ADB Set-Top Boxes To Kick Off Taiwan's First Mass Deployment Of Digital Cable TV.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

GENEVA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 2002

Advanced Digital Broadcast (www.adbglobal.com), a world leader in digital set-top box technology, has signed a contract to become the primary digital cable set-top box supplier to China Network Systems (CNS) Taiwan, the Koo's Group and News Corp-controlled STAR's joint venture cable TV operator.

ADB will supply the boxes over the next four years in a deal making it a major supporting partner in CNS's plans to become Taiwan's leader in developing interactive TV.

Taiwan, with close to five million cable TV subscribers -- some 80 percent of the nation's TV households -- has the highest penetration of any pay-TV market in Asia Pacific. STAR, Asia's leading multi-platform content and service provider, and the Koo's Group, Taiwan's leading business conglomerate, created CNS in May 2001. Headed by CEO Nelson Chang, CNS plans to deploy a fully interactive digital cable TV network by 2005.

ADB will supply its low-cost digital cable ABQ6H44 set-top box, incorporating the Sti5512 multimedia chip processor from ST Microelectronics, and an in-house designed tuner incorporating the MT2040 IC from Microtune.

The set-top box comes from ADB's full range of cable, satellite and terrestrial digital decoders that are fast gaining worldwide acceptance for quality and value.

"CNS's impending rollout of digital set top box will be a major milestone for cable TV development in Taiwan. Viewers will benefit with innovative digital interactive TV services, premium programming, enhanced picture and sound quality and TV functionalities like parental control and Chinese-language electronic programme guides," says Daniel Cheung, COO of CNS. "We are pleased to work with ADB in bringing this new television experience to Taiwanese viewers."

The ADB box will also pioneer the newly developed Master/Slave decoder technology in Taiwan.

The technology enables a single set-top unit (the master) to assume full control over other units (the slaves) in one household. ADB's engineers have designed the master to communicate with it slaves over the TV cable. The controlling and responding units can therefore easily and rapidly make contact with each other without needing additional physical paths. The master can now centrally control many functions, including parental control.

"Master/Slave functionality adds a new dimension to the traditional digital TV set-top box," says ADB's Asia Pacific Marketing Director, David Tung. "Its key benefits to operators are enabling them to offer single household subscribers low-cost multi-set-top box installations, whilst maintaining efficient management of deployed services."