OpenTV Opens New Doors in Southeast Asia's Digital Interactive Television Market with MediaCorp of Singapore

Business Wire, Dec 4, 2000

Business Editors

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 4, 2000

Global ITV Software Leader OpenTV Chosen by Leading Asian Broadcaster

to Provide Singapore's First Interactive Television Services

Media Corporation of Singapore (MediaCorp), one of Asia's most established broadcasters and content providers, and OpenTV (Nasdaq and Amsterdam Stock Exchange:OPTV), the leading interactive television and media solutions provider, announced today an agreement to deploy OpenTV's interactive television (ITV) services -- the first ever in Singapore -- to the tech-savvy market.

The OpenTV-enabled set-top boxes are expected to be deployed on MediaCorp's digital terrestrial network by December of this year for a pilot service. MediaCorp will also be working closely together with OpenTV to jointly migrate towards Digital Video Broadcasting-Multimedia Home Platform (DVB-MHP), the open digital interactive standard adopted in Europe, which is also Singapore's platform of choice.

In an effort to stimulate the interactive applications development community in Singapore and in Southeast Asia at large, OpenTV and MediaCorp have also agreed to create a joint applications development and training center in Southeast Asia for OpenTV and DVB-MHP applications. The center will facilitate both in-house development of interactive applications such as e-mail, games, banking and shopping, and offer training to third-party software developers. The initially deployed applications resulting from this agreement will include enhanced programming, news and instant weather, all at the click of the remote control.

"Singapore is very wired and highly influential within the Southeast Asian market," said James Ackerman, OpenTV's President and COO. "OpenTV's operating software and applications have also been selected for deployment by Asia Pacific multichannel service operators (MSOs), including TVB in Hong Kong, for launches in the U.S. and Australia; CB-SAT (a satellite initiative sponsored by the Chinese government) in China; Foxtel, Austar and Sky New Zealand in Australia; United Broadcasting Corporation in Thailand; and Pacific Digital Media (PDMC) in Taiwan.

"We have achieved the recently announced deployment milestone of 11 million set-top boxes by partnering with forward-thinking MSOs who recognize the enormous revenue potential of interactive television and that OpenTV's middleware and applications are proven, reliable and immediately deployable," added Ackerman.

"Upon receiving our license to broadcast digital interactive content and interactivity from the Singapore government, we chose the world leader in ITV to help us provide our subscribers with the most advanced and meaningful, enhanced television experience available today," said Joo Thong Tay, chief engineer, Group Engineering, MediaCorp. "Our reputation as a driver of the television market in Asia perfectly complements OpenTV's established first-mover strategy to bring the best in interactive television services to new markets around the world." Come December, MediaCorp is expected to become the first digital interactive platform provider over terrestrial in the region. It is also expected to be the first free-to-air broadcaster in the region that provides interactive programming.

Commenting on OpenTV and MediaCorp's agreement to migrate television interactivity to support DVB-MHP standards, Ackerman said, "This migration further demonstrates our commitment to open standards that will help us continue to bring this new TV experience to the world in whatever format MSOs choose to provide it."

To support its focus on Asia, OpenTV maintains four offices and 45 employees throughout Asia, including an office in Beijing. Primary interactive television services currently running in Asia include electronic program guides, weather, finance/stocks and games.

About OpenTV

OpenTV is the world's leading interactive television and media solutions company. OpenTV builds a complete software and infrastructure platform that enables digital interactive television and brings on-demand content to other digital communications devices. OpenTV solutions are crafted to meet the needs of all digital communications networks and include operating middleware, content applications, content creation tools, professional services expertise and strategic consulting.

OpenTV middleware has been shipped with or installed in more than 11 million digital set-top boxes worldwide and has been selected by 37 digital cable, satellite and terrestrial Communications Networks in over 50 countries, including BSkyB in the United Kingdom; TPS and Noos in France; PrimaCom in Germany; Via Digital in Spain; Stream in Italy; DIRECTV(TM) Latin America LLC; and EchoStar's DISH Network and USA Media Group in the U.S. In addition, more than 31 digital set-top box manufacturers have licensed OpenTV's middleware, and OpenTV's authoring tools are licensed to more than 650 independent developers and content service providers.