GRASS VALLEY GROUP UNVEILS ALL-NEW PRODUCTS FOR NEWS, PRODUCTION, INTERNET APPLICATIONS

Nevada City, Calif., January 31, 2001 - Unflapped by market downturns, dotcom turmoil, and skepticism about using the words "profitability" and "streaming" in the same sentence, the Grass Valley Group today unveiled a comprehensive set of all-new, applications-oriented products for driving workflow efficiencies and cost control. Continuing to chart the course it set a year ago with its Media Without Bounds™ initiative for Digicasters, today's announcements will provide broadcasters and video professionals a no-nonsense approach to getting any content, any place, any time-and as efficiently as possible.

"Imagine a shared-storage solution that gives you unlimited access to high-quality video and the tools you need to manipulate that video-simultaneously. Or a suite of digital non-linear tools for news production that provide unprecedented speed and efficiency while being easy to use for lifetime tape operators. What if you could commit within today's budget to the router investment you'll need to make two years from now? And what if you could easily, even automatically re-purpose your video assets at a fraction of today's cost with better quality," said Tim Thorsteinson, president of the Grass Valley Group. "What if you could proceed with your transition to a fully digital model unabated by the ups and downs of the 'new, new' economy?

"Our customers have a real hunger for solutions that enable business efficiencies like these. The practical approach we've taken will enable them to maintain equilibrium in today's economy, to make step-wise investments in their current models and at the same time into new digital distribution and revenue opportunities, and to enjoy new price/performance benefits in many of our new products."

The hardware and software products announced today include the Grass Valley™ Media Area Network™ (MAN) real-time shared-storage option for the Profile® XP Media Platform; the Aqua™ Internet encoder; the Concerto™ Series, Tempo™ Series, and Bravo™ Series of compact routers and the Encore™ scalable facility control system; a new Vibrint™ system for hard-news editing; the PVS1100 Profile XP Media Platform for news and sports production; and the extension of the NetCentral™ Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-based software for remote monitoring and diagnostics. As well, the company detailed advances in its Profile XP Media Platform for high-definition video and for digital cinema, and offered a technology preview of the industry's most advanced archive technology-the Profile Network Archive partial file restore software.

Buoyed by continued broadcast market momentum for its products, the company today announced orders from the Australian Broadcast Corporation, and the BBC as well as strong momentum for its next-generation of products in the Americas. It also received public support for its announced products, part of its efficiency-driven Media Without Bounds initiative, from leading Internet companies such as Microsoft and professional content creators, aggregators, and distributors such as the Enterprise Broadcast Corporation, eMedia, iBlast, and VNI (soon to be Pathfire).

As a digital media leader, the Grass Valley Group works with preeminent content producers worldwide engaged in digital content creation and distribution for transmission, streaming, interactive, and other applications.

NO MORE TRADEOFFS FOR SHARED STORAGE
The Grass Valley MAN real-time shared-storage option for the Profile XP Media Platform gets networking compatibility issues out of the way so Digicasters can extract the greatest possible efficiencies from their production workflows-from ingest, editing, and browse to Web publishing and transmission. It overcomes the shortfalls of today's shared-storage products, which prevent users from simultaneously accessing high-quality video and the tools that they need to manipulate that video.

Providing more than 40 channels of video and 300 channels of audio, the Grass Valley MAN option is the industry's only shared-storage solution to offer both real-time capabilities and Windows NT accessibility, and is architected to support future applications, such as video streaming for the Internet and interactive TV.

THREE COMPACT ROUTER LINES, SCALABLE FACILITY CONTROL
With the three new compact router lines introduced today-Concerto Series, Tempo Series, and Bravo Series-customers no longer have to make size-related decisions up front. Instead, they can plan for any configuration they want, and the Grass Valley routing systems will get them there. Each of the new routers lines offers a flexible, future-proof design for a variety of applications-from multi-screen presentations to video and audio over broadband networks to traditional television-related uses.

The Encore scaleable facility control system gives media companies of all stripes just the level of facility and routing control they need-and the ability to easily expand that control as those needs change. The next-generation system offers centralized and distributed router and machine control, remote monitoring and diagnostic capabilities, and signal-integrity analysis to expand the capabilities of their LAN, WAN, and video networks, thus maximizing their signal-management infrastructure investments. And with a design that will enable tighter integration with automation systems, third-party routers, and other equipment, the Encore system will promote even greater inter- and intra-facility integration.

NEWS OFFERINGS CONTINUE TO SPEED PRODUCTION WORKFLOW
Directly responding to news directors and producers who think digitally enabled efficiencies are great-but not at the risk of impeding the creation of high-quality news products, the Grass Valley Group today detailed solutions that will provide newsrooms worldwide fast production workflows, unprecedented media access, and the most flexible transition to digital.

To that end, the company announced a new Vibrint Digital News Production Workgroup system for the fastest hard news production workflow, and a new version of the Profile XP Media Platform designed expressly for news and sports production. The company also provided a preview of its highly efficient archive retrieval system using partial file restore software, which will dramatically speed the time required to retrieve video from digital archives.

The Grass Valley Group also detailed how the integration between its ContentShare™ software platform for media asset management and VNI's (soon to be Pathfire) NewsTracker is simplifying newsroom operations, allowing multiple users to use the same media, and improving time to air (both the NBC News Channel and ABC News One have selected News Tracker for on-demand news delivery). This integration offers users dramatic timesavings by making key VNI (soon to be Pathfire) metadata available to all ContentShare-enabled newsroom applications and by automating the retrieval of material from VNI's system to both the Profile XP Media Platform and Vibrint systems.

"The Grass Valley Group is truly a leader in digital newsroom technology," said Floyd Christofferson, chief operating officer, VNI (soon to be Pathfire). "The innovative integration of the Profile XP Media Platform, Vibrint systems, and the ContentShare platform will even further newsroom accessibility to content resident on VNI's leading news on-demand technology."

TOOLS, NOT TOYS, FOR EFFICIENT STREAMING CONTENT
Delivering the superior video quality that broadcasters and other high-quality content creators have been demanding to exploit broadband streaming, the Grass Valley Group today announced the Aqua Internet encoder. The encoder is part of the digital media leader's Web Media Publishing offering, which includes its Emmy® award-winning Profile XP Media Platform, ContentShare platform for digital asset management, and WebAble™ technology for streamlining the re-purposing of content for the Web.

The Aqua Internet encoder is architected to provide the highest streaming throughput per rack-unit of space compared to any product in its class. Featuring the Grass Valley Group's One Pass Encoding™ technology, it can pre-process, capture, clean, and encode an input source, and render it into multiple streaming formats, at multiple bit rates-all in real time. Unlike other encoders architected to work in a time-consuming, serial process, the Aqua encoder uses multiple, high-density processing units working in parallel. Also, it can be accessed through any standard Web browser. Finally, it supports all major streaming formats, including Microsoft's latest digital media technology, Windows Media Audio and Video 8, RealNetworks' RealVideo, and Apple's QuickTime.

SNMP-BASED REMOTE MONITORING GETS BIG BOOST
The Grass Valley Group's NetCentral software for SNMP remote monitoring and diagnosis represents one of the great payoffs of going digital - the ability to automatically monitor the health of a facility's infrastructure, spot minor anomalies before they become major problems, and electronically notify the appropriate people.

Today, the Grass Valley Group announced the comprehensive expansion of the NetCentral software. Its new features include Internet access and predictive failure analysis. As well, the application features an all-new design that allows device types to be supported as plug-ins to a common NetCentral application framework that the company plans to extend to its next-generation servers, production switchers, routers and modular gear.

STANDARD-BASED APPROACH GUIDES ALL PRODUCT OFFERINGS
Today's announcements reflect the open, standards-based approach the Grass Valley Group has taken across all of its product lines to promote robust facility integration-an approach key to its Media Without Bounds initiative.

At the core of each of the products announced today is a common set of architectural parameters: increased use of Grass Valley Group and third-party software; use of the latest chip and networking technologies; and, the combination of these components with smart mechanical designs for more compact products and more competitive price/performance. In support of the company's strategy to offer its customers greater value and increased flexibility, these products also offer the industry's broadest standards and format support, including that for SNMP, Windows NT and Microsoft's .NET framework, and streaming media formats such as Microsoft Windows Media Audio and Video 8, RealNetworks RealVideo, and Apple QuickTime.

ABOUT THE GRASS VALLEY GROUP
The Grass Valley Group knows more about high-quality video than anybody else-especially as video goes digital. The Internet. Digital cinema. Data-enhanced broadcasting. Interactive television. It's a world of Digicasting-one that demands Media Without Bounds solutions. Whether online or on the air, the Emmy award-winning Grass Valley Group, a privately held digital media leader, has the hardware, software, and new media technologies to get content wherever it needs to go. For the latest Grass Valley Group product information visit www.grassvalleygroup.com.