SoC."
Intel Fellow David Papworth, who was the lead architect for Intel Corp.'s Pentium Pro processor, expressed more skepticism, saying that the low density, low performance and high cost of FPGAs will confine them to prototyping and low-volume production for the foreseeable future. "A 40-MHz processor at 0.18 micron does not impress me," he said.
Still, LSI Logic's Gasperini said one of the company's customers is using an embedded PLD core as a digital signal coprocessor commissioned for such "mundane" tasks as Viterbi decoding. Other customers are using the PLD tiles as direct memory access controllers or configurable protocol interfaces, Gasperini said.
Actel's Varicore, for its part, can reach clock speeds of 250 MHz and consumes 240 milliwatts at 100 MHz and 80 percent utilization. To reduce the size of the programmable logic blocks, the company cut back on routing resources. The cores run 20 percent slower than Xilinx Inc.'s high-end VirtexE FPGAs, said Tanurhan.
Both Actel and LSI Logic said their cores can be folded into standard RTL-based ASIC flows. Gasperini said the Adaptive Silicon cores have already been blended into LSI Logic's ASIC environment and are treated like any standard cell. "This core has to be like another piece of ASIC intellectual property," Gasperini said.
Special attention
The cores do still require some special attention in the areas of partitioning, synthesis, integration and floor planning, according to LSI Logic. But some of those areas may be addressed by tools that are expected to be announced soon.
Actel has proposed two ASIC-compatible design flows for its Varicore line. The functional flow includes RTL coding, synthesis, place and route and verification; the hard-core integration involves the GDSII block, test generation and physical verification. Actel is providing Windows NT and Unix-based compilers. The design flow supports synthesis tools from Synopsys and physical design tools from Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Avanti Corp.
Few observers here doubt that hybrid FPGAs-cum-ASICs will appear. Whether designers will tolerate the trade-offs remains open for debate.
TiVo unveils upgraded TV recording device
LAS VEGAS, Jan 8 (Reuters) - TiVo Inc. (NasdaqNM:TIVO - news) on Tuesday unveiled a new version of its set-top box that gives users improved options for digital television recording, and the ability to access services such as music, video-on-demand, and games via high-speed Internet connections.
The San Jose, California-based company said its TiVo Series2 DVR (digital video recorder) offers more recording capacity at a lower cost, with up to 60 hours of recording time.
TiVo's????y powers a personal video recording service that allows viewers to record shows on a hard drive for playback at a later time. The technology also tracks users' preferences so TiVo can suggest other programming.
The current generation of devices are manufactured by Philips Electronics , Sony Corp. and Hughes Electronics Corp. (NYSE:GMH - news), a unit of General Motors Corp (NYSE:GM - news) . TiVo Chief Executive Mike Ramsay said Solectron Corp. (NYSE:SLR - news) would make the Series2 boxes, but that the company would continue to support the older boxes.
``This is the first time we are launching a product that is TiVo-branded,'' Ramsay told Reuters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where the box was being unveiled.
Ramsey said that while TiVo would sell some Series2 devices now on its Web site, the majority of the boxes would be available at retail closer to the 2002 holiday season. Asked if there would be a Series2 box for the holidays manufactured by Sony or Philips, Ramsay declined to comment.
TiVo, which derives its revenues from customers who sign on to its subscription service, and from software licensing, said a Series2 recorder that can record up to 40 hours of content will sell for about $300, while a 60-hour unit will go for around $400. Currently, a first-generation TiVo-powered box built by Philips sells for some $600 on TiVo's Web site.
SEEK Do???nd difficulty spreading the gospel of digital TV recording.
Still, TiVo claims some 280,000 subscribers as of Oct. 31, and indications are that TiVo devices sales were strong during the recently ended holiday season. Experts say further licensing deals and content collaborations will likely draw in subscribers.
TiVo's faces stiff competition in the DVR arena, including UltimateTV, developed by software behemoth Microsoft Inc., ReplayTV, made by SONICblue, the consumer electronics maker which has sued TiVo claiming patent infringement.
In an effort to woo new users, TiVo added features and prospect of content offering with the new model. TiVo Series2 has two USB expansion ports, providing easy connectivity with peripheral devices, such as digital cameras, MP3 or CD players.
Earlier on Tuesday, in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, RealNetworks said it would include its software for playing video and audio over the Internet in TiVo DVRs. TiVo users will be able to manage their music collections on TiVo's hard disc and also download and listen to music.
In addition, personal computer game maker Jellyvision, said it will work with TiVo to create ``video party games'' that will run on TiVo Series2. Further Radiance Technologies Inc. will include technology in he TiVo box that will integrate into the TiVo's platform an Internet Video-on-Demand application.
``From TiVo's inception we've known that delivery of music, photos and games would be a natural extension to the easy to use DVR service TiVo offers today,'' TiVo's Ramsay said in a statement.
TiVo subscribers with TiVo Series2 DVRs will be able to sign up for the new services from RealNetworks and Jellyvision by the 2002 holiday season.
TiVo shares closed up 99 cents, or 15.7 percent, at $7.29, its highest level in 5 months, on Nasdaq.
Digital Jukebox Firm Ecast Licenses All Five Major Record Labels
San Francisco, Calif. -- Ecast, a provider of Internet-connected digital
jukeboxes, announced on Tuesday that it has obtained licenses from BMG,
EMI Recorded Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and
Warner Music Group to offer their music in its jukeboxes. Financial terms
of the agreements were not disclosed. Located in public venues like bars
and restaurants, San Francisco-based Ecast's jukeboxes will now give
consumers access to songs from 10,000 albums recorded by both major label
and independent artists. The music is delivered using Microsoft's Windows
Media technology, and is secured by Ecast's proprietary watermarking and
encryption technologies. Ecast raised $12.4 million in a September 2001
financing round led by St. Paul Venture Capital.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.010802/220082297
Thomson Multimedia Debuts Video Copy-Protection, Other Products
Las Vegas -- Consumer electronics developer Thomson Multimedia announced
on Tuesday a new video copy protection technology developed in conjunction
with semiconductor firm Micronas. The SmartRight system is designed for
home networks and meets commercial requirements for TVs, set-top boxes,
DVD players, digital video recorders and PCs. The system is based on the
use of removable security modules, such as smart cards, and will be
implemented on Micronas's digital TV chip. Thomson also announced that its
Technicolor unit is developing Technicolor Digital Memory Cards -- a new
line of more affordable, write-once flash memory cards that will be
compatible with existing and future digital cameras, MP3 players and other
portable devices. Another of Thomson's product announcements from the
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is a new series of analog
RCA televisions designed with a higher quality connection for Microsoft's
Xbox video game console. This new connection takes advantage of the Xbox
system's ability to output component video signal levels, and feeds the
signal through a single connection cable to the TV's special port. Thomson
said that the connection will deliver "dramatically improved picture
detail for Xbox functions."
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020108/sftu079_1.html
courtesy of D.Inkie: home MP3 centers
Senior Editor
Beat: Digital music
e-mail eliot Eliot Van Buskirk
I have a few predictions about what we will see this year in the digital audio arena. First, while most MP3 players have been portables, I think we're about to see an explosion of home-based MP3 players. Gathering momentum for about a year now, devices such as the HP Digital Entertainment Center DE100C have convinced me that we're finally on the edge of the convergence revolution. I'm expecting a proliferation of devices with a mix of the following attributes: hard drive, Ethernet, stereo, HPNA, portable-device connectivity, CD burner, onscreen TV display, embedded Linux, upgradable firmware/software, remote control, high-speed modem, and (hopefully) integration with the fledgling online music and entertainment subscription services. As I've said before, music will lead a number of trends, from home networking to convergence--and I think this is the year everyone will finally see what I was talking about.
The other device that has me in a tizzy is the Archos Jukebox MultiMedia, which takes this idea of a hard drive as the core of an entertainment machine and tricks it out beyond belief. This portable jack-of-all-trades features the following: a 10GB hard drive, an MP3 player, an MP3 recorder, a video player (on the embedded LCD or a TV), a video recorder (with a 4X zoom), and connectivity by FireWire and USB 1.0 and 2.0. This could be the device that both early adapters and people who have been shy about portable electronics go gaga for, and I expect to see many others like it at CES.
MOTOROLA EXPANDS PORTFOLIO OF CUTTING-EDGE AUDIO ENTERTAINMENT ACCESSORIES WITH NEW MP3 PLAYER
Motorola’s MP3 Player keeps you connected with your calls and your music in one smart
hands-free accessory
TORONTO, ON (November 6, 2001) – At the "Communications 2001" conference and tradeshow in Toronto, Canada, Motorola, Inc. today announced its new MP3 Player accessory that turns any compatible Motorola mobile phone into a personal jukebox. The addition of this accessory to the roster of Motorola entertainment products answers the growing consumer demand for multifunctional mobile phones. The new Motorola MP3 Player accessory allows users to download favourite digital music from personal computers or compact discs to the MP3 Player and allows them to listen to their favorite tunes everywhere, without skipping a beat or missing an important call.
"We believe that our accessories are a great complement to the mobile phone experience, whether maximizing functionality and performance, or just adding enjoyment," said Jack Nolan, Director of Operations & Accessories Sales, Motorola Canada. "The Motorola MP3 Player is a useful accessory that allows hands-free phone use and also provides the fun option of choosing your personal soundtrack for each day."
Let your mobile phone entertain you
Listening to favourite digital music without missing a beat - or call - is simple with the Motorola MP3 player. It has an in-line stereo headset for grooving to tunes and a built-in microphone for taking calls – all hands-free. The music is automatically muted when a call is received and resumes once more when the call is ended. Included with Motorola’s MP3 Player are MUSICMATCH® Jukebox Plus™ software and a USB cable to connect to existing music collections on personal computers. To take beloved compact discs on the road MP3-style, just transfer the songs onto the player using the software.
The evolution of mobile entertainment
Motorola is helping make mobile phones entertainment centres. They offer musical distractions while waiting for the bus or running on the treadmill. The MP3 player is the latest product in Motorola’s growing roster of entertainment accessories including the FM Stereo headset. Both offer a seamless connection to music and information. Consumers can choose the Motorola cell phone they like and enhance it with the accessories to complement their personalities and customize their wireless experience.
"The 18-24 year-old demographic is one of the fastest growing market segments today," said Christopher Swambar, MP3 Player Product Manager, Motorola. "These young trendsetters demand stylish, cutting-edge products that fit their lifestyle. Motorola’s new MP3 Player has been designed with this in mind, but it is certainly a great product for anyone who would enjoy digital music on the go."
Motorola’s first MP3 Player is expected to be available at the end of November at select Canadian retailers, including carriers of the V.Series™120c, V.Series™ 60c, and Timeport™ P270c handsets. The expected Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price of the Motorola MP3 Player kit is $300 to $325 CDN.
About Motorola
Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) is a global leader in providing integrated communications and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2000 were $37.6 billion. For more information on Motorola, please visit our Web site at www.motorola.ca.
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MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.
© 2001 Motorola, Inc.
® MUSICMATCH is a registered trademark of MUSICMATCH, Inc.
Samsung Electronics to Introduce NEXiO
Business/High Tech Editors
CES 2002
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2002--At the International Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung Electronics will unveil its Wireless Hand PC NEXiO S150 - the first in a series of Wireless Hand PCs that has just been launched in Korea.
This first of its kind device combines the power of a handheld computing device with the capability of anytime, anywhere access to the Internet.
With the launch of this new product category, Samsung is recognizing the need for today's mobile world to have access to the rich information that is always available on the Internet. No longer is it acceptable to wait for key information, or to be required to view needed information through restrictive formats.
With the NEXiO S150, users will be able to view the Internet through a 5.1'' reflective LCD screen with a WVGA (800 x 480) resolution that recreates a desktop viewing experience. With its built-in wireless cdma2000 module, the Internet is available 24/7 to mobile users at speeds that exceed today's traditional landline access capabilities.
Samsung is on the leading edge of an industry that is working to combine the power of next generation wireless networks with the portability and ease-of-use of handheld devices. As the 3G networks as described by the wireless industry continue to be rolled-out, Samsung will be positioned as a leader in offering devices that respond to the needs of all categories of users.
The NEXiO S150 is based on the WinCE platform which provides a flexible operating system that can support a wide variety of devices developed for specific markets. Combined with applications ranging from PocketWord, a spreadsheet and various e-mail capabilities, the NEXiO S150 can be a serious business tool for communications, yet still provide access to great content available through wireless networks.
The NEXiO S150 also introduces a VGA port to allow presentations to be given directly from the device. Using the NEXiO S150, being away from the office no longer means having to rely on a notebook computer for e-mail and presentation capabilities - the NEXiO S150 has all the functions one needs when away from the office for a quick trip.
A USB port is also built in to facilitate connections to a mouse, keyboard, memory card or other peripherals and expand the ways that the NEXiO S150 can be utilized. Currently available options include a global positioning system for automobile navigation, a 300,000-pixel digital camera, and a wireless LAN module that can transmit data at up to 11Mbps.
With its embedded cdma2000 1x module, the NEXiO S150 can utilize the built-in personal information manager (PIM) to track important personal meetings and tasks, look up phone numbers, and even make voice calls directly from the device. A notepad application allows notes to be tied to particular conversations, as well as producing longer messages that can be delivered through wireless networks to the intended user.
The NEXiO S150 also comes with applications geared towards personal entertainment. These applications include an e-book reader, an MP-3 player and games. Plus, with the Windows CE platform, additional applications are being developed every day.
Samsung's Wireless Hand PC is designed to provide mobile online access anytime and anyplace. The product lineup will encompass options and built-in features that enable selective use of wireless cellular networks or wireless LANs, thereby satisfying diverse needs.
Although the product that is being demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show is only available in Korea, Samsung Electronics is evaluating the market potential for a device in the United States that satisfies the mobile needs in this country. As details for a US product are developed, additional information will be provided.
About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductors, the consumer electronics industry, and digital convergence technology. The Company employs approximately 66,000 people in 50 countries. Samsung Electronics is the world's fourth-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, the world's largest producer of DRAMs, and the first developer and mass producer of digital TVs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Digital Media, Semiconductor, Information & Communications, and Home Appliance Businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.samsungelectronics.com .
--30--mw/ny*
CONTACT: Samsung Electronics
Laura Ware/Sue-Jung Yu
Tel: 212-642-7786/212-819-4848
laura.ware@edelman.com
sue-jung.yu@edelman.com
KEYWORD: NEVADA KOREA INTERNATIONAL ASIA PACIFIC TRACK
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS NETWORKING SOFTWARE
TELECOMMUNICATIONS TRADESHOW
SOURCE: Samsung Electronics
©2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Samsung Electronics to Introduce NEXiO
Business/High Tech Editors
CES 2002
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2002--At the International Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung Electronics will unveil its Wireless Hand PC NEXiO S150 - the first in a series of Wireless Hand PCs that has just been launched in Korea.
This first of its kind device combines the power of a handheld computing device with the capability of anytime, anywhere access to the Internet.
With the launch of this new product category, Samsung is recognizing the need for today's mobile world to have access to the rich information that is always available on the Internet. No longer is it acceptable to wait for key information, or to be required to view needed information through restrictive formats.
With the NEXiO S150, users will be able to view the Internet through a 5.1'' reflective LCD screen with a WVGA (800 x 480) resolution that recreates a desktop viewing experience. With its built-in wireless cdma2000 module, the Internet is available 24/7 to mobile users at speeds that exceed today's traditional landline access capabilities.
Samsung is on the leading edge of an industry that is working to combine the power of next generation wireless networks with the portability and ease-of-use of handheld devices. As the 3G networks as described by the wireless industry continue to be rolled-out, Samsung will be positioned as a leader in offering devices that respond to the needs of all categories of users.
The NEXiO S150 is based on the WinCE platform which provides a flexible operating system that can support a wide variety of devices developed for specific markets. Combined with applications ranging from PocketWord, a spreadsheet and various e-mail capabilities, the NEXiO S150 can be a serious business tool for communications, yet still provide access to great content available through wireless networks.
The NEXiO S150 also introduces a VGA port to allow presentations to be given directly from the device. Using the NEXiO S150, being away from the office no longer means having to rely on a notebook computer for e-mail and presentation capabilities - the NEXiO S150 has all the functions one needs when away from the office for a quick trip.
A USB port is also built in to facilitate connections to a mouse, keyboard, memory card or other peripherals and expand the ways that the NEXiO S150 can be utilized. Currently available options include a global positioning system for automobile navigation, a 300,000-pixel digital camera, and a wireless LAN module that can transmit data at up to 11Mbps.
With its embedded cdma2000 1x module, the NEXiO S150 can utilize the built-in personal information manager (PIM) to track important personal meetings and tasks, look up phone numbers, and even make voice calls directly from the device. A notepad application allows notes to be tied to particular conversations, as well as producing longer messages that can be delivered through wireless networks to the intended user.
The NEXiO S150 also comes with applications geared towards personal entertainment. These applications include an e-book reader, an MP-3 player and games. Plus, with the Windows CE platform, additional applications are being developed every day.
Samsung's Wireless Hand PC is designed to provide mobile online access anytime and anyplace. The product lineup will encompass options and built-in features that enable selective use of wireless cellular networks or wireless LANs, thereby satisfying diverse needs.
Although the product that is being demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show is only available in Korea, Samsung Electronics is evaluating the market potential for a device in the United States that satisfies the mobile needs in this country. As details for a US product are developed, additional information will be provided.
About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductors, the consumer electronics industry, and digital convergence technology. The Company employs approximately 66,000 people in 50 countries. Samsung Electronics is the world's fourth-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, the world's largest producer of DRAMs, and the first developer and mass producer of digital TVs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Digital Media, Semiconductor, Information & Communications, and Home Appliance Businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.samsungelectronics.com .
--30--mw/ny*
CONTACT: Samsung Electronics
Laura Ware/Sue-Jung Yu
Tel: 212-642-7786/212-819-4848
laura.ware@edelman.com
sue-jung.yu@edelman.com
KEYWORD: NEVADA KOREA INTERNATIONAL ASIA PACIFIC TRACK
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS NETWORKING SOFTWARE
TELECOMMUNICATIONS TRADESHOW
SOURCE: Samsung Electronics
©2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<< previous Message Next Message >>
Samsung Electronics Introduces ''Digital Freedom''
Business Editors/High Tech Writers
CES 2002
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2002--
Keynote Address at CES 2002 Stresses Commitment to Products that are
Amazing, Accessible and Affordable, Freeing Consumers from the
Constraints of Time and Space
Digital Freedom -- the ultimate evolution of digital convergence, ensuring a totally seamless integration of devices and networks -- is the CE industry's newest challenge and opportunity, according to Dr. Daeje Chin, Samsung Electronics' President and CEO of Digital Media Business, and this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2002 keynote presenter.
In his keynote, Dr. Chin emphasized the fundamentals of Digital Freedom: providing products that are so amazing that consumers will be totally excited about their new digital experience, making content and services accessible anytime and anyplace, and offering the most advanced products with the most value at affordable prices.
''We at Samsung are committed to providing every customer the freedom from limitations of time and space in accessing whatever services they want,'' Dr. Chin told the CES audience. ''This is true Digital Freedom, and it should be available to everyone regardless of age, culture or geography.''
Dr. Chin discussed Samsung's hopes to accelerate the pace of Digital Freedom through a variety of strategic alliances that cross industry lines to create new, breakthrough products and services. In particular, Dr. Chin urged the development of new and innovative products and services that bridges the gap in both technology and industry practices including privacy issues, personal data security, and digital rights management.
Dr. Chin previewed Samsung's vision with a forward looking demo where a home computer is used as a central media server and control device for both consumer electronics and home appliances. The demo showed how seamless connectivity, easy controllability for all home devices, and the convenience of managing family information come together to enable Digital Freedom.
In addition, Dr Chin introduced a wireless hand PC, NEXiO that will play a key role in Digital Freedom both inside and outside the home in the post-PC era. With a NEXiO, users will be able to view the Internet through a 5.1'' reflective LCD screen with a WVGA (800 x 480) resolution that recreates a desktop viewing experience. The capabilities of the NEXiO will significantly change the lifestyle and work style when wireless LAN and IMT 2000 provide sufficient broadband capabilities. This wireless handheld computer will be the most important post-PC product in this decade.
Dr. Chin also highlighted products including i300 (PDA phone), which received ''The Best Products of The Year'' from Business Week; a 63-inch plasma screen, which is the largest PDP in the world; a new 40-inch TFT-LCD monitor; and the DVD Combo.
All of the products embody Samsung's vision of Digital Freedom and the company's commitment to new experiences in digital convergence.
In his keynote, Dr. Chin proved that Samsung is making a fast transformation as a new leader in the digital era by obtaining core digital technologies and solutions.
He is also confident that through Samsung's well balanced business portfolio, (digital media, information & communications and semiconductors) the company can move quickly to meet customer needs and deliver more valuable convergence products.
Samsung Electronics made a start in a relatively disadvantageous position in the analog era, but is confident that it had the same starting point as other companies in the digital era and is establishing its position as a new leader in the new era of Digital Freedom.
Dr. Chin, who joined Samsung Electronics in 1985 as a project leader for 4Mb/16Mb DRAM, brought great success to its Semiconductor business including achievement of the number one position in supplying DRAMs in 1992. He has strengthened Samsung's Digital Media Business by combining its cutting-edge semiconductor technologies with digital consumer electronics products since January of 2000 when he became a President and CEO of the Digital Media Business of Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Products
Samsung Electronics made several other announcements today, to highlight the products discussed in the keynote and their place within the industry. Key products include:
SPH-i300 - The SPH-i300 combines a Palm-OS(R) based PDA (Personal
Digital Assistant) with a CDMA Phone. This compact wireless
intelligent terminal, known as the SPH-i300, has a large
screen just like a PDA and offers wireless Internet connection
and the ability to send and receive email. It has been on the
market in the United States since the end of October 2001. The
SPH-i300 received ''The Best Products of The Year'' from
Business Week and won CES 2002 Innovations Awards.
Home Media Center - A new-concept Home Media Center with a simple
user interface will enable everyone to take full advantage of
new audio/video offerings. The Home Media Center will allow
consumers to view personal videos, play audio files (MP3,
WMA), display photos, and watch, control and record live TV
with a single PC that will support a remote control and
''anywhere in the room'' user interface. This new Home Media
Center is a result of a previously announced agreement between
Samsung and Microsoft where the two companies agreed to
develop and market a new breed of products that would change
consumer lifestyles and work styles based on Samsung hardware
and the Microsoft Windows operating system.
NEXiO - Its first entry into this category, Samsung's wireless
handheld PC--the S150 --comes with a 5.1 inch reflective LCD
screen with VGA (800 x 480) resolution and a built-in wireless
module that operates on the Windows CE platform. The screen is
large enough so that the Internet can be viewed without having
to scroll left and right. A built-in cdma2000-1x (OS-95C) CPU
allows high-speed data transmission for full online access
anytime, anyplace. NEXiO is widely recognized as a pioneer
product for the Post-PC era.
63-inch plasma screen - With the advent of worldwide digital
broadcasting, plasma display panel TVs are expected to soar in
popularity over the next decade as the preferred model for
television viewing. The Korean-based manufacturer plans to
capitalize - selling 50,000 PDP TVs in the worldwide this
year, with total sales rising to 250,000 units in 2003 and 1
million units in 2005.
TFT-LCD 40-inch monitor - The first-ever 40-inch LCD
television-ready flat panel monitor, Samsung's latest
introduction is intended for use in high-performance,
wide-screen digital TVs. The new 40-inch TFT-LCD has more than
twice the pixels of a 42-inch VGA (Video Graphics Array)
plasma display panel-- giving it much better picture clarity
and resolution. The monitor has approximately 980,000 pixels
(1280 horizontally by 768 vertically) to provide a wide screen
with XGA (extended Graphics Array) definition.
DVD Combo - Billed as the ''everything in one'' system, Samsung's
DVD-2000 is a dual-vision DVD player and VCR wrapped into one
easy-to-use unit that is also CD, CD-R, MP3 (kept in CD) Video
CD and Super VHS compatible. In addition, a technological
advance, this ''DVD Combo'' offers a DTS decoder and digital
Dolby, while the VCR has four heads and hi-fi sound. The DVD
Combo has been on the market since April 2001 in the US.
Conference and Trade Show Details
CES 2002 is being held at the Las Vegas Convention Center from
January 8 - 11, 2002. Samsung products will be showcased in:
- Booth 657 Central Hall (Digital Media)
- Booth 11206 South Hall (Information & Communications)
About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductors, the consumer electronics industry, and digital convergence technology. The Company employs approximately 66,000 people in 50 countries. Samsung Electronics is the world's fourth-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, the world's largest producer of DRAMs, and the first developer and mass producer of digital TVs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Digital Media, Semiconductor, Information & Communications, and Home Appliance Businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.samsungelectronics.com
Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
PRESSPLAY TO BE OFFICIAL NAME FOR NEW SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC SERVICE CREATED BY SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT AND UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP
Andy Schuon Named President and Chief Executive Officer; Michael Bebel Named Chief Operating Officer
Company Was Formerly Known By The Working Title of Duet
New York, New York, June 11, 2001 -- Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group today announced the official name for their on-demand music subscription service: pressplay. The joint venture was formerly referred to by the working title "Duet." In addition, it was announced that Andy Schuon has been named President and Chief Executive Officer, and that Michael Bebel has been named Chief Operating Officer. pressplay is slated to launch in the U.S. by late summer 2001.
As head of the company, Mr. Schuon will oversee all aspects of pressplay's operations, including the launch of the online subscription service, the management of its technical operations and the overall branding and development of the service. Mr. Bebel will be responsible for overseeing the business affairs, finance, and day-to-day operations of the company as well as lead its technology implementation. pressplay will have offices in New York and Los Angeles.
"It is a true pleasure to announce these two key players in the pressplay team," commented Thomas D. Mottola, Chairman and CEO, Sony Music Entertainment. "We have followed Andy Schuon's career for many years, and have long admired his enormous creative talent in the areas of programming and brand development. Throughout his career, Andy has proven time and time again that he understands how to take a concept and turn it into a cultural touchstone. Mike Bebel brings to the table enormous technical experience and a broad-based knowledge of digital music distribution. The combined talents of these two, well-respected executives will provide pressplay with the leadership, direction and creative resources it needs to succeed in the marketplace."
"Andy and Mike are both extremely talented executives, and we are pleased that they will be steering pressplay," said Doug Morris, Chairman and CEO, Universal Music Group. "Andy is a tremendously creative individual who, in a very short time, built Farmclub.com into one of the premier online music sites and pioneered new ground in the area of multimedia convergence. Having worked with both Andy and Mike in their respective positions at UMG, it is clear that they make up a great team, melding vision and business acumen."
"pressplay will introduce a new way for people to interact with the music they love," commented Mr. Schuon. "I am excited to be at the helm of a company on the leading edge of music, and I believe that the team Mike Bebel and I are putting together will bring a compelling service to consumers."
"I'm delighted to be working with Andy to create pressplay," commented Mr. Bebel. "We already have the support of two of the world's largest music companies and Yahoo!, and we hope to get as many music companies and online affiliate partners on board as possible by the time we launch."
pressplay is a subscription music service that will offer consumers the opportunity to download and stream songs on-demand. pressplay expects to be able to add portability options following the initial launch. The service, which will feature a secure delivery system designed to respect artists' rights, will provide online consumers with fast and efficient access to a vast catalogue of music.
Among many other features, pressplay will provide music enthusiasts with the ability to compile personalized play lists and to share them with other pressplay members. The service, which will be available in the U.S. through a broad array of affiliates, announced its first affiliate relationship in April of this year, joining together with Yahoo! Inc. to form an alliance through which the pressplay service will be marketed to users of Yahoo! network and Yahoo! Music.
Prior to joining pressplay, Mr. Schuon was President and Chief Operating Officer of Jimmy and Doug's Farmclub.com where he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of the company's record label operations, online activities and television programming since its launch in January 2000. Previously, Mr. Schuon was Executive Vice President and General Manager of Warner Brothers Records, with responsibility for all creative and administrative issues including promotion, marketing, artist relations, advertising, art, sales and production.
Before his post at Warner Brothers, Mr. Schuon spent several years at MTV: Music Television, culminating in his title as Executive Vice President of Programming. Mr. Schuon is credited with engineering the station's evolution from "video jukebox" to a fully realized "youth culture" network. He was the executive producer of the MTV Video Music Awards and the MTV Movie Awards, and created and developed such programming as "Alternative Nation," "MTV Live (now TRL)," "MTV Jams," and "The MTV Beach House." Mr. Schuon also served as Executive Vice President of Programming at VH-1 where he supervised the channel's successful re-launch.
Prior to his appointment at pressplay, Mr. Bebel held the position of Executive Vice President, Business Development and Strategic Planning for Universal Music Group's eLabs since 1998. In this capacity, he was responsible for the development of electronic commerce enterprises and new technology business opportunities on a worldwide basis as well as for participating in the development and updating of eLabs strategic planning.
During his tenure, he led UMG's strategic investments in companies such as Clickradio, DataPlay and Listen.com, as well as spearheaded the GetMusic initiative and sat on the joint venture's board.
Mr. Bebel first joined Universal Studios Inc. in January of 1996 from the Seagram Beverage Company. He holds an MBA in Finance and Economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
About pressplay
pressplay is a joint venture equally between Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. Based in New York City, the company is developing a new consumer offering, a subscription-based service that will include various music offerings via the Internet. The initial service is expected to launch in the U.S. during the summer of 2001. Universal, Sony and other music companies will separately provide their music to pressplay on a non-exclusive basis and pressplay will provide its services to a broad range of affiliates.
About Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Entertainment (SME), a leading global producer, manufacturer, and marketer of recorded music and video, has a presence in 60 countries. In 1994, SME launched www.sonymusic.com, which links to 20 Sony Music affiliate sites worldwide in addition to licensing and business-to-business sites. Reflecting its strategy for the broadband era, SME was the first major music company (in tandem with retail partners) to establish commercial download of singles, and has numerous investments in the digital media infrastructure, technology, wireless, service and digital content areas.
About Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is the world's leading music company with wholly-owned record operations or licensees in 63 countries around the world. Its businesses also include Universal Music Publishing Group, one of the industry's largest global music publishing operations. Universal Music Group consists of record labels A&M Records, Decca Record Company, Deutsche Grammophon, Geffen Records, Interscope Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Jimmy and Doug's Farmclub.com, MCA Nashville, MCA Records, Mercury Records, Motown Records, Philips, Polydor, Universal Records, and Verve Music Group as well as a multitude of record labels owned or distributed by its record company subsidiaries around the world. The Universal Music Group owns the most extensive catalog of music in the industry which is marketed through two distinct divisions, Universal Music Enterprises (in the U.S.) and UM3 (outside the U.S.).
Universal Music Group is a unit of Vivendi Universal, a global media and communications company.
* * *
STM Demos Multimedia Application On VLIW Micro Core
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 1/8/2002
First samples from microprocessor collaboration with HP redefine price/performance/power trade-off
STMicroelectronics has developed an MPEG-4 decoding application demo for the company's first VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) microprocessor core, called the ST210. Based on an evaluation chip called the ST200STB1, the demo was developed within a few weeks of the first silicon becoming available. During the demo, the ST210 decoded MPEG-4 data in real time.
The new ST210 core, which is based on technology jointly developed by ST and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, is a scalable and customizable core family designed for embedding in multimedia System-on-Chip (SoC) devices. The first member of the ST200 family, the ST210, reportedly executes four instructions per clock cycle while maintaining the low power benefits of a 250-MHz clock frequency. The ST200 cores are primarily targeted at video/audio streaming applications such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and MP3 in digital consumer applications.
Customer samples of the ST210STB1 chip, evaluation platforms and development tools are scheduled to begin shipping later this month.
Panasonic Chooses Texas Instruments' DSP to Enable Digital Audio in Its New DVD Player
Customer Support From Panasonic Marks TI's First Venture of Bringing Digital Audio to DVD Marketplace
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) continues to be the tradeshow to unveil the latest and greatest consumer electronics products, and this year is no exception. Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN) (TI) will showcase the Panasonic DVD player (DVD-RV32) at its semiconductor booth (#13737) this week at CES in Las Vegas. The new DVD player is the world's first to support Windows Media Audio (WMA) file playback, which is enabled by TI's power-efficient digital signal processor (DSP). Leveraging its success in the Internet audio industry, TI is expanding its reach into the spinning disk market by adding compressed audio functionality to DVD products.
"TI is looking to bring its DSP expertise to high growth markets to enable advanced capabilities and unmatched features," said Fred Cohen, worldwide manager of Digital Audio at TI. "Adding audio to DVD applications extends the long list of markets that can benefit from TI DSPs, including stand alone digital audio players, CD players, cell phones, PDAs, Internet appliances, home stereos and car audio systems."
The Panasonic DVD-RV32 will play DVD-R(*1), CD-R/RW(*2) and MP3(*3) playback, allowing all kinds of digital content to be played on one single device. Using TI's low-power TMS320DA105 DSP, consumers will also be able to listen to WMA discs with over 22 hours of CD-quality music.
TI provides high-performance, programmable DSP and analog-based solutions for many digital audio segments. TI offers a broad range of audio products with the performance headroom and flexibility in a low power solution for a wide range of product designs. TI's award-winning DSP technology is designed into more than 90 Internet Audio devices, including products from nine of the top 10 consumer electronics manufacturers.
(*1) This unit can play back Panasonic DVD-R discs recorded and finalized with a Panasonic DVD video recorder DMR-E20. It may not be able to be played back depending on the DVD-R disc and the recording condition.
(*2) This unit can play CD-DA format audio CD-R and CD-RW. It may not be able to play some CD-R or CD-RW due to condition of the recording.
(*3) For contents recorded on CD-R/RW media for CDs for your personal use. Playability may vary on contents and discs.
About TI
Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. The company's businesses also include sensors and controls, and educational and productivity solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. The company's web site is www.ti.com .
Trademarks:
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per tenderloin
Chip Set for Hands-Free Cellular Being Used by Motorola and CellPort
LAS VEGAS (Jan. 3, 2000) -- Lucent's Microelectronics Group today announced a chip set for hands-free cellular phone products that eliminates the need for manually dialing and reduces background noise so drivers can be heard more clearly.
The announcement is being made during this week's Consumer Electronics Show here.
CellPort Systems of Boulder, Colorado, will use Lucent's digital signal processor (DSP)-based chip set in the company's universal hands-free system, scheduled to be introduced in the first quarter. The Telematics Communications Group of Motorola will use the chip set in its hands-free phone systems slated for use in Motorola's embedded telematics systems, which they expect to be available by 2001.
"Lucent's high-powered DSP definitely does a much better job of suppressing the multitude of in-cabin automobile background noises, such as wind, passenger movement, and echo, than the several other DSP chips we tested," said Doug Daniels, vice president, marketing and sales, CellPort Systems. "The Lucent solution helps the driver using a hands-free cellular phone talk in a more normal voice without needing to speak unnaturally, as is typical with other systems available today.
"Most people limit their cell phone sound volumes to avoid echoes," added Daniels. "Lucent's echo cancellation also allows drivers to listen to the far side speaker at high volume levels without annoying howling or echoes."
Targeted for use in the range of hands-free markets, including automotive telematics, embedded cell phone hands-free kits, and completely portable hands-free kits, Lucent's DSP operates at 100 million instructions per second. On a single DSP chip, Lucent can simultaneously enable voice recognition; hands-free, full-duplex speakerphone functions including adaptive acoustic echo cancellation, line echo cancellation, and noise suppression; simultaneous voice and data; and voice memo recording functions.
Because of its DSP horsepower, Lucent reduces the chips typically required for such functions from three to one, thereby reducing overall circuit board and component costs for its customers. "We know of no other company that can offer as many simultaneous hands-free cellular phone functions on one DSP," said Daniels.
The Advanced Communications Technology Center of Bell Labs developed several key software algorithms for the Lucent DSP offering. The algorithms were fine-tuned for the hands-free application, tapping Bell Labs' extensive experience in speech, audio, and other communications technologies.
Lucent's entry into this automotive market draws on capabilities from other areas of the company's communications integrated circuits business, such as wireless, access, and computing systems.
"This new market pursuit shows yet again how focused we are on communications semiconductor applications, where we are the world leader," said Rob Franzo, director of the Automotive Products Group within Lucent's Microelectronics Group. "As communications technology and automotive electronics converge, Lucent will be positioned to provide solutions to the automotive market."
There is worldwide momentum driving the hands-free cellular phone market. Twenty countries, including England, Australia and Brazil, currently have laws requiring use of hands-free cellular phones in automobiles; Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and 11 other U.S. states have introduced legislation to implement hands-free cellular phone laws. Brooklyn, Ohio has already passed a local hands-free law.
Approximately 45% of wireless subscribers in 1999 purchased or planned to purchase hands-free kits, which equals close to 13 million units in the United States alone, according to the Yankee Group 1999 Mobile User Survey. "Hands-free is quickly becoming the most popular wireless phone accessory, eclipsed today only by carrying cases and extra batteries," said Phillip Redman, associate director of wireless/mobile communications. "As more data-oriented applications emerge augmented by more accurate speech recognition systems on wireless networks, using phones hands-free will become critical and provide subscribers a greater ease of use and added safety."
Hands-free functions are used more often in wireless phones than any other features, including message waiting indicator, last number redial, and spell dial, according to a 1998 Yankee Group study of approximately 1,000 wireless phone users.
Lucent's offering consists of the DSP1627 and DSP1629, both of which operate at 100 MIPS and 2.7 volts. The DSP1627 has 32 kilowords of read only memory (ROM) and 6 kilowords of random access memory (RAM). The DSP1629 has 48 kilowords of ROM and 16 kilowords of RAM on chip. A complementary part of the offering is Lucent's CSP1027 coder/decoder (codec) chip.
Lucent's complete chip set solutions, based on both the DSP1627 and DSP1629, are now available in sample quantities, and in high volumes in the first quarter of 2000. The DSP1629-based chip set is priced under $17 in quantities of 100,000, with a feature rich complement of software functionality and two linear codecs.
Both chips can be used in the various global wireless standards including Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications, code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access, and advanced mobile phone system.
For more product information, customers may call the Microelectronics Group Customer Response Center, 1-800-372-2447, Dept. #N25 (in Canada, 1-800-553-2448); fax number +1-610-712-4106 (especially for callers outside of North America) or write to Lucent Technologies, Room 30L-15P-BA, 555 Union Boulevard, Allentown, Pa. 18103.
Lucent's Microelectronics Group designs and manufactures integrated circuits and optoelectronic components for the computer and communications industries.
Additional information about the Microelectronics Group is available from its web site at <http://www.lucent.com/micro/handsfree>.
Additional information about Motorola's automotive telematics systems is available at <http://www.telematics.motorola.com>.
CellPort Systems, Inc., is a Boulder, Colorado-based, privately held company that develops and markets mobile, wireless connectivity products for cellular phone, Telematics, Intelligent Transport Systems and mobile "infotainment" systems. The company provides technical solutions for voice applications through its CellPort Universal Hands-Free Connectivity System. For vehicle-based data network and wireless connectivity, the company's CP2100 represents the industry's first off-the-shelf product to provide an open technical architecture that combines server, router and wireless gateway functionality. CellPort is a member of the IDB Forum and Telematics Supplier Consortium. More information about CellPort can be found at <http://www.cellport.com>.
Motorola Takes Home One Dozen Coveted CES Innovations Awards for New Phones, Two-Way Radios, Broadband Technologies and Accessories
Recognition Showcases Company's Breadth in Product Innovation at This Week's Consumer Electronics Show
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) today received 12 CES Innovations 2002 Design and Engineering Showcase Honors for two new GSM/GPRS handsets from the company's industry-leading portfolio of six GPRS handsets; one iDEN® multiple communications handset; four two-way radios; one MP3 accessory; two Bluetooth accessories; an integrated, interactive broadband/home theater system; and a digital wireless audio receiver. All of the winning products will be on display this week at the annual 2002 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), booth #30733 at the Las Vegas Hilton, starting tomorrow, Jan. 8.
``Year after year, we're pleased that Motorola's innovations in engineering and design are recognized,'' said Ron Garriques, senior vice president, Personal Communications Sector, Motorola, Inc. ``At Motorola, we pride ourselves on bringing consumers the best designs to fit their lifestyles and the features to make their lives more convenient. In addition, we work to uphold the quality people have come to expect from Motorola products.''
``Innovations'' is the most prestigious award given in the consumer industry, endorsed by the Industrial Design Society of America and sponsored and produced by the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA), a sector of the Electronics Industries Association (EIA).
Award-winning Products Include:
Motorola P280 Phone
The tri-band GSM/GPRS Motorola P280 phone enables consumers to stay connected with one phone and phone number in more than 70 countries worldwide. GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) technology provides virtually instant and constant connectivity to movie times, sports scores, weather updates and shopping. Consumers also have the option of using the Motorola P280 as a wireless modem for their laptop or PDA with the P280's data connectivity kit.
Motorola V66 Phone
The Motorola V66 phone is truly cutting edge, combining an elegant and distinctive design with a myriad of the latest mobile technologies. The V66 is Motorola's smallest tri-band phone to feature GPRS technology and offers such features as voice activation, real-time clock, a currency converter and calculator.
Motorola i80s
The Motorola i80s phone is a sleek, silver handset that combines the capabilities of a digital wireless phone, two-way radio, alphanumeric pager, and ``always on'' Internet microbrowser. It is one of five handsets from Motorola that gives users the ability to download and run applications to meet their individual needs using Java(TM) technology. It offers a rich set of features including speakerphone, productivity tools and the ability to access corporate e-mail, databases and directories.
The leader in two-way radio technology for more than 70 years, Motorola continues to develop innovative designs that appeal to their targeted audiences. This year, Motorola two-way radios take home four CES Innovations 2002 Design and Engineering Showcase honors. In addition to being part of the Motorola showcase at booth #30733 at the Las Vegas Hilton, Motorola's new line of two-way radios will also be displayed at booth number M-16849, South Hall 4, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Motorola Talkabout® T4300 FRS Two-Way Radio*
With a uniquely thin design perfect for small hands, the Motorola Talkabout T4300 two-way radio is an easy-to-use, affordable communications solution that helps families have fun and stay in touch within a two-mile range (depending on terrain and conditions). This colorful two-way radio has 14 channels for communication, an audible call tone to alert friends and family before you start talking, and a talk-confirmation tone to signal others when you're done. The package is complete with a keypad lock that prevents settings from being accidentally changed by younger kids and an easy-to-read LCD display. With an MSRP under $20, the T4300 is the company's lowest-priced two-way radio to-date.
Motorola Talkabout® T5400 FRS Two-Way Radio
Available in Ice Blue, the Motorola Talkabout T5400 two-way radio is perfect for users who want to stay connected (two-mile range depending on terrain and conditions). Proving that communications don't have to be complicated, the T5400 offers five call tones, a talk-confirmation tone, a battery meter and a backlit LCD display, which makes the radio easier to read in dark conditions or direct sunlight. With 14 channels and 38 interference eliminator codes, which help minimize interference by providing the user with multiple code combinations to choose from, channel interference is minimized.
Motorola Talkabout® T5800 GMRS Two-Way Radio Series*
With a small, ergonomic design, the Talkabout T5800 Series General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) two-way radio delivers rugged Motorola quality with clear communications whether skiing or hiking rough terrain. Built to withstand a harsh environment and provide extra communications range (up to five miles depending on terrain and conditions), the T5800 Series has a sporty design and provides a variety of features including 38 interference eliminator codes, which help minimize interference by providing the user with multiple code combinations to choose from; 10 audible call tones; a scan feature to help find a clear channel; and a talk confirmation tone to signal others when you've finished. Perfect for outdoor enthusiasts, the Motorola T5800 allows users to talk hands-free with the voice-activation (VOX) optional accessory.
Motorola Talkabout® T7200 GMRS Two-Way Radio*
The most advanced product in Motorola's consumer two-way radio portfolio, the Motorola Talkabout T7200 two-way radio combines superior ergonomics and rugged dependability in a stylish package. With its weather-resistant design, the Talkabout T7200 is perfect for hunting trips and family picnics alike. Simple to use with greater range than FRS radios (up to five miles depending on terrain and conditions), the Talkabout T7200 offers interchangeable faceplates, 10 audible call tones, hands-free VOX (with or without accessories), NOAA weather radio broadcasts with a weather alert feature**, and recharge capability. Privacy features include the Eavesdrop Reducer and 38 interference eliminator codes to help minimize unwanted chatter from other users.
Motorola MP3 Player
Motorola's MP3 Player accessory turns any compatible Motorola mobile phone into a personal jukebox. The Motorola MP3 Player allows users to download their favorite digital music from a PC or CD player, all the while ensuring incoming calls are not missed. With a touch of a button, music can be paused and restarted to answer calls without having to remove the headset or touch the phone.
Bluetooth(TM) Handsfree Car Kit by Motorola
Motorola continues to revolutionize the in-car experience with wireless, hands-free communication. The new Bluetooth Handsfree Car Kit by Motorola provides consumers with high-quality, wireless car kit-to-handset compatibility. This in-vehicle device features hassle-free mobile communications through seamless wireless connectivity between the handset and the in-vehicle communications panel. The highly stylized, easy-to-use Bluetooth Handsfree Car Kit by Motorola also boasts superior sound quality that incorporates noise suppression and echo cancellation features to enhance the in-vehicle communications experience. The car kit is compatible with version 1.1 Bluetooth Standard enabled mobile phones and audio devices from Motorola and other vendors.
Bluetooth(TM) Headset by Motorola
The Bluetooth(TM) Headset by Motorola offers a powerful means to communicate both wirelessly and hands-free. The Bluetooth Headset by Motorola allows users to connect virtually instantaneously between any phone compatible with Bluetooth wireless technology. With its stylish, industrial design, the headset weighs in at less than an ounce and is smaller than two inches in diameter. Features include up to three hours talk and 100 hours stand-by time, operation within 30-foot range of a handset and an over-the-ear style for added convenience and comfort.
Motorola's latest ``broadband-home'' technology received two CES Innovation Design and Engineering Awards. The Motorola DCP501, the first offering from Motorola's DCP 500 Series Home Theater System, and the Motorola simplefi(TM) wireless digital audio receiver were recognized for delivering home entertainment that is smarter, simpler and more synchronized than ever before. In addition to being part of the Motorola showcase at booth #30733 at the Las Vegas Hilton, the Motorola DCP501 and the Motorola simplefi will also be displayed at booth #165, Central Halls 3-5 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Motorola DCP501
The Motorola DCP501 Home Theater System provides an easy option for consumers who want to experience today's most popular entertainment technologies and interactive broadband services from a single, convenient unit. The Motorola DCP501 is the first consumer electronics product that combines a digital cable receiver, CD/DVD player, and AM/FM stereo-receiver (powered by a 5x100 Watts/channel amplifier) -- all with the ease of plug-and-play installation.
Motorola simplefi(TM) Wireless Digital Audio Receiver
The Motorola simplefi digital audio receiver allows easy wireless high-fidelity playback of digital streaming audio and music for the first time. Digital music is ultra-popular, but Motorola recognizes that few consumers want to sit in front of their home PCs to listen to it. Motorola's simplefi wireless digital audio receiver is a great-looking and easy-to-install system that enables users to stream Internet digital audio to the existing high-fidelity stereo equipment in their homes.
About Motorola:
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) is a global leader in providing integrated communications solutions and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2000 were $37.6 billion. More information can be found at Motorola's company Web site: www.motorola.com.
Network and subscription dependent feature. Not available in all areas.
MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.
The Bluetooth trademarks are owned by their proprietor and used by Motorola, Inc. under license.
Bluetooth(TM) Car Kit By Motorola Combines Seamless Connectivity With Voice Recognition for New Wireless Hands-Free Experience
Bluetooth(TM) Car Kit and Headset Accessories by Motorola On Display at CES 2002 Bluetooth(TM) Pavilion
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Motorola (NYSE: MOT - news) today introduced the company's Bluetooth(TM) hands-free car kit, combining high-quality audio performance and voice recognition with the latest Bluetooth(TM) technology. This wireless car accessory delivers universal interoperability with any other 1.1 Bluetooth(TM) handset, and takes the world of hands-free convenience to a new level. The Bluetooth(TM) hands-free car kit, a CES Innovations Honoree, is on display at the Consumer Electronics Show 2002 in the Bluetooth(TM) Pavilion (booth #15447-C).
Bluetooth(TM) technology enables a car to adapt the functionality of a device, like a wireless phone, to an auto environment. With that ability, a consumer talking on their mobile phone that uses Bluetooth(TM) technology can enter the car, at which point the conversation would automatically transition from the phone to the hands-free car system.
With the new Bluetooth(TM) hands-free car kit by Motorola installed, consumers can simply start the car and the car kit automatically connects securely to their mobile phone with Bluetooth(TM) technology. The phone can be within thirty feet of the car kit -- on a belt, in a purse or anywhere in the car -- and no wires or cords are needed to make the connection. The Bluetooth(TM) hands-free car kit by Motorola provides consumers with an additional 100 voice activation numbers and is also compatible with phones that don't support voice recognition. Drivers can use simple verbal commands to place calls, bringing true hands-free convenience to the user. In addition, the car kit also features echo cancellation and mic noise cancellation for outstanding performance.
``During 2002, many states are expected to consider hands-free mobile phone legislation. Motorola continues to develop technology to expand its existing portfolio of products that enhance the driving experience for consumers,'' said Ken Wasko, general manager, Companion Products and Accessories Group, Motorola's Personal Communications Sector. ``The new Bluetooth(TM) hands-free car kit by Motorola is designed to help drivers fulfill their primary responsibility -- driving safely -- while offering convenient features and the latest in cutting-edge wireless technology. These Bluetooth(TM) accessories lay the foundation for consumers to evolve along with the technology, as future devices and applications arrive.''
Also on display in the CES 2002 Bluetooth(TM) Pavilion will be the Bluetooth(TM) headset by Motorola, also a CES Innovations Honoree. The Bluetooth(TM) headset by Motorola provides high-quality hands-free, wireless headset-to-handset compatibility. It is a model of efficiency, offering hands-free, wireless connections between most phones that utilize Bluetooth(TM) wireless technology.
Pricing and Availability
The Bluetooth(TM) hands-free car kit by Motorola is expected to be available in Q2 2002, and the Bluetooth(TM) headset is expected to be available in Q1 of 2002. The Bluetooth(TM) headset by Motorola has an MSRP of $199.00. For more information, please visit the Motorola Web site at www.motorola.com .
About Bluetooth(TM) Technology
Bluetooth(TM) wireless technology is set to revolutionize the personal connectivity market by providing freedom from wired connections. It is a specification for a small-form factor, low-cost radio solution providing links between mobile computers, mobile phones and other portable handheld devices, and connectivity to the Internet. The Bluetooth(TM) Special Interest Group (SIG), comprised of leaders in the telecommunications, computing, and network industries, is driving development of the technology and bringing it to market. The Bluetooth(TM) SIG includes promoter group companies 3Com, Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Toshiba, and more than 2400 adopter companies. http://www.bluetooth.com
About Motorola
Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) is a global leader in providing integrated communications and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2000 were $37.6 billion. For more information on Motorola, please visit our Web site at www.motorola.com .
For further information, please contact media, Julie Cordua of Motorola Inc., +1-847-523-0015, Julie.cordua@motorola.com.
Network and subscription dependent features. Not available in all areas.
MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. TrueSync, Sidekick, Starfish and the Stylized Starfish Logo are registered trademarks of Starfish Software, Inc., a wholly owned independent subsidiary of Motorola, Inc.
SOURCE: Motorola Inc.
08 Jan 2002, 01:20 PM EST Msg. 874556 of 874569
Big News ! Or clue from EDIG....
I just got another Treo 10 in the mail. The 4 I bought a month ago came in white unmarked boxes.
This one came in a blue box with a picture of the Treo on it with all kinds of writing on it saying what it does. Stores over 3000 songs, 10 gigabyte capacity, Smart Song Selection, rechargeable Lith ion batt,
Yellow circle with " Great for playing Internet Downloads - Mp3 Windows Media.
Take your music collection with you anywhere !
On the back it has the specs and says Made in the USA with an American flag on it. Also says e.Digital corporation and has wwww.edigital-store.com with the 877 telephone number.
What does all of this mean????????????
It means that this box is meant for a retail shelf, not an online purchase. So I would expect to see the Treo on retail shelves in the near future.
Balrog
Samsung will improve your life with easier, richer, and more enjoyable entertainment using the new Home Media Center
Vision for Samsung Home Media Center will transform the next generation of consumer PCs into complete digital media centers
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2002-- Today, Samsung Electronics introduced its vision for the future of home electronics and previewed a new product called the Home Media Center at the 2002 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Samsung Electronics' vision is that future technology will provide seamless connectivity, easy controllability for all home devices, and the convenience of managing family information. This technology will be able to control all consumer electronic devices in the home including DVD players, VCRs, TVs, PCs, and household appliances. In order to achieve this vision, Samsung is previewing the new Home Media Center.
The Home Media Center concept is a result of a previously announced agreement between Samsung and Microsoft where the two companies agreed to develop and market a new breed of products based on Samsung hardware and the Microsoft Windows operating system.
``We are happy to be previewing our new Home Media Center, which will be an important step towards our vision of transforming average households into next-generation digital homes,'' said Dr. Daeje Chin, President & CEO, of Samsung Electronics' Digital Media Business. ``Samsung has developed the Media Center concept to improve the family experience. It will bring families closer together by becoming the nucleus for the future of family entertainment.''
The Home Media Center is a unique concept because it adds several new capabilities to the home computer and will move the computer environment from the private office or den to more social rooms.
First, the Home Media Center remote control will allow consumers to enjoy a variety of entertainment content from anywhere in the room. Second, the Home Media Center will allow customers to enjoy their digital media content on multiple types of video displays. Third, consumers will be able to find and play their favorite music from anywhere in the room in a variety of formats such as CDs, Windows Media Audio, and MP3. Fourth, digital photos can be stored and edited on the Home Media Center. Finally, users can enjoy any content that can be in a digital format including live TV, an Electronic Program Guide (EPG), DVDP, and PVR.
Overall, the Home Media Center's various media and entertainment modes are integrated for easier recording and viewing. The Home Media Center concept is the platform for Samsung's entire home networking initiative.
Their first Home Media Center will be introduced with new Microsoft technologies code-named ``Freestyle'' for Windows XP previewed yesterday by Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp. chairman and chief software architect.
The ``Freestyle'' technologies will offer a new user interface and remote control access to enable consumers to access their music, home movies and photos from anywhere in the room. It will also extend Windows XP to deliver a new television experience on the home computer. People will be able to easily search for TV shows with a built-in electronic programming guide and watch, pause and record live TV. With ``Freestyle,'' the new Home Media Center will provide the choice, simplicity and enhanced digital media experiences that consumers desire today.
``Together, Microsoft and Samsung will extend the ways in which people can use their home computer,'' said Mike Toutonghi, vice president of the eHome division at Microsoft. ``Samsung's Home Media Center concept is a significant advancement toward our shared vision of simple yet rich digital entertainment, communications, information and home control experiences that people can enjoy anywhere in the home.''
Product timing will be announced later this year.
About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductors, the consumer electronics industry, and digital convergence technology. The Company employs approximately 66,000 people in 50 countries. Samsung Electronics is the world's fourth-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, the world's largest producer of DRAMs, and the first developer and mass producer of digital TVs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Digital Media, Semiconductor, Information & Communications, and Home Appliance Businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.samsungelectronics.com.
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