Broadbus Introduces Television-on-Demand Video Server at NCTA.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

The National Show 2003

Booth #1902

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 9, 2003

Broadbus Technologies, Inc.

Cable's First High Density DRAM-based Server Simultaneously Ingests

and Streams Massive Amounts of Video and Broadcast Television

Content; Enables Enhanced Business Models for MSOs, Studios

and Programming Networks

Broadbus introduced today its B-1(TM) Video Server, the first high-density, highly scalable DRAM-based server uniquely designed to support the growing requirements of today's Video-on-Demand (VOD) and SVOD (Subscription Video-on-Demand), as well as the fast-approaching requirements of Television-on-Demand services including, Broadbus' new TOD(R) service.

Drawing upon fifteen years of experience in building and deploying RAM-based servers, the Broadbus B-1 is capable of scaling up to 80 Gbps of throughput via independent Gigabit Ethernet ports -- the highest density in the industry. The system offers the ability to simultaneously deliver up to 19,200 MPEG-2 streams per server (38,400 per rack), while ingesting hundreds of channels of both "live" and pre-recorded content. Through an innovative, ultra-wide memory architecture and advanced software management system, the B-1 completely eliminates the use of hard drives as streaming engines. Instead, Broadbus' architecture leverages the Moore's Law attributes of DRAM as an access device and hard drives as a storage device. The result is a significantly lower total cost of ownership, greater functionality, and unmatched reliability, all within a footprint that is as little as 1/30th that of current VOD servers. Broadbus is launching the B-1 server at the cable industry's National Show (NCTA), Booth #1902.

"With the growing success of VOD and SVOD indicating a substantial appetite for on-demand services, we've designed the B-1 Video Server to be the perfect solution for today's environment and the only practical solution available for TOD," said Broadbus CEO Jeffrey Binder. "MSOs are keenly aware that non-liner television delivery is creating new architectural challenges, requiring servers with ingest capacity and densities far beyond conventional platforms. The B-1 provides a powerful, future-proof solution that will allow a seamless migration from today's VOD to the TOD services of tomorrow."

"Simply put, the Broadbus B-1 server is the right product at the right time in the right industry", said Tom Jokerst, who recently joined Broadbus as CTO from Charter Communications. "Having spent nearly 30 years as a cable operator, I was thrilled to join a technology company that will have a tremendous impact for years to come on the way MSOs will generate new revenues and win new customers More than the B-1, it was Broadbus' thought leadership and industry leading vision of TOD that attracted me most. I'm fully convinced that by combining the superior streaming attributes of DRAM with the low-cost storage attributes of RAID, we have created the ideal platform to enable MSOs to transform all of digital television in a way that will put the DBS industry back on its heels," Jokerst added.

Enabling Television-on-Demand

While still in its early stages, many believe that offering programs and movies on-demand are the key to reducing churn and attracting new customers. A recent study by Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) found that, while 5% of all cable subscribers have used VOD, nearly two-thirds of cable subscribers are interested in some form of video on-demand. "Consumers express a strong interest in VOD, and many say that on-demand services would make them more likely to keep digital cable or switch from DBS," said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst with LRG. "Operators would be well served to investigate infrastructure that can meet today's VOD volume and be able to grow to support the more robust demands that are to come." For more information on this study, go to www.leichtmanresearch.com/research/newresearch.html.

TOD, enabled by a Broadbus server at the head-end, enables operators to offer consumers a virtually unlimited breadth of content, including live and pre-recorded broadcast television services, as well as movie and subscription-based content. Through rules-based control over programming, TOD also enables operators, programming networks and studios to collectively control programming "windows," determining together, what will be shown and for how long, and making it possible to manage compliance with the constantly changing licensing and syndication rules of television. Unlike PVRs, TOD enables pause, fast-forward and rewind functionality across an enormous breadth of content, without a digital set-top box upgrade or the need to pro-actively record programming.

Serving On-Demand with the Broadbus B-1

In contrast to traditional VOD server architectures, Broadbus' approach removes the limitations of streaming data directly from a hard drive by streaming out of solid-state DRAM. With its revolutionary server architecture, the Broadbus B-1 is ideally suited to address the content ingest and propagation issues created by today's advanced video services. By "decoupling" the streaming functions from storage, stream count and storage size are scaled independently and storage is placed in the network, where it can be leveraged in the most cost-effective way.

"One of the by-products of true decoupling is the massive ingest requirement created when storage is removed from the server," said Broadbus' Binder. "In large deployments, hundreds of programs will need to be ingested into the server every hour, creating an ingest requirement as much as 1,000 times that experienced by coupled RAID based solutions in a traditional VOD environment.

"De-coupling is easy; re-coupling or ingest is the difficult part," he added. "This is where the Broadbus architecture really shines. It has no practical limitation on ingest, and an intelligent content management system for moving the decoupled content back into the server with a zero latency response streaming requests."

The B-1 is designed to be carrier-class with significantly fewer moving parts, and is thus, more reliable than conventional servers. Total cost of ownership for cable operators is lowered as a result of configuration flexibility, scaling and management options. A chassis-and-blade solution, the B-1 may be easily upgraded in the future to support more streams by adding new modules without disrupting existing customers and services. Scaling increments of 1 GigE set a new standard in the industry for VOD.

The B-1 server also features the Broadbus Stream Commander(TM) management system, designed to configure, coordinate and monitor up to 256 networked B-1 video servers via a web-based graphical user interface. The software manages all ingest, storage and streaming activities and maintains an active database of configuration profiles and status, alarm, stream and content statistics.

Designed to integrate seamlessly with legacy VOD/SVOD systems, the B-1 enables MSOs to incrementally respond to the expanding market for on-demand services, without the need to over-provision.

Additional key benefits of the Broadbus B-1 Video Server include:

-- Lowest TCO - The inherent architecture of RAM+RAID delivers

lower price per stream and maintenance costs

-- Highest density - up to 1/30th the footprint of current VOD

servers

-- Massively scalable - Scalable in Gigabit Ethernet increments,

the B-1 can support MPEG-2 stream counts from several hundred

to nearly 40,000 per rack

-- Massive ingest capacity - The B-1 can ingest a virtually

unlimited number of both live and pre-recorded programs

simultaneously, with only a linear impact on streaming output

performance

-- Power Efficiency - The B-1 consumes up to 1/8th the power per

stream of conventional servers

In addition to demonstrating the B-1 server at NCTA Booth #1902, Broadbus will present its Television-on-Demand server architecture during a technical session entitled "Ingest and Metadata Partitioning: Requirements for Television on Demand" on Tues., June 10, from 2:45 PM - 4:00 PM.

About Broadbus Technologies, Inc.:

Broadbus develops fully scalable, next-generation VOD server systems designed to solve streaming scale, space, power consumption and live ingest issues for cable system operators deploying advanced video services such as Video-on-Demand (VOD), Subscription VOD, and ultimately, full-scale Television-on-Demand, including its own TOD(R) service. Broadbus offers an elegant migration path to the emerging TOD environment, while fully exploiting existing upgraded broadband networks. The company's revolutionary server architecture, based on the intelligent configuration and management of massive amounts of random-access-memory, enables operators to offer their subscribers unparalleled convenience, choice and control over their home entertainment. More information may be found at www.broadbus.com.

Broadbus(R), TOD(R), Broadbus B-1(TM) and Stream Commander(TM) are trademarks owned and licensed by Broadbus.