JVC's D-9 IS HOUSE FORMAT AT EABC Ethnic-American Broadcasting Co. Selects D-9 FORT LEE, NJ, November 18, 1996 -- Ethnic-American Broadcasting Company, the country's largest distributor of foreign-language programming, has selected JVC's D-9 videotape format as the company's house format for its new 24-hour Russian broadcast service. The commitment to purchase D-9 was made in May, 1996, after JVC's successful product launch at NAB 1996. The company received delivery of nine D-9 machines, (four BR-D85 editing recorders with pre-read and five BR-D80 editing recorders) in the first week of October, 1996. Ethnic-American Broadcasting Company (EABC) was founded nine years ago as a local all-Russian language radio station. The company quickly expanded its product offerings to meet market demands and is now a full-production facility that downlinks television signals in five foreign languages (Arabic, Italian, Filipino, Chinese and Russian) and distributes them across North America. EABC also offers local television and radio programming in Russian. EABC has nine radio studios located in Fort Lee, NJ; Boston, MA; Baltimore, MD; Chicago, IL; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Sacramento, CA; San Francisco, CA; and Los Angeles, CA. Director of Engineering and Broadcast Support, Denis J. Roche, called the move to D-9 an obvious choice, and expressed pleasure with the format's competitive performance and price. "After a rigorous technical evaluation of all the major digital formats, we selected D-9 as our house format," said Roche. "D-9 outstanding picture quality that rivals the most expensive digital systems, but its price is literally half. There is no question that JVC's D-9 product is the best choice for our broadcast needs. Point of fact, an engineer like myself is always concerned about picture quality. However, another major factor we considered when we chose D-9 was its low tape cost. If D-9 was priced like some of its competitors, we wouldn't have made the deal. It would have cost too much to feed the machine." "Ethnic-American Broadcasting Company is in good company, said Dave Walton, communications marketing manager for JVC PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS COMPANY. "Their studio installation of D-9 machines coincided with deliveries to Fox NewsChannel and Fox SportsNet. All three networks are committed to producing the highest quality video product." D-9 operates at 50 megabits per second (mbps), and uses a robust -inch metal particle tape with 4:2:2 8-bit component digital signal processing. Half-inch tape allows more information to be recorded, including two audio cue tracks, a control track, and two lines of uncompressed video. Furthermore, D-9 offers video pre-read, a feature previously found only on the highest- priced digital formats. Pre-read allows users to do A/B roll-style editing with just two editing machines instead of three, and offers complex layering effects and keying. And because it uses a very mild compression ratio of 3.3:1, concatenation problems are not exacerbated using D-9. Roche agrees, "Mild compression was a very significant reason we chose D-9. The ability to get back in several times to edit a piece without loss of chroma resolution is a big factor. It's a great tape design." Roche continues, "One of the primary reasons we selected D-9 above DV, which is also a low-cost digital alternative, is that while we currently uplink a single analog signal, eventually we will be uplinking in the MCPC mode. And when we do, we will be glad to have 4:2:2 component digital, SMPTE 259 format output with 3.3:1 compression. A format with higher compression ratios could begin to show artifacts with further MPEG compression and decompression." Scott Watson, vice president of sales and marketing for JVC PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS COMPANY remarked, "JVC's decision to stick with -inch tape and offer a format with minimal compression and 4:2:2 component processing has once again been proven correct." JVC PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS COMPANY, based in Wayne, New Jersey, distributes a complete line of broadcast and professional equipment. For more information about JVC's D-9 format, contact David Walton at 1-800-JVC-5825. # # #