USA Video Interactive Holds Annual Meeting; Announces First Sales, Demos Technology - Recaps Eventful Year, Start of Revenues
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 25, 1999--USA Video Interactive (Nasdaq:USVO)(ASE:US.)(www.usvo.com) held its annual shareholders meeting today in Vancouver, British Columbia and provided several demonstrations of its patented Video-on-Demand(TM) and Wavelet compression technology. The demonstrations included live streaming video over the Internet, using a standard modem, from a remote camera in Washington, DC; and a full-screen, full-motion Video-on-Demand(TM) broadcast featuring excerpts from AGC/United Learning Educational Media's "Simply Science" series.
USA Video Interactive also announced its first sales: to a consortium of career colleges in Puerto Rico and mainland United States, and to Enersphere.com, an Ontario-based company planning to provide community-based Intranet systems and offer entertainment as well as value-added services such as monitored smoke detectors, automatic meter reading, E-commerce, E-mail and Internet access. (See USA Video Interactive News Releases issued June 24, 1999.)
"We are pleased to demonstrate this remarkable technology to our shareholders and to let them know we have made our official transition into sales," said Edwin Molina, President of USA Video Interactive. "The contracts we are announcing are for the initial installations in what promise to be major international deployments of our systems." Molina then described the events of the past year, starting with the development of a new management team to help lead the company into the next millennium. He also outlined some of the major accomplishments of the past six months. These include:
-- Establishing a West Coast subsidiary, Merging Rivers Media, to create the first-ever Internet-TV ad agency. Focusing on entertainment-related applications of the USA Video Interactive technology, Merging Rivers Media provides the full range of advertising agency services to entertainment companies, advertisers, corporations and others.
-- Completing an OEM agreement with SeaChange International for NT-based servers that will enable USA Video to provide one of the most reliable solutions for broadcast-quality video delivery on the Internet.
-- Establishing a USA Video Interactive video portal on the UUNET/MCI network, allowing USA Video Interactive to host interactive TV; create and host TV-type commercials on the Internet; provide educational, entertainment and other content to users via a password-protected access; and other applications.
-- With MCI/UUNET, offering an overall package of Internet services as part of USA Video Interactive's "turnkey" system, including Direct Subscriber Line (DSL) technology and various other broadband services to clients whose Video-on-Demand(tm) requirements include Internet access and transmission.
-- Establishing a partnering with Motion, Inc., a leading full-service film and video production company, to collaborate in producing and marketing original content for education, career development, corporate training, E-commerce and commercials for broadcast on the Internet.
-- Reaching agreements for pilot programs with three of the world's leading educational video libraries - AGC/United Learning Educational Media, The Phoenix Learning Group, and Lucerne Media -- to digitize their most popular educational videos and series, install them on a USA Video server, and make them available via intranet networks to remote locations. These three libraries have a combined total of more than 10,000 educational videos.
-- Adding high-end, state-of-the-art Wavelet-based compression and decompression technology to the USA Video Interactive systems, allowing full-motion, high-speed, high-quality streaming video and Video-on-Demand(tm) in Intranet systems and via the Internet using existing telephone lines and standard TV-cable.
Shareholders also approved the ability to change the name of the company, perhaps to "USA Interactive.com" to reflect the expanded services and Internet capabilities provided by the company. No immediate action is planned on this proposal, however.
Molina closed the meeting by pledging to continue the focus on marketing and sales, concentrating on several major markets including education, E-commerce and advertising, entertainment, sports, and security; and to continue delivering the highest quality products and services as part of the USA Video Interactive commitment to its customers and employees.
USA Video Interactive is an international designer and supplier of high-tech Video-on-Demand(TM) systems and services. The USA Video Interactive technology allows users to view streaming video or to access digitized video libraries, including movies, sports, other entertainment, educational resources, corporate training seminars and other archives. The USA Video Interactive technology gives users full-motion video; the unique flexibility of standard, VCR-like controls of play, fast forward, reverse and pause; and the convenience of a standard internet-browser format for access. USA Video Interactive can utilize MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 compression techniques but prefers its Wavelet compression technology. The USA Video Interactive Wavelet technology allows direct streaming and download & play options; provides video images significantly faster and at a higher degree of resolution than with previously available methods; significantly overcomes bandwidth restrictions; and eliminates the blockiness and slowness of current technologies, all at a lower cost. An essential feature of the USA Video Interactive technology is that it allows extremely high compression ratios while retaining broadcast quality.
USA Video Interactive Corp. US Office: 70 Essex Street; Mystic, CT 06355; (800) 625-2200; (860) 572-1560; Canada Office: 837 West Hastings Street; Suite #507; Vancouver, B.C. V6C 1B2. Trading symbol on the US NASD OTC BB: USVO; SEC 12g3-2(b) Exemption: #82-1601. Trading symbol on The Alberta Stock Exchange: US. Standard & Poors Listed. CUSIP 902924208 Video-On-Demand(TM) and Video Yellow Pages(TM) are trademarks of USA Video. |
