The Museum of Television & Radio to Bring Historic Radio and Television Clips to the Web With Breakthrough Windows Media Technology

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 12, 2000 — Today at Streaming Media West 2000, the Museum of Television & Radio and Microsoft Corp. announced that the museum will use the latest audio and video encoding technology from Microsoft to make its collection of television and radio programs available to Internet audiences.

The museum has a collection of more than 100,000 television and radio programs and advertisements covering more than 75 years of television and radio history. They feature news, public affairs, arts, sports, comedy and variety programs as well as commercial advertising. The collection includes such great radio moments as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
“fireside chats”
and Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956, as well as television coverage of the first Apollo moon landing, previously thought-to-be-lost episodes of
“The Honeymooners,”
the first hours of MTV, and the pilot episode of
“Seinfeld.”
Many of the most significant and entertaining clips from the collection will be offered on the Internet next year.

To provide an excellent audio and video experience for Internet audiences, the museum will encode its content in digital form using Microsoft® Windows Media™
Audio and Video 8, the breakthrough digital media codecs announced today by Microsoft. Already a leader in digital media technology with Windows Media Format 7, Microsoft has achieved a remarkable 30-percent quality improvement with its latest technology. Windows Media Audio and Video 8 offer near-CD-quality streaming audio at 48 Kbps and near-VHS-quality video at rates as low as 250 Kbps.

“The Museum of Television & Radio is excited about utilizing new technologies to further its mission,”
said Robert M. Batscha, president of The Museum of Television & Radio.
“Microsoft’s latest technology offers an excellent vehicle for distributing high-quality video to the Internet community, allowing the museum to extend its reach beyond the museum’s walls.”

“This is great pairing – the best of the past with the best of the new technology,”
said Dave Fester, general manager of marketing for the Digital Media Division at Microsoft.
“The collection at the Museum of Television & Radio has tremendous cultural significance, and it is a real pleasure to be part of opening this up to the Internet with Windows Media.”

The museum’s collection will be available on its Web site next year at http://www.mtr.org/ and will be promoted and accessible through WindowsMedia.com ( http://windowsmedia.com/ ). Content posted by the museum will be protected against piracy with Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) technology. Windows Media DRM is the most widely deployed technology for protecting audio and video content on the Internet.

About The Museum of Television & Radio

The Museum of Television & Radio, with locations in New York and Los Angeles, is a nonprofit organization founded by William S. Paley to collect and preserve television and radio programs and advertisements and to make them available to the public. From its inception in 1975, the museum has organized exhibitions, screening and listening series, seminars and education classes to showcase its collection of over 100,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. Programs in the museum’s permanent collection are selected for their artistic, cultural and historic significance. The museum is initiating a process to begin acquiring Internet programming for the collection.

About Windows Media

Windows Media is the leading digital media platform, providing unmatched audio and video quality to consumers, content providers, solution providers, software developers and corporations. Windows Media offers the industry’s only integrated rights-management solution and the most scalable and reliable streaming technology tested by independent labs. Windows Media Technologies includes Windows Media Player for consumers, Windows Media Services for servers, Windows Media Tools for content creation and the Windows Media Software Development Kit (SDK) for software developers. Windows Media Player, available in 24 languages, is the fastest-growing media player. More information about Windows Media can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/ .

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.

Microsoft and Windows Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages.

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