Imagine choosing from a huge library of movies - without ever leaving your chair - that you can watch at home any time you want. It's called video-on-demand: Digital and broadband cable TV technology let film fans call up their favorites with just a few clicks of their remote controls.
Bil Styslinger's Seachange International is offering the technology behind the ultimate couch potato item: videos on demand. (Globe File Photo)
|
Complete with pause, rewind, and fast-forward capability, this is the future Seachange International, of Maynard, has had in its sights for three years, as it developed the necessary electronics and pushed others in related industries to join in.
Last year proved to be the breakthrough year for Seachange's vision - and along with the company posting a full 12 months of profits, following five consecutive losing quarters in 1997-1998, Wall Street took notice.
The result was a stock surge that doubled the price of a Seachange International share to $35.375 during the last seven weeks of 1999. By late March, the company's shares were over $73 before sliding back to $61.625 as of March 31 - a gain of almost 980 percent above Seachange's March 31, 1999, price.
Seachange's profitability comes from its longtime leadership in the technology used by cable TV broadcasters and over-the-air stations to store and manage advertising and programming. It's this technology that lets local broadcasters sell ads to car dealers and nail salons for insertion in CNN newscasts and Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite reruns. The units also are used to store and play syndicated programming and news film clips.
Last year's gains were largely the result of Seachange riding a second wave in the TV industry: the conversion from analog signals to digital, which requires upgrading older equipment.
But underlying these sales is the future of video-on-demand - or VOD - which appears to be coming on fast.
''VOD now seems to be poised to take off by the end of 2001 or in 2002,'' said E. Brian Harvey, an analyst with Gilford Securities in Boston.
And its future isn't limited to cable TV. Seachange last week announced an alliance with Microsoft Corp. aimed, in part, at moving VOD onto the Internet, using broadband technology to support the complex data demands of transmitting Hollywood feature films.
Seachange's VOD is now limited to closed-circuit cable systems that supply movies to 20,000 hotel rooms in Chicago, Honolulu, New York, and San Diego. But home VOD is on the way, with trial rollouts being planned this year by Time Warner Inc. in Austin, Texas, and Telewest Communications PLC in Britain.
Both trials also will be testing equipment made by Seachange's VOD competitors, privately held nCube Inc. of Foster City, Calif., and Concurrent Computers Corp. of Atlanta.
Even though VOD isn't quite ready for widespread home viewing, Seachange last year made its first residential sale - a home-theater system that cost more than $500,000. Company officials won't identify the buyer but hint broadly that it could well be Microsoft Corp.'s chief executive, Bill
Gates.
JERRY ACKERMAN
Company of year
