ACADEMIA

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Kasenna, Inc. and SGI (NYSE:SGI) today announced that NHK, Japan's oldest major broadcasting company, has brought on-line an MPEG-4 video server system from SGI Japan, Ltd. to archive video assets spanning the network's 50-year history. With hundreds of thousands of assets already installed, the massive undertaking is being powered by Kasenna(TM) MediaBase XMP software and an SGI(R) Origin(R) 3000 server. The high-performance, scalable SGI Origin server combined with Kasenna MediaBase XMP's ability to manage content, ingest dozens of streams, and deliver thousands of streams is enabling NHK to manage their sizeable collection of video assets with unprecedented ease and storage efficiency. "We are encouraged by the continued trust that NHK Broadcast exhibits in SGI Japan's systems integration capabilities. Our longstanding relationship with NHK has allowed us to engineer many 'firsts' in the use of open systems for broadcasting applications. This MPEG-4 video streaming deployment is yet another example of how cutting-edge broadcasters can leverage open IT standards to increase productivity and therefore improve profitability," said Norio Izumi, President and CEO of SGI Japan, Ltd. The Kasenna and SGI(R) archive and browse on demand system at NHK is among the first to afford broadcasters and other demanding markets the benefits of MPEG-4. The system converts MPEG-2 video assets that NHK broadcasts and decides to archive for rebroadcast into highly compressed MPEG-4 files using systems integrator IBE's MPEG-4 encoder. These assets are then available to the production staff to browse on demand in real time. "Japan is at the forefront in the use of broadband video technologies for real-world applications. The storehouse of video assets that will be stored on the SGI Origin servers will represent much of the broadcast history of the country," said Jan Silverman, senior vice president and general manager, Industry Solutions and Services Group, SGI. "We're pleased to see that NHK has realized that the Origin 3000 system is an extremely scalable solution. We appreciate the trust NHK has placed in SGI and Kasenna." "With MPEG-4, the NHK archiving project realizes storage efficiencies never before seen with video," said Mark Gray, CEO of Kasenna. "As the volume of video assets continues to grow, content owners and distributors need to find more cost-, bandwidth-, and space-efficient methods of storing material while still having it instantly available for viewing. MPEG-4 is the format of the future that makes this possible. While many companies are still exploring MPEG-4 functionality, Kasenna's solution is already deployed in a demanding, 24 by 7, commercial environment today." Since it first began broadcasting television in 1953, NHK's television programs have become historically valuable records of particular times, places and cultures. The number of films and video tapes that have accumulated over the past 50 years has surpassed 1.73 million. Among the massive amounts of data, the NHK archives now store material from approximately 590,000 films and tapes including 229,000 programs and 880,000 news clips.