Internet Access: WavePhore Announces Launch of Online Mall and New Electronic Commerce Channel - Company Business and Marketing

EDGE, On & About AT&T, Dec 7, 1998

WavePhore, Inc., the leading new media content integrator and architect of digital delivery systems, Tuesday announced the launch of the WaveTop Store electronic commerce channel, and establishment of 9 initial merchants in this new "broadcast mall".

Consumers will now be able to take advantage of WaveTop's unique broadcast delivery of multimedia content to receive exciting offers and place orders for useful merchandise and services. Vendor's product offerings and catalog-like content will be delivered seamlessly to their desktop, without the hassle of going on line, and for free. Clearance of the actual transactions will be completed using the consumer's existing Web connection and the secure methods implemented by each of the respective vendors.

"The launch of the WaveTop Store extends our successful content offerings, which have been primarily information and entertainment content, to include services which enhance and ease our customer's day-to-day lives," said Thom Kozik, WavePhore WaveTop's Executive Vice-President and General Manager. "The primary benefit is an improved online shopping experience," added Kozik. "For our vendors, this channel represents a new way to merchandise their products without the limitations of slow connections or the costs of additional infrastructure."

While catalog and retail vendors spend tens of millions annually to display their products effectively and make the presentation attractive and enticing to prospective buyers, much of this traditional merchandising discipline is tossed aside in the rush towards web-based retailing. Due to typically slow connection speeds and infrastructure limitations, merchants are often forced to present only limited thumbnail images of their products, and generally cannot take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the average home PC. With WaveTop's broadcast capability, vendors can now distribute rich, multimedia presentations of their product offerings directly to the consumer's PC with no limitations due to slow connections, servers or Internet traffic. As they develop these new media rich product presentations, merchants in the WaveTop Store will begin offering the consumer a better way to be introduced to their products and make more informed buying decisions.

"WaveTop's broadcast architecture provides us with a unique branding tool," said Diana Madrigal, Marketing Director at Fry Multimedia, a leading e-commerce interactive agency. "Our clients, such as Godiva Chocolatier, will be able to reach "early adopter" consumers of rich media technology. With WaveTop, they can view an exciting multimedia message with video and sound elements that can help leverage Godiva's world-class brand and promote e-commerce on the web.

In addition to Godiva Chocolatier, other vendors involved in the launch of the WaveTop Store include the Wall Street Journal, Barnes and Noble, Audio Book Club, CompUSA, The Fragrance Counter, NextCard, Shop-at-Home, and VideoMaker magazine.

WaveTop's unique electronic commerce and advertising-supported service also provides multi-media programming, including news, investment advice and information, children's programming, weather, free software downloads and much more, all supplied by the Web's leading content providers. Distributed nationally via the unused portion of television signals from 264 PBS member stations around the country, WaveTop currently reaches more than 99 percent of U.S. households.

WavePhore is a leader in the industry bringing new programming and content to home viewers through the television medium. The company is a member of the IP Multicast Initiative (IPMI), an industry committee that drafts the specifications for IP Multicast, the data broadcasting standard adopted by the recently formed Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) for enhanced television programming. Enhanced television enables a variety of new information, entertainment and commerce opportunities using data broadcasting alone or in conjunction with video programming and set-top boxes.

HOW WAVETOP WORKS WaveTop's PC data broadcast service works by embedding data streams into the unseen portion of existing broadcast television signals using the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI). WaveTop has partnered with PBS National Datacast to broadcast data over the television signals of its 264 PBS member stations. Using a simple browser interface and a broadcast ready PC (a standard PC with a built-in TV tuner or equipped with an add-on TV tuner card), users will interact with automatically downloaded information, entertainment and software. Computers equipped with TV tuners and WaveTop software transparently receive, decode and cache content without the bottleneck of the Internet or tying up a phone line. WaveTop is compatible with Microsoft Windows 95 and is part of the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system.

RICH CONTENT WaveTop content providers are among the world's leading media companies, including Time Inc. New Media, which includes the on-line versions of People, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Money, Fortune and Sports Illustrated for Kids and ZDNet News, on-line versions of ComputerLife, Family PC and Yahoo Internet Life. Also providing content are USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, CBS SportsLine, PBS ONLINE, Warner Bros. Online, Bloomberg L.P., The Weather Channel, N2K's Music Boulevard, BarnesandNoble.com, Universal Press Syndicate - Comics, Women's Wire and Prevention's Healthy Ideas, NECX, Astrology.Net, Dummies Daily and UltimateTV.