Escient Convergence FireBall Named International CES Innovations Award Winner And Honored As Product Of The Year By Electronic House Magazine

19-Dec-01

Escient Convergence Corp., a leading force in developing innovative products that combine consumer electronics with the Internet to enhance home entertainment, announced that their newest groundbreaking product, FireBall, has been named a winner of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2002 Innovations Design and Engineering Award. Additionally, it has been chosen as a Product Of The Year by Electronic House magazine. FireBall is a distributed music system that blends a user's physical CD collection with non-physical-based music and the latest digital technologies.FireBall was chosen to be an Innovations honoree at the upcoming 2002 International CES by a panel of prominent industry experts, including journalists, designers and engineers. One of the most renowned consumer technology awards programs, Innovations recognizes the best designed and engineered products in consumer technology. Overall product evaluations were based on weighted criteria that included value to a user, aesthetics, contributions to the quality of life, and the product's innovative qualities.The Electronic House magazine's editorial staff named FireBall as a Product of the Year after examining the unit's features and functions, ease of installation and use, and expansion possibilities after reviewing Escient Convergence's previous track record. As a Product of the Year, FireBall will be specially featured in the December issue of Electronic House, and Escient Convergence will receive an official award from the publication at an upcoming ceremony.Bob Pankratz, President of Escient Convergence, said, ""It is extremely rewarding to have FireBall recognized for these industry awards. Being awarded a CES Innovations award and being named an Electronic House Product of the Year are welcome additions in a recent string of successes for FireBall. We are pleased the product is held in such high regard by opinion makers and leaders, while also being enthusiastically embraced by our dealers and customers.""The first offering in Escient's new Physital product line, FireBall has signaled a new era in easy-to-use music management solutions. Utilizing Escient's unique, friendly interface, FireBall bridges the capabilities of a CD music player and controller with the new world of digital music file formats -- including MP3 and Internet radio. FireBall allows direct access to music stored on the hard drive, CDs, music-recognition services, and Internet radio with continuously updated station lists, software upgrades, and revolutionary enhanced entertainment services from sister company OpenGlobe, Inc. OpenGlobe's entertainment services are delivered through FireBall, and allow users to learn about artists and their influences, explore new music, expand their collection, and more. All of these features are available when a user connects to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) via either dial-up or broadband (cable, DSL etc.). A user can also connect to a broadband network via an HPNA home network or can use optional Ethernet. In line with Escient's mission, the product provides this capability without requiring a PC in the system. FireBall is the first of two new products from Escient to reside on a completely embedded platform and encompasses the most advanced, reliable platform architecture.An all-in-one music product, FireBall identifies, burns, catalogs, and manages both physical discs and digital music files and has a CD-R/RW single internal drive for playback and for copying music at six times (6x) normal speed. Offering a 40 GB hard drive, the product delivers selectable compression rates up to 320 kbps, and provides 700 hours of music at 128 kbps, which takes into account the memory required for the Escient user interface graphics and unique cover art delivery. Multiple FireBall units can be connected together for up to five zones of distributed music with five independent Escient interfaces into the system. When multiple units are linked, through streaming technologies, FireBall allows five concurrent ""taps"" of the same or different song simultaneously. In addition, the hard drive space is expandable by adding additional FireBall units, a feature rarely seen on hard-drive based music products.FireBall incorporates control and management for a wide variety of leading changer brands -- including Sony upon initial product shipments, and Denon, Pioneer, Marantz, Integra and Kenwood changers will be supported in early 2002. The product allows for seamless mixing of changer brands on one unit and provides a simple interface for ""ripping"" a user's CD or legacy vinyl collection, into a digital format on the FireBall hard drive. The CDs are then available in non-physical-based formats for faster access to music, distribution around the home, and downloading to approved personal MP3 players.Cat Fowler, Vice President of Marketing for Escient Technologies, stated, ""In many ways we owe these awards to our dealers and customers. It is their invaluable feedback that helped create the product. Specially crafted to meet their demands for multizone with multiple interfaces, FireBall also has the ability to rip from mega-changers, as well as comprehensive external and touch-panel control. FireBall is a real breakthrough in home entertainment design and engineering.""FireBall can be ordered today and will begin initial shipments in January 2002 at a suggested retail price of $1,999.For more information about Escient Convergence Corp., visit www.escient.com.

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