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Digital Rapids to Provide Encoding, Transcoding and Streaming Systems for NBC's Online Coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games

Posted on: Thursday, 27 March 2008, 12:00 CDT

MARKHAM, Ontario and NEW YORK, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Rapids has been selected to provide media encoding, transcoding and streaming systems to NBC for the network's Internet coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing, China, August 8-24. The announcement was made today by Rab Mukraj, Director of Digital Media Delivery at NBC Universal and Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation.

Digital Rapids' DRC-Stream(TM) encoding and streaming solutions will enable NBC Olympics' unprecedented live and on-demand online coverage of the Beijing Olympics. 2200 hours of video will be streamed live on the Internet at NBCOlympics.com, primarily encoded from video feeds into web-friendly streams through the DRC-Stream systems. Streams will be encoded in the VC-1 compression format for a viewing experience powered by Microsoft Silverlight technology. The encoded live streams will also be archived for viewers to watch on-demand. Digital Rapids Transcode Manager(TM), the enterprise-class solution for scalable, high-volume media file transcoding, will be used to convert affiliate-provided content between compression and file formats for U.S. domestic distribution.

"We're thrilled to continue our relationship with NBC by supplying our solutions for coverage of this year's paramount event, the Beijing Olympics," said Eksten. "The nearly unlimited scope of Internet-based video lends itself perfectly to coverage of an event of this scale, and our solutions are renowned for bringing video to the web with exceptional quality and reliability. We're pleased that NBC has again placed their trust in our technology and expertise for their ground-breaking online coverage."

"Delivering an unparalleled online experience is a vital component of our unprecedented multi-platform coverage of the Beijing Olympics. The Digital Rapids encoding systems will enable an outstanding viewing experience for our online audience through superior encoded video quality and robust reliability, while providing us the workflow efficiencies needed for coverage of this magnitude." - Rab Mukraj, Director of Digital Media Delivery at NBC Universal.

Digital Rapids' DRC-Stream encoding solutions combine powerful hardware for video and audio capture and pre-processing with the intuitive Stream software interface, delivering reliable, high-quality, multi-format media encoding and streaming for professional applications such as high-end Internet TV and IPTV. The advanced, hardware-based video processing features enable superior quality and the most efficient use of bandwidth in the compressed result. Digital Rapids Transcode Manager provides automated, distributed transcoding with centralized management and exceptional load balancing intelligence for high-volume, multi-format workflows, increasing production volume while reducing operational costs.

For more information on Digital Rapids products, please visit http://www.digital-rapids.com/.

About NBC Olympics -- NBC, "America's Olympic Network," owns the exclusive U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games, television's most powerful property, through 2012, which includes Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012. From August 8-24, 2008 NBC Universal will present an unprecedented 3,600 hours of coverage, highlighted by NBC in primetime with live swimming, gymnastics and beach volleyball. In August 2004, 203 million viewers watched as the networks of NBC Universal -- NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo, Telemundo, and NBC's HD affiliates -- offered a then record 1,210 hours of Olympic coverage from Athens. For additional information, go to NBCOlympics.com, a year-round destination for fans of Olympic sports, featuring news, Beijing previews, athlete features, expert blogs, photos, Olympic video from the NBC archives and social tools enabling users to build communities around their favorite sports, post comments and blogs.

About Digital Rapids Corporation -- Digital Rapids is a leading developer of professional hardware and software solutions for video ingest, encoding, transcoding, protection, streaming, and delivery. Digital Rapids offers solutions that scale from individual applications to enterprise and global workflows, with the proven expertise to help our customers maximize their productivity and the value of their content in the evolving digital media market. Digital Rapids products integrate seamlessly into new and existing post production, broadcast, institutional and media distribution environments, dramatically increasing the volume and quality of media produced while lowering overall costs. Digital Rapids Corporation (http://www.digital-rapids.com/) is headquartered in Ontario, Canada with sales offices in the United States, the UK, Australia, Argentina and Hong Kong.

Copyright 2008 Digital Rapids Corporation. All rights reserved. Digital Rapids, the Digital Rapids logo, DRC-Stream and Digital Rapids Transcode Manager are trademarks or registered trademarks of Digital Rapids Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice.

Digital Rapids Corporation

CONTACT: Americas, Mike Nann, Director of Marketing-Cmns, Digital RapidsCorp., +1-905-946-9666 Ext. 135, mike.nann@digital-rapids.com; Europe & Asia,Kerr Duffy, Marketing Manager, Digital Rapids Europe +44(0)1428-751-012,kerr@digital-rapids.com, or Jan Dixon, +44(0)1297-489229,jdmc@globalnet.co.uk

Web site: http://www.digital-rapids.com/http://www.nbcolympics.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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