re: mwc - how to silence techno-sceptics!
HQ, I have read your earlier posts on this. Then, as now, you seem to assume that you have to disclose the technology to prove it.
The point is with the above procedure all the secrets are uncompromised.
The big deal is the compression. That process takes part at the MWC remote host, which the testers DO NOT EVEN WITNESS. As there's no need to, when proving the technology works as claimed.
All they see is the results - the timely rendering of a video clip on a TV + VCR.
There's no secrecy compromised through recording the TV output.
A common way of making big $$$'s is to con innocents into giving you money for what is actually a lie. Just dream up some sensational mind-boggling technology advance, which is hard to disprove. I don't consider that makes you a good business person, even if the ruse gets you into the BRW Top 200.
While it's possible that all of this is genuine and viable how can an investor tell?
Consider Zylotech (ZYL) which started off ~1996 claiming use of very similar technology to this. They totally scrapped it soon after, but not before lots of innocents lost money to those in the know. It wouldn't surprise me if the spiel helped a spot of fundraising. Remember how recently they announced their solution to aircraft terrorism? Hyper-diluted ZYL has hit a new lifetime low, with another rights issue announced yesterday!
How is an investor to guard against a scenario where, post fundraising AP suddenly decides to fail? MWC are unlikely to return their windfall to investors. They can instead use those funds to switch to a "traditional" VOD business, not forgetting to salary and expense account themselves in the process. And sponsor the MWC Champagne Stakes.
Maybe it's more prudent to demand a more convincing prospectus before venturing into the fiscal unknown?
-----
As to the risk that (even assuming they were prepared to raise a sweat) CSIRO could have detected fraud:
These tricks are reasonably easy to do and hard to detect: - Hide video files on a disk, or pretend a 32Gb disk is only 6Gb - (Courtesy Stocko's ideas) Wireless downloads via Wi-Fi, other microwave, BlueTooth or 3G - as DSL is just additional signalling over plain copper, supporting a concurrent voice conversation, a secreted DSL modem might work wonders - So-so (aka inferior) video quality which at first glance appear OK
