Boca Research First to Ship and Support ITU H.324 Standard on New Desktop Videoconferencing Product

Business Wire, August 5, 1996

BOCA RATON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 5, 1996--Boca Research, Inc. (NASDAQ: BOCI) announced today it began shipping its new BocaPRO Video Phone Elite on July 26. The first of a new desktop videoconferencing product family, the BocaPRO Video Phone Elite is the first product of its kind to meet the ITU H.324 standard for videoconferencing over regular analog phone lines. This new standard now means that like systems are no longer required on each end to communicate. Users can now be assured that Boca Research's product will connect and communicate with any other vendor's product adhering to the H.324 standard.

The BocaPRO Video Phone Elite is a collaborative effort leveraging the strengths of three companies. Boca Research's hardware design, Lucent Technologies' AVP-III Video/Audio Processor videoconferencing chip and MultiMedia Access Corporation's application software combine to create a high-quality desktop videoconferencing product.

With a suggested retail price of $399, users will have the option of using their home video camcorder or purchasing a color desktop camera from Boca Research. This new product is ideal for the SOHO (small office/home office) market because it's an economical way to save time and travel dollars for one-on-one videoconferencing telephone calls. For example, regional offices can conduct videoconference calls instead of incurring airfare and hotel expenses. It also provides a unique way to keep the lines of communication open for families and friends. Grandparents can now see how their grandchildren have grown and changed, parents can videoconference with their children in college, and lifetime friendships are enhanced by seeing friends instead of just speaking to them.

"The introduction of the BocaPRO Video Phone Elite makes desktop videoconferencing affordable for the general public as well as businesses and it's just in time for the retailers' Christmas buying season," said Jerry Lumpkin, vice president of product management and marketing at Boca Research. "Providing leading-edge communication technology is what Boca Research is all about, and the BocaPRO Video Phone will continue to revolutionize the way we all communicate in the future," he added.

Product Features

The BocaPRO Video Phone Elite is a PCI bus-based card that supports high-quality connections to the desktop via the ITU H.324 (POTS - Plain Old Telephone Service) industry standard. It provides face-to-face desktop videoconferencing with simultaneous audio/video over a single dial-up telephone connection and will work with all of Boca Research's V.34 modems as well as any other V.34 modem.

The BocaPRO Video Phone Elite's on-board hardware provides real-time compression and decompression of audio and video signals giving unsurpassed teleconferencing capability with echo cancellation and up to 15 fps (frames per second). With its five external connectors for NTSC/PAL camera input, microphone input, microphone output, line in and line out along with its modular upgradable design and application software, it's a complete desktop videoconferencing solution.

CORPORATE INFORMATION

Multimedia Access Corporation of Dallas, Texas builds a wide range of video communications products for the home, business and the Internet.

Lucent Technologies is a new company created as part of AT&T's restructuring into three separate, publicly held companies. Its Microelectronics Group, headquartered in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, designs and manufactures integrated circuits, optoelectronic components, power systems and printed circuit boards for applications in the telecommunications and computing industries.

Founded in 1985, Boca Research (NASDAQ: BOCI) is a U.S. corporation headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida with international operations and ventures worldwide. The company designs, manufactures, markets and supports quality, cost-effective data communications, multimedia and networking products to facilitate the transmission and presentation of information on personal computers and computer networks. The Company provides hardware products augmented with software for use in the corporate, consumer and small office/home office marketplaces. Boca's current product groups include data communications (fax/data/voice modems); multimedia (video, telephony, sound, voice and data); networking; video graphics; and input/output (I/O), IDE and multiport products. The company sells its products worldwide to wholesale distributors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and retailers. -0-

All products and company names referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. -0-

In the Internet/email address noted in this news release, there is an "at" symbol between galeb and bocaresearch.com and between brynetts and bocaresearch.com. In the World Wide Web address noted in this release there is a double slash between http: and www.bocaresearch.com. These symbols may not appear properly in some systems.

CONTACT: Boca Research