Generic Media: Breakthrough Streaming Media Framework Dramatically Reduces Complexities and Costs of Streaming Media

Generic Media Unveils Generic Media Publishing Service at DEMO 2001

Breakthrough Streaming Media Framework Dramatically Reduces Complexities and Costs of Streaming Media

Phoenix, AZ -- February 13, 2001 -- Generic Media, creators of innovative technology and services for the digital media industry, this week unveiled the Generic Media Publishing Service, a streaming media framework that provides a comprehensive, long-term strategy for dynamically deploying optimized media to the widest possible audience. The Generic Media Publishing Service redefines the economics and workflow of Internet media - establishing the ability to publish streaming content once, and immediately deliver it across multiple formats, devices and platforms.

The traditional media-publishing model requires content owners to create separate copies of their content for each combination of media player and connection speed, as well as to regularly update them to stay compatible with technology advances. This dated approach is complicated, expensive and inefficient - regularly rendering digital assets obsolete. The dynamic media transformation capabilities of the Generic Media Publishing Service enables content publishers to reach the established base of media players employed by Internet users, as well as to immediately stream to new devices and formats - all from one streaming master source file, on-the-fly and on-demand.

Streaming masters can be stored in a number of industry standard, high quality digital media formats including AVI, MP3, MPEG-1, QuickTime, and WAVE. The Generic Media Publishing Service transforms the streaming master into formats already installed by the end-user, including Windows Media Player, QuickTime streaming, Real Player, MP3 streaming, and gMedia formats at a wide range of bit rates.

"There's been plenty of talk about convergence, but the streaming industry is actually experiencing accelerating divergence, with growth hindered by the technical complexities and high costs associated with publishing media," said Chris Shipley, Executive Producer of DEMO 2001. "The Generic Media Publishing Service provides an economical means to ensure the long-term relevance of media, while enabling companies to extend the reach of greater quantities of content to audiences. The potential impact on the streaming media marketplace is very exciting."

The Generic Media Publishing Service

The Generic Media Publishing Service consists of three components: the Generic Media Transformation Engine, the Delivery Manager, and the Publishing Manager.

--The Generic Media Transformation Engine processes streaming media in real-time, automating traditional tasks such as resizing, encoding, sampling and filtering, thus eliminating the need to select media formats, player versions and bit rates in advance. To keep pace with media format advances, The Generic Media Transformation Engine is continuously updated to provide publishers with support for new and revised formats eliminating any need for costly re-encoding. The Generic Media Transformation Engine can also dynamically brand video content with animated logos and other enhancements, protecting the media investment by not having to permanently brand streaming content.

--The Delivery Manager facilitates a smooth media experience for end-users. Audiences can play various types of content with the media players installed on their computer or device. This prevents the need for a user to interrupt their media experience to download an additional media player or to upgrade an existing player in order to access desired content.

--The Publishing Manager is an easy-to-use browser-based interface for publishing media. The Publishing Manager assistant provides a simple and intuitive way to transfer, manage, and preview media assets. The Publisher's settings assistant provides step-by-step guidance to create and save unlimited sets of encoding parameters. The assistant simplifies the complex process of setting encoding priorities, adding graphic overlays, and controlling the dimensions of published media. Publishers may also manage their content through FTP which facilitates automated batch uploads of streaming masters.

"With multiple media players, ongoing format enhancements and the growing array of new devices, the current streaming media landscape is chaotic and wrought with uncertainties. We're completely changing that with our next-generation framework for streaming media," said Peter Hoddie, CEO of Generic Media. "The Generic Media Publishing Service manages the complexities of streaming media technology, benefiting both the media publisher and the end-user audience. Publishers can now focus on developing value from their media assets, and end-users no longer experience hassles when playing media."

about generic media
Generic Media provides innovative technology and services that fundamentally change the way video and audio is published and consumed on the Internet. The company's investors include SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Sony and NTT Leasing. The Generic Media team consists of pioneering media engineers and executives from major technology companies, including Apple Computer, Pinnacle Systems, SGI, Sun and Oracle. Generic Media was founded in early 2000 and is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, please visit www.genericmedia.com.

about DEMO 2001
The annual DEMO conference focuses on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected by executive producers Chris Shipley and Jim Forbes from across the spectrum of the personal technology marketplace. Top executives from the leading hardware and software technology companies, venture capitalists, journalists from key industry publications and industry analysts attend the DEMO conference to preview the most promising products and technologies for the coming year. For more information, visit www.demo.com.