anyON™ Enables User Generated TV over the Internet

Silver Spring, MD – Jan.2, 2007. BroadbandMD and eMedia Tech. announced today the availability of anyON, a personal video streaming platform available via Web download. anyON empowers PC and any Internet-connected device into a personal broadcaster, video recorder and IPTV receiver and allows anyone to create, publish and tune-in unprecedented live channels from anywhere without adding hardware and dedicated bandwidth.

“While people are talking about TV anywhere, anytime, on any device, by anyone, we have a product that is doing these, and it only requires the installation of our software on an existing PC with Internet connection.” said Dr. Phillip Chen, founder and Chairman of both companies with operations in China and US. “As user generated video grows rapidly, we want to offer a new tool for consumers to entertain as well as for enterprises, schools, etc to do business with independent, self-created, TV-like channels.”

anyON’s public launch has already started to receive a warm welcome in both the US and Chinese markets. “With recent development in user centric video services, anyON is defining a new space in consumer content distribution, where TV-like user channels are broadcast effectively over the Internet. It is much more than an uploaded or downloaded clip,” said Randy Zadra; a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab after tried out the product.

Enabling anyone to create, publish and enjoy TV-like channels over the Internet, anyON is the only platform for personal channel generation, video fusion and scalable distribution. anyON publishes channels in three modes: broadcast, groupcast and pointcast, depending on the need and available infrastructure. Unlike other products or services currently available such as Slingbox and YouTube, anyON is a pure software solution designed for scalable content distribution for anyone and does not require a hosting server or dedicated bandwidth to sustain mass video services. In addition, anyON supports instant and scheduled PVR, redirection of cable/HD TV or other existing video services and mobile play of DVD/camcorder content to anywhere a user goes.

How anyON Works

anyON software is designed to work with any existing computer and network infrastructure. anyON can be used from home, office, or while traveling. Installed at a PC (as broadcaster), anyON accepts standard video devices such as a TV tuner, Web cam or stream input from a PVR, CD/DVD or URL as channel source. Channel name, and its protection key if needed, is controlled by the channel owner, who also has several distribution options: broadcast to an unlimited number of viewers who are peering with each other; group cast to a limited number of any viewers; and point cast to a designated address. Typical broadcast or group cast requires at least one public IP except in a local network such as a campus environment; but point cast can originate from any source even be hide a firewall.

As user generated channels couple with redirection of licensed TV programs and videos from other sources, an unprecedented set of Internet TV channels is created based on anyON platform. Any Web-enabled device such as PC, PDA, smart phone and STB can tune in the anyON space, and receive public channel by choice, or private channel via its channel key delivered by the publisher.

Under the Hood

anyON is powered by Ubiquity TV’s patented, proprietary P2P media distribution technologies. The software specializes in delivering live stream reliably over the Internet, and distributing user channel scalably only with existing computing and network infrastructure. It is uniquely designed to encode/decode live stream video and to publish to shared peers with general processor, generic device, and typical DSL or cable modem connection. The following are the key innovative technologies and feature components of anyON platform:

- anyONp2p: a scalable distribution mechanism similar to BitTorrent in P2P file sharing, but in the context of live streams. There is no file download or storage, just segment exchange of live stream. The more peering receivers, the better streaming performance.

- anyONpush: a reliable streaming mechanism based on FEC to recover lost streams by redundancy push. Media encoding/decoding is performed on the fly.

- anyONtrack: a dynamic tracking, control mechanism for users and channels management, directory service and content protection. It is also the basis for premium service offerings.

It is expected that more and more new video services will be launched due to the ubiquity of broadband and media devices. Our design goal is to complement and extend the reach or coverage of existing content services, while enabling both consumers and under-served content providers for scalable, decentralized, non-conventional media services.

anyON software is available in three forms: as standalone GUI by Web download from www.anyon.us or www.anyon.cn; as a Web plug-in automatically downloaded from Web links in anyON powered video portals; as an embedded application with an existing video device or PC accessory sold on the market. In the coming months, anyON software will be available for select PDAs, smart phones, and brand laptop/computers and will support HDTV tuning.

About eMedia Tech. Ltd.

eMedia Tech. is a high tech firm based in Beijing, China with its US operations at BroadbandMD in Maryland. Found by a team who pioneered the Internet CDN over Intelsat satellites for a multicast caching service, and backed by one of the largest DVD manufacturers in the world, eMedia Tech was named a top 50 high tech firm in China. Its self-developed, proprietary and award-winning personal media platform anyON is the first and only commercially available Internet software product that allows custom and mass delivery of live TV and personal videos over the public Internet without use of dedicated servers and bandwidth. For more information on anyON, please visit www.anyon.cn or www.anyon.us.