Last financial report before Christmas afforded CE’s top 2 retail chains with opportunity Tues. to accentuate positive in 3rd quarter results. Best Buy and Circuit City each credited strong demand since Nov. for digital products in posting profitable results compared with year earlier. However, same- store sales were lackluster at both chains and were boosted in some measure by favorable calendar that added crucial post- Thanksgiving selling days to end of Nov. reporting period.
Winstar TV & Video Div. was bought by Wellspring Media, private investment group. Entertainment company will be renamed Wellspring Media, said Al Cattabiani, Winstar pres., who stays on as Wellspring CEO. Acquisition entails more than 1,000 hours of programming that includes cult, classic and special interest titles.
Activision Value (AV) started shipping 2 new games -- T (Teen) rated Cabela’s Big Game Hunter Ultimate Challenge, which company described as its “flagship title for the PlayStation,” and E (Everyone) rated Cabela’s 4x4 Off-Road Adventure for PC. Each title is $19.99. Minneapolis-based Activision Value is wholly owned subsidiary of Activision.
Alcatel and Thomson transmitted MPEG-2 compressed video via DSL phoneline transmission in Paris demonstration Tues. Companies said transmission of high-density content through line with 1 MB bandwidth was made possible by their joint venture NextStream encoding. System delivers audio, video and data to decoder in Thomson set-top box. Plans or timetable for commercialization weren’t disclosed.
Amsterdam-based Philips spokesman at our deadline affirmed accuracy of quotes attributed to CEO Gerard Kleisterlee in Dutch business magazine Elsevier that company may scrap its U.S. CE operations within 3 years if they show no improvement.
U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., Mon., upheld lower court ruling that awarded Bose $5.6 million after finding that Harman International’s JBL loudspeakers infringed on its patent.
Enroute spokeswoman told us company was “still looking at” GameCube, Xbox and PC as possible future platforms for its immersive video technology. But she said “nothing official has been announced” yet. Palo Alto company said Mon. it had entered into agreement to license its FirstPerson technology to Calabasas Hills, Cal., game maker THQ (CED Dec 18 p7). THQ is using Enroute’s technology in upcoming Britney Spears PS2 game for 2002. Enroute spokeswoman said title of game, price and ship date were unavailable.
Albert Pastino named Take-Two Interactive CFO, replacing James David, who remains with company in unspecified capacity… Appointed at Sega of America: Tom Nichols, ex-EA.com, as mktg. dir., Sega Sports Group; Kirsten Merit, ex-Sony Computer Entertainment America, as PR mgr., Entertainment Div… GameCube designers Satoru Iwata, Nintendo corporate planning dir.-gen. mgr., and Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo dir.-entertainment analysis and development gen. mgr., to keynote first D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Create and Entertain) Summit Feb. 28-March 1, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas… Michael Markey, ex-Gigex, named senior distribution vp for N. America, BAM Entertainment.
MGI Software said 3rd-quarter loss widened to $7.1 million from $4.8 million year ago on delay in shipment of new Cienmatic video editing software. As result, sales slumped to $7.2 million from $13.8 million. MGI CEO Anthony DeCristofaro in conference call with analysts said $700,000 in Cinematic software shipped in first week of 4th quarter after delay that was designed to “ensure the highest quality” of product. Imaging product sales, consisting largely of PhotoSuite photo editing software, were $5.3 million (67% of total revenue), while digital video sales fell to $1.9 million. That decline was related to transition to VideoWave 5 editing software that allows DVD authoring, from VideoWave 4, portion of which was returned during quarter, company said. MGI also took $600,000 provision for bad debt in quarter, DeCristofaro said. MGI, which is expected to complete its sale to Roxio in Jan. for $57.4 million, had $2.2 million in cash and cash equivalents as of Dec. 17. It had drawn $1.6 million on $1.5 million credit facility supplied to Roxio and had negative working capital of $453,000. MGI trimmed expenses and personnel, ending quarter with 195 employees, down from 214 in 2nd quarter. Marketing and selling expenses declined to $4.4 million from $6.7 million.
Sanyo will show SDMI-compliant portable digital recorder and player using Verance copy protection and watermarking technology at CES. New SSP-PD77R records audio directly to Secure MultiMedia Card (SMMC) without needing connection to PC. Device, which uses Verance watermarking optimized for Texas Instruments’ DSP, was introduced in Japan this month.