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September 22, 2008 Digital Rapids Wins Prestigious IBC Innovation Award with NBC UniversalMarkham, Ontario: Digital Rapids -- a leading developer of solutions for bringing television, video and movie content to the next generation of viewing devices -- has been honored with an IBC2008 Innovation Award for the company's contribution to the MICAH multi-format, digital media production workflow at leading global media and entertainment company NBC Universal. The award win in the Content Management category is shared between NBC Universal, Digital Rapids and a fellow technology supplier.
 The IBC Innovation Awards celebrate the partnership between technology companies and users, with winners having demonstrated innovative and cost-effective solutions to technical, commercial or creative challenges. The winners were announced in a ceremony September 14 during the IBC Conference and Exhibition in Amsterdam.
The MICAH production workflow combines NBC Universal's proprietary in-house development with the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager enterprise-class transcoding solution; Digital Rapids' StreamZ ingest and encoding systems; and third-party distribution software. The result is a fully automated workflow for transforming and distributing media for multiple content partners and platforms including the Web, VOD and Electronic Sell-Through. Spanning NBCU's geographically dispersed operations across the U.S. and worldwide, MICAH maximizes quality and throughput for the timely availability of media assets in multiple formats, while providing the high level of automation essential for handling the substantial volume of content -- typically thousands of clips -- being processed daily.
"Not only has this platform contributed to operational efficiency in our company, it has also allowed us to properly manage costs while enabling new digital monetization opportunities," said Jeff Chiumiento, VP & CFO, Media Technology at NBC Universal. "We are excited about the partnership with Digital Rapids and thank the IBC Awards Committee for this recognition."
Said Rab Mukraj, Director of Digital Media Delivery at NBC Universal: "We're delighted that our MICAH Production Workflow has been honored as the winner of an IBC Innovation Award. The close collaboration between our team and Digital Rapids has created a powerful, high-quality and scalable ingest, encoding and transcoding workflow that has significantly streamlined our digital media operations and works seamlessly alongside the contributions of our additional technology vendors. NBC Universal has a rich history of technical innovation in media, and to have this project recognized amongst our international peers is a fantastic tribute."
"We were absolutely delighted with the incredibly high standard of the winners and highly commended runners up," said Michael Lumley, IBC Chairman of the Innovation Awards Judging Panel. "The winning projects were from many parts of the world and demonstrated the truly international nature of IBC together with the powerful impact technology is making to the business and creative challenges faced by users."
"We're thrilled to be recognized with this prestigious accolade, and we thank the IBC Awards Committee for this honor," said Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation. "The IBC Innovation Awards are exceptional in their recognition of not only outstanding technology, but also how close collaboration between users and vendors can turn that technology into real-world benefits. Our work with NBC Universal has enabled them to maximize the value of their content in the rapidly evolving digital media market, and we look forward to future developments with them as their operations continue to grow."
For more information about Digital Rapids, please visit www.digital-rapids.com.
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