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Jun 4, 2001  •  Post A Comment

SeaChange floating 2,000-movie server
Maynard, Mass.-Cable video-on-demand server vendor SeaChange International will ship new servers in July that are able to store 2,000 feature-length movies at one time, the company announced Friday. By the fourth quarter, SeaChange will begin using Gigabit Ethernet technologies that will allow its servers to send more than 3,000 streams at once from a single server rack.
Vivendi Universal buys Houghton Mifflin
New York-Vivendi Universal continued its acquisition spree Friday, buying Houghton Mifflin for $1.7 billion and assuming $500 million in debt, making it the second-largest global educational publishing firm. The move came less than two weeks after Vivendi said it will buy the music downloading company MP3 for $372 million.
PBS channel-reservation swap not derailed
Washington-The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington on Friday denied a challenge by the Buffalo watchdog Coalition for Noncommercial Media of a Federal Communications Commission order that permitted sister PBS stations there to swap channel reservations. WNED-TV, originally reserved for commercial use, was de-reserved, and its less powerful sister station, WNEQ-TV-initially reserved for noncommercial use-was designated for commercial use. That paved the way for WNEQ to be sold to LIN Television, a deal pending before the FCC that the watchdog opposes. Separately, the group has asked the FCC to block the sale of WNEQ to LIN or any other commercial entity because it fears the community will lose precious public TV programming. WNED says it needs the proceeds from the station sale to convert to digital.