e.Digital Announces Agreement To License Sony's Proprietary ATRAC3ô Format For Portable Internet Music Player Designs
e.Digital Corp. (OTC: EDIG) announced a licensing agreement to incorporate Sony's proprietary ATRAC3ô sound compression technology into e.Digital's portable Internet music player designs. e.Digital's multi-codec platform including ATRAC3 support can be incorporated into a variety of products including portable digital music players, home and automotive stereos, and functionally-enhanced wireless phones. ""This agreement furthers the penetration of ATRAC3 in the Internet music market,"" said Yutaka Nakagawa, Corporate Senior Vice President of Sony Corp. ""This project is mutually productive, and we are pleased to be working with e.Digital to promote further growth in the Internet music industry."" Fred Falk, e.Digital's President and Chief Executive Officer, said, ""Sony's ATRAC3 is one of the premier music codecs available and it is gaining support from a number of companies in the industry including online music providers. e.Digital's designs for portable Internet music players will now be able to play ATRAC3-encoded files in real time without transcoding."" He continued, ""We will work together with Sony and other partners to build players with the maximum sound quality and compression, and to promote secure, SDMI-capable designs that support music content from the major record labels."" e.Digital's Internet audio player platform provides a broad range of functionality along with a flexible design enabled by their patented MicroOSô file management system. The company has developed a menu of options to provide a quick time-to-market for manufacturers, licensees, or private-labelers interested in marketing devices capable of playing music downloaded from the Internet. About ATRAC3 ATRAC3 is a codec developed from ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding), which is the sound compression technology used in MiniDisc. ATRAC3 provides both high sound quality and the compression rate necessary for electronic music distribution. ATRAC3 compresses sound with great efficiency and high sound quality by utilizing the latest sound compression technologies and engineering know-how combined with Band Splitting Filters and MDCTs (Modified Discrete Cosine Transforms), as well as Gain Control Technology, etc. The ATRAC3 encoding/decoding process is relatively less complex than alternate approaches, allowing ATRAC3 to be incorporated into smaller ICs suitable for implementation in portable products. About Sony Sony Corp. is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, communications and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Its music, pictures and computer entertainment operations make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of over $56 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1999. Sony's home page URL: http://www.sony.co.jp/. About e.Digital e.Digital Corp. offers an engineering partnership for the world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PCs and the Internet. e.Digital develops and markets to consumer electronics manufacturers complete end-to-end solutions for delivery and management of open and secure digital media with a focus on music players/recorders and portable digital voice recorders. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS file management system to custom software and hardware development, industrial design and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, visit www.edig.com.