Digital Media Leader Gains PC-Based Products for Hard-News Editing As Newsrooms Worldwide Begin Transition to Digital; NBC Affiliate WHDH Airing With Grass Valley Group, Vibrint Solutions

NEVADA CITY, CA --(March 29, 2000)-- In a move that will improve productivity and break down price barriers for video-based news organizations, the Grass Valley Group, a worldwide digital video leader, announced its intention to acquire the Bedford, Mass.-based Vibrint Technologies, a pioneering developer of innovative solutions for digital news production. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be complete within 30 days.

This acquisition addresses one of the most critical activities related to making high-value content available via television as well as Web media: the ability to rapidly assemble and edit hard news stories for on-air and online packages. It also expands the Grass Valley Group's strategy to deliver a full spectrum of standards-based news production products to complement its Emmy award-winning Profile XP Media Platform.

The worldwide newsroom market is on the cusp of a wholesale transition to digital technologies. As they make this transition, news broadcasters hope to gain competitive advantages by removing existing technology barriers between the news scripting and video production processes. While some have introduced digital nonlinear technology for features-related production, they have not made similar investments for the two-machine, cuts-only, hard news edit bays that represent the majority of news edit bays. Conversion of these edit bays -- estimated at just three percent worldwide -- has been stalled not by a lack of desire, but more by the failure of nonlinear systems to meet the specialized price-performance requirements of hard news editing.

In April 1999, Vibrint introduced the first cost-effective, open, and standards-based digital news production solution targeted precisely for hard news production. The Vibrint digital news production workgroup features Vibrint FeedClip, an interactive feed capture system; Vibrint NewsEdit, a nonlinear, hard news editing workstation; and, Vibrint NewsQ, a low-cost news playback product.

Meanwhile, the Grass Valley Group last year introduced the Profile XP Media Platform, a portal for the rapid access, management, and distribution of video, audio, and data assets that maintain the broadcast-quality video and audio for which the Profile line of digital video servers is known. As the industry's most open platform, the Profile line supports JPEG, MPEG, DVCPRO, and HD formats today and MPEG Transport Streams (MTS) in the future.

Both the Profile XP Media Platform and Vibrint's digital news production systems are designed with standards-based technologies, including MPEG2 video, the Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) operating system, and standard networking and storage solutions. Because of this openness, the companies have been able to very rapidly integrate the Vibrint news production workstations with the Profile XP Media Platform. And by combining the strengths of these open solutions, the Grass Valley Group will be able to offer a complete, standard-based ingest-to-playout digital solution based on a field-proven media platform and digital news production workgroup.

"In a short time, Vibrint has proven itself to be a great innovator and a company that brings incredible focus and expertise in news. They are unique in their approach in terms of this focus, which has resulted in great products," said Tim Thorsteinson, president and chief operating officer, Grass Valley Group. "One of the greatest benefits of this acquisition is the already tight integration of the Grass Valley Group and Vibrint engineering teams. We are extremely fortunate to be able to have these software experts on board," said Thorsteinson. "The broadcast industry has great solutions to look forward to."

"With more than $2 billion worth of equipment installed worldwide, the Grass Valley Group has the strongest brand name in the broadcast industry and, based on industry response, we know that Vibrint has developed the right mix of tools for hard news production," said Peter Tarca, president and chief executive officer of Vibrint Technologies. "By combining our resources and leveraging the Grass Valley Group's worldwide distribution channel, we will be able to help broadcasters rebuild their newsrooms into digital production environments more quickly than we could on our own."

NBC Affiliate WHDH-TV Airing With Grass Valley Group, Vibrint Solutions

At Boston-based NBC affiliate WHDH-TV, the Grass Valley Group Profile XP Media Platform and the Vibrint NewsEdit nonlinear editing system are diminishing the chaos of trying to find video at the last minute before playback.

"We have been very impressed with Vibrint, both from a technology and support standpoint," said Steve Harrington, director of news operations at WHDH-TV. "The Vibrint solution allowed us to leverage our existing assets, including the Profile, without waiting for special plug-ins or future developments. And the fact that we can transfer MPEG files from the edit bay to playout faster than real-time, and begin playing to air while it is still transferring, is very important when we're trying to get a breaking story to air."

"For some broadcasters, however, it's a tougher decision to go with a new player in the industry. Knowing now that they can invest in the best of both worlds, I think we're going to see a flood of broadcasters converting their cuts-only bays from tape to the Profile XP Media Platform and Vibrint," he said.

About the Companies

Founded in 1995, Vibrint Technologies is a pioneering developer of innovative solutions for digital news production. Vibrint provides broadcasters with price/performance leading solutions that ease the transition from analog-mechanical systems to more efficient computer-based systems. Vibrint offers a complete digital news production solution featuring applications for interactive feed capture, news editing, and news and commercial playback. Vibrint also offers MPEG encoding and time delay applications. All Vibrint applications run on the Vibrint MPEG 4:2:2 VideoServer which relies on the Microsoft Windows NT file and operating system and standard networking and storage. With the Vibrint platform in place, broadcasters can easily grow from a single system to more collaborative digital news production workgroups. Vibrint is a member of the Pro-MPEG Forum. Vibrint, FeedClip, NewsEdit, NewsQ, NewsLog, and NewsBrowse are all trademarks of Vibrint Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

The Grass Valley Group knows more about high-quality video than anybody else -- especially as video goes digital. Video on demand. Digital cinema. Data-enhanced broadcasting. Internet. It's a world of Digicasting -- of Media Without Bounds. 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 necessary to get content wherever it needs to go.

For the latest Grass Valley Group product information, see www.grassvalleygroup.com.

SOURCE Grass Valley Group
CO: Grass Valley Group; Vibrint Technologies

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