K-WILL VP21H Video Quality Evaluation System Wins Broadcast Engineering's ''Pick Hit Award'' at NAB 2005

Business Wire, May 6, 2005

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- K-WILL Corporation's VP21H was awarded Broadcast Engineering's "Pick Hit Award" at this year's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention. The award was judged by a group of industry experts who work in the broadcast, post, network and satellite industries.

The VP21H is an objective picture quality evaluation system designed to meet the need for real-time HD/SD video quality measurement in the networks of broadcasters, network operators, cable TV companies, satellite service providers, telecommunication companies transmitting video, post-production companies and equipment manufacturers. K-WILL's VP21H utilizes a powerful double-stimulus video quality evaluation system that performs detailed, pixel-by-pixel measurement and comparison of a reference and copy videos on a real-time and fully automated basis. It utilizes the same technology and combines the capabilities of the K-WILL products recommended by ITU J.144 (the VP21S and VP2000H).

According to Broadcast Engineering, the "Pick Hit Awards" are the industry's longest-running product technology awards and one of the most prestigious to be presented to NAB exhibitors. Pick Hits are selected based on several criteria, including the product's positive impact on the intended user's everyday work, its technological improvement over previous products and its appropriateness in pricing for the intended user.

"We were honored to receive the Pick Hit Award from Broadcast Engineering," Dr. Takahiro Hamada, president and CEO, K-WILL, said. "The VP21H offers broadcast engineers and other video content and service providers a high quality system to monitor the video quality of the signals they are transmitting in a forensic view at the pixel level in real-time."

The VP21H can be used for debugging encoder/decoder operations, quality evaluation of broadcast systems, automatic dubbing, DVD authoring and DVD playback.

The VP21H is available direct from K-WILL or through one of K-WILL's partners.

About K-WILL

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., K-WILL Corporation is pioneering the objective evaluation and measurement of digital video and audio quality through its patented technology. K-WILL is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based KDDI Media Will, a venture spinout of KDDI Corporation, the second largest telecom service provider in Japan.

K-WILL's products serve the entire video industry including content producers, professional broadcast equipment manufacturers, broadcasters, CATV companies and satellite and telecom carriers. More information can be found at www.kwillcorporation.com.