At 01:35 AM 9/30/02 +0000, you wrote:
>greetings all,
>
>(1)
>news about Emblaze,
>http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=621070
Emblaze is an interesting company but it seems that their product
roadmap and strategy has been all over the map. I first used their
Emblaze product (when they were GEO) back around 1997. It worked
very well, especially considering what it was trying and the fact that
it was over 5 years ago.
Shortly after that, though, they went out of the packaged software business
and got
into the "end to end" rich media creation/distribution/mgmt business with a,
in my view, very cumbersome and pricey solution.
They obviously have large war chest to ride out any economic turbulence
as they state they have $328 mm in the bank and no debt -- I guess that's
one of the good things about selling stock at a market peak.
But they're hemorrhaging cash now losing $22.1 million for the first half. This
wouldn't necessarily be too bad, except for the fact that even with
with revenue of $18.6 million for first quarter of last year, they still
lost $6.25 million
so I would expect large loses for the foreseeable future.
If I were a shareholder, the statement from Emblaze CEO Eli Reifman
wouldn't make
me feel too good. "We feel it is unrealistic to see revenue generation
alone as an
indication of our success."
Which would mean to me, "expect low revenue for some time to come and
corresponding losses because we can't control our expenses and/or
our business model is broken".
>and I haven't heard from PacketVideo for a while.
The last I heard about PV was earlier this month when MSFT and PV
signed an agreement to start streaming using the MSFT WM9 system.
This raised my eyebrows, since PV was a big and early proponent of MPEG-4
(and MPEG-4 promise of interactivity and interoperability) for the mobile
space.
Lots of possibilities why PV did it -- I can only speculate.
1) Was it because PV was out running of money and this is first step to getting
money/buyout from MSFT? Or was PV just broadening options?
2) Was PV/MPEG-4 not able to make it yet in the low bit-rate/low
processing power market - i.e, mobile? I'm big proponent of MPEG-4, but
from what
I've seen and read WM9 performs better at lower bit rates and I believe that PV
was only supporting Simple Profile -- so the quality would be far lower than
if Advanced Simple Profile was being supported (ASP supports
B frames and 1/4 pel motion comp.).
3) Content encoding/creation: Lets face it, the MPEG-4 creation tools that
enable
interactivity leave a lot to be desired currently. So, without
interactivity (and with
the limited interoperability) what are you really gaining with MPEG-4 in
the mobile
space, especially when you can have the power/reach of MSFT behind you and
get a
better looking result at the lower bit rates.
Just my take.
James Santagata
A U D I E N C E T R A X
Monetize your Media (tm)
http://www.audiencetrax.com
Received on Tue Oct 1 04:11:51 2002