Microsoft Selects RAVISENT For Xbox

RAVISENT And Microsoft Enter Five-Year Software Licensing Agreement

27-Dec-00

RAVISENT Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: RVST), a provider of digital audio and video software solutions, announced that MicrosoftÆ Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has selected RAVISENT to be the provider of DVD playback software for its eagerly awaited Xboxô video game system. Under the terms of the five-year agreement, Microsoft is licensing RAVISENT's CineMaster DVD engine for DVD playback on the Xbox. Scheduled for launch in the fall of 2001, Xbox is designed around an Intel processor and a custom chipset from NVIDIAÆ Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA). Utilizing RAVISENT's CineMaster DVD engine optimized for the Xbox graphics processing unit, the Xbox is expected to provide users with the highest quality video and audio performance on the market today.This product offering is part of an emerging effort by RAVISENT to capitalize on its extensive consumer electronics and PC entertainment technology experience, in order to bring the latest video innovations to the gaming community. Video gaming is a growing market, and video game consoles are quickly becoming a standard part of home entertainment centers.""Xbox not only raises the bar for game consoles, but has the opportunity to greatly impact and redefine the world of home entertainment,"" said Alan McCann, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Digital Media Group for RAVISENT. ""This agreement provides RAVISENT with a tremendous opportunity to leverage our extensive experience in both the PC and consumer electronics markets, bringing the best of both worlds to this innovative platform."" ""With Xbox, we have set out to provide consumers with unquestionably the best entertainment experience available, and RAVISENT's DVD playback software and consumer electronics expertise allows us to deliver on this vision. CineMaster is the ideal software solution for the Xbox, providing the best DVD viewing experience available in the market today,"" commented Todd Holmdahl, General Manager of Xbox Hardware at Microsoft Corporation.RAVISENT's CineMaster DVD engine is also available for licensing to system designers and platform builders in PC, consumer electronics set-top box and game console configurations.RAVISENT's CineMaster DVD Engine is a cross-platform, high-performance DVD and MPEG-2 decoding solution designed to decode and playback DVD-Video, MPEG video and broadcast MPEG video content. CineMaster DVD can be integrated with a variety of digital media processing components to deliver decoding capabilities, as well as support cutting-edge HDTV decoding. The CineMasterÆ DVD Engine components are in use by major consumer electronics OEMs, PC OEMs, video graphics companies and video game manufacturers. CineMaster digital media components meet the requirements of the DVD Forum, the Content Scrambling System (CSS), DolbyÆ and MacrovisionÆ, and assist OEMs to meet rapidly changing consumer preferences in record time at a low cost.Key components in the CineMaster DVD Engine include: - DVD Navigation Engine - DVD Presentation Engine (including trick mode playback) - MPEG-2 Video Decoder - Dolby Digital (AC-3Æ), MPEG-2, LPCM Audio Decoder - Closed Caption/Sub Picture DecoderScheduled for release in fall 2001, Xbox (www.xbox.com) is Microsoft's future-generation video game console that delivers superior graphics, better audio and the most intense, action-packed gaming experiences available. All this is possible because Xbox has at least three times the graphics performance of the newest generation of game consoles. For more information on RAVISENT, visit www.ravisent.com.

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