LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8, 2004 — Today at the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft Corp. announced that support for Windows Media® on consumer electronics devices has grown 150 percent since the 2003 CES, resulting in more than 500 devices that now support Windows Media. These new devices add to the broad choice of devices for consumers supporting Windows Media. Also, new portable music players from leading consumer electronics manufacturers increase the size of the world’s largest installed base of secure portable digital music players, bringing the tally to more than 4 million devices supporting Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Digital Rights Management. In addition, Apex Digital Inc., KiSS Technology and Malata North America today announced the first DVD players supporting Windows Media Video (WMV) 9, and leading chip manufacturers Sand Video Inc. and Sigma Designs Inc. announced new chips supporting playback of high-definition WMV 9. Together, these new devices and chips help ensure that consumers can enjoy a wide variety of content on their choice of devices throughout the home and on the go.
“The support we have seen for Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series in the past year has been remarkable,”
said Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft.
“Our attractive licensing terms and the quality of the audio and video enable consumer electronics manufacturers to easily add Windows Media support and ultimately deliver to consumers the highest-quality audio and video on devices.”
“Creative portable audio players support Windows Media because of its quality and file size advantages, enabling our customers to take more high-quality music with them on their favorite Creative devices,”
said Lisa O’Malley, senior brand manager for portable audio at Creative Labs Inc.
“Windows Media powers many of the new music services, providing our customers with the freedom to choose from popular music download services and take their favorite songs on the go.”
Windows Media Throughout the Home
With the explosion in popularity of digital content, consumers are demanding more ways to enjoy their digital media throughout the home. The following new home theater components support Windows Media and are being announced at 2004 CES:
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Apex Digital unveiled its new AD 700 DVD player that supports playback of WMA 9 and WMV 9, one of the first DVD players with this capability. It will be available for purchase in April, 2004. Apex Digital announced support for WMA and HighMAT™
technology in its entire line of DVD players for 2004. -
KiSS Technology , a globally leading Scandinavian manufacturer of DVD products, will launch three new products: DVD Player DP-600, DVD Recorder DP-678, and a streaming device, SB-020, with the new decoder chip from Sigma Designs that supports WMV 9 playback. KiSS Technology’s booth at CES is South Hall 2, Booth 17731.
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Malata North America introduced two models of the DIVA, a new generation of entertainment console featuring the world’s first Windows Media-based personal video recorder (PVR). It offers consumers the ability to record television onto a DVD-R or CD-R with up to 15 hours of quality television programming using WMV, or 70
hours of WMA music per DVD-R disc. The DIVA (co-developed with Equator Technologies Inc. and Aeon Digital Corp.) also can serve as a broadband Internet browser able to
“stream” Internet-based movies and music like a PC, and supports HighMAT for photos, music and video as well as the ability to play back digital home movies made with Microsoft® Windows® Movie Maker 2 in Windows XP. -
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Ltd. (Panasonic) unveiled 14 new models of digital audiovisual products supporting WMA and HighMAT. These include the Panasonic DVD-S27, DVD-S47 and DVD-S97 DVD players; DVD-F86 and DVD-F87 five-disc DVD changers; and SC-HT670, SC-HT720, SC-HT820, SC-HT920, SC-PM29 and SC-PM39 DVD/CD home theater systems.
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Pioneer unveiled three new home theater products supporting Windows Media. The VSX-59TXi is a new top-of-the-line AV amplifier model that supports WMA 9 Professional for the delivery of multichannel surround sound. The new amplifier model also uses Pioneer’s Advanced Multichannel Acoustic Calibration system, which allows sound adjustments at the same professional level as the monitoring methods of recording studios. Also unveiled were the DVR-310 DVD Recorder and the DV-275 DVD, both of which support playback of WMA.
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Shanghai Media Group, the second-largest broadcaster in China, announced a new mobile TV set supporting WMA 9 and WMV 9 for use with its digital video broadcast system. The model number is MHD301R-9.
Also, Microsoft announced industry support for its new technology, Windows Media Connect, which will help pave the way for accessing music, video and photos from the PC on consumer electronics devices throughout the home. In addition, Microsoft announced the Windows Media Center Extender Technology and Xbox® Media Center Extender Kit, which will enable consumers to enjoy the rich Windows XP Media Center Edition experience and Windows Media Audio and Video content throughout the home.
Windows Media on the Go
The following new portable devices and car stereos support Windows Media, and are being announced at CES 2004:
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Apex Digital is offering WMA playback on all of its new portable DVD players in 5-inch, 7-inch and 8-inch models.
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BENQ Corp. is unveiling two new portable audio players, Joybee120 and Joybee125, that support WMA and Windows Media DRM, providing consumers with a wider choice of devices and the ability to enjoy content purchased from many popular music services.
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Creative Labs is unveiling three new portable audio players, including the new NOMAD MuVo 2 4GB, the NOMAD MuVo TX and the Creative Zen Portable Media Center, that support WMA and Windows Media DRM, providing consumers with more choice of devices and the ability to enjoy content purchased from popular music services.
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iRiver International, whose entire line of devices currently supports WMA, announced that its industry-leading flash memory players will support Windows Media DRM to enable access to content downloaded from a range of music services, and that the company will be providing a firmware upgrade to its existing device users in 2004.
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Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Ltd. (Panasonic) is unveiling a new portable CD player with WMA playback that is also the first portable device to support HighMAT technology.
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Pioneer unveiled 10 in-car CD players that support playback of WMA files. The CD players use an enhanced digital speed-read mechanism, which provides faster loading and track-to-track access times. Multiple players also feature advanced text capability showing up to 64 characters to display folder, file, artist, album and song names, making them easy to manage and access. CD players supporting WMA include Pioneer Car Stereos DEH-P4600MP, DEH-P7600MP , DEH-P8600MP and DEH-P9600MP, and Pioneer Premier Car Stereos DEH-P460MP, DEH-P560MP, DEH-P760MP, DEH-P860MP, DEH-P960MP and DEH-P8MP.
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SANYO will demonstrate the new HDD Voice Recorder/AV Player, a portable media player and digital recorder built on Windows CE .NET 4.2 with a 20GB hard disk drive. The device will support WMA 9 and WMV 9 playback as well as the transfer of media from a PC.
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SIRIUS Satellite Radio and Delphi Corp . will demonstrate the next step in the development of in-car mobile video transmission over a satellite radio network using Windows Media Video 9. The video delivery capability utilizes SIRIUS’ existing infrastructure to offer up to four streams of video to complement the more than 100 streams of audio currently available.
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Thomson/RCA is unveiling four new portable audio players supporting WMA including Model RD2854, a 40GB RCA LYRA MP3 Jukebox; Model RD2850, a 20GB RCA LYRA MP3 jukebox; Model RD2012, a 256MB RCA LYRA Personal Digital Player; and Model RD2010, a 128MB RD2010 RCA LYRA Personal Digital Player.
Also at CES, Microsoft demonstrated the first working Portable Media Center devices, a new class of device that will change the way people enjoy music, movies, recorded television and photos, no matter where they are using Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series.
Windows Media Support on Nearly 80 Chips for Consumer Devices
At the heart of many devices are new chipsets that will power the next generation of consumer electronics devices. Nearly 80 chips now support Windows Media from leading integrated circuit (IC) companies such as Analog Devices Inc., AMD, Cirrus Logic Inc., Equator, ESS Technology Inc., Hitachi Ltd., Intel Corp., LSI Logic Corp., NEC Corp., PortalPlayer Inc., Renesas Technology Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sigma Designs, SigmaTel Inc., Sunplus Co. Ltd., Tamul Multimedia Co., Telechips Inc., Texas Instruments and Zoran Corp. including new chips announced today at CES 2004. They include these:
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ALi Corporation announced support for WMA on its new chip model M3355 for DVD players.
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Analog Devices (ADI) is among the first to embrace Windows Media 9 Series, including WMA Professional support from ADI’s new SHARC processors and WMA and WMV support from its new Blackfin series of processors.
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Renesas Technology unveiled SH-Mobile, the world’s first chip for the wireless handset market that supports recording and playback of WMA 9 and WMV 9, realizing the demand for multimedia content playback and distribution.
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Sand Video , a leading provider of video compression silicon technology, announced that it is adding support for WMA and WMV 9 Series throughout its product line with support for real-time high-definition decoding and standard-definition encoding of Windows Media Video.
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Sigma Designs announced and demonstrated one of the first digital media processor chips for consumer appliances to support WMV 9 decoding in high definition, along with support for WMA, WMA Professional, WMA Lossless and HighMAT.
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Sunplus Technology , the leading consumer chip supplier, announced new chips used in portable digital audio players supporting WMA.
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Telechips is expanding support for Windows Media on its TCC72X platform from having WMA decoding functionality to include WMA codec support.
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Zoran announced that its seventh-generation Vaddis DVD multimedia processor IC is shipping to original equipment manufacturer customers. Zoran’s Vaddis 7 enables the next generation of advanced DVD players to include enhanced content and media support for standard and high-definition displays as well as emerging networking capabilities. Vaddis 7, like the previous-generation Vaddis 6, supports WMA for delivering high-quality digital media experiences on all types of consumer electronic devices.
About Windows Media
Windows Media is the leading digital media platform, used by consumers, content providers, solution providers, software developers and corporations throughout the world. The Windows Media 9 Series platform includes Windows Media Player 9 Series; Windows Media Services 9 Series, the powerful streaming server feature in Windows Server™
2003 for distributing content; Windows Media Encoder 9 Series for content creation; Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series for the best-quality audio and video; Windows Media Digital Rights Management to help protect content; and the Windows Media Software Development Kit for software developers to develop digital media products and services. Windows Media Player, available in 26 languages, is now the leading 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, Windows Media, HighMAT, Windows, Xbox, Windows Mobile and Windows Server 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.
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