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PEAK Systems
Bernd Neuhauser
bn@peak-info.com
Tel +49 (0)89 666478
Fax +49 (0)89 666478
www.peak-info.com

L&S Marketing, Inc.
Sheldon Liebman
lsmarket@flash.net
Tel +1 (505) 332-1281
Fax +1 (505) 332-1286
www.lsmarketing.com

NOVA TELEVISION, PRAGUE, BUYS EVEREST™ AND SHERPA™ FROM PEAK SYSTEMS
Leading central European TV station gains a lead with technology and quality for news and sports graphics, on-air only 5 days after installation

(Munich, February 28, 1999) PEAK Systems GmbH announces that TV Nova in Prague, Czech Republic, has bought Everest real-time 3D graphics and Sherpa external control software. Everest and Sherpa is already producing news and sports graphics live to air at TV Nova using a Silicon Graphics Onyx2 computer.

TV Nova produces sports, news and current affairs programming for the Czech Republic TV market. Mr. Vavra, News Director at TV Nova, said "we needed to choose a system that could offer high quality live to air graphics, that fit our television production process and that let us differentiate our programming from our competitors. Everest and Sherpa have proven the right choice, and we went live to air with Everest for the first time on 4th February, only 5 days after the installation. This included time to design and implement our new graphics templates and train our production team"

Dipl. Ing. Ivo Ferkl, TV Nova´s Technical Director, continued "Important factors for us were the local support available from Visual Connection here in Prague, and the upgrade potential for Everest and Sherpa for more graphics systems and Virtual Sets. TV Nova is determined to be a technical and creative leader in our market."

Everest runs on Silicon Graphics workstations and can produce any television format. In addition, large data volumes can easily be managed with Everest. The graphical elements, images, objects and animations used as components in trailers, graphics or sets are administered in internal databases. Links to external systems or databases are provided.

TV Nova Television Profile
TV Nova is a leading commercial terrestrial television station, the most popular in the Czech Republic, starting fulltime nation-wide broadcasting on February 4th, 1994. TV Nova's broadcast signal reaches 99% of the Czech Republic's 10 million people and the channel is on the air 20 hours per day. During May 1994 TV Nova became the leader in the Czech Republic market and has retained that position since. The average audience share was 51,61% last year. The average audience share of the main Daily News in the same period was 72%, the average rating of the main Daily News was 35,6% while the main competitor public TV CT-1 reached 14,7%.

Peak Systems Profile
Peak Systems supplies complete on-air graphics systems and virtual sets to broadcasters on a global basis. Full training, production support and technical support services back up these systems. The core technologies employed are Everest real-time graphics generation and rendering software, Sherpa external control and Silicon Graphics computer systems.

Television graphics need to be on air fast, look great and tell the story. Frequently repeated graphics need template animation and fast breaking news stories need powerful authoring tools for the designer. Everest is a real-time, 3D, live to air graphics system for television. It is high quality, designer friendly and easy to integrate into standard production methods.

Virtual sets expand upon traditional chroma keying to immerse the presenters in a 3D world, offering new program formats, better usage of the studio and make small studios seem more impressive. Everest Graphics systems can be easily upgraded to full virtual sets by connecting the customer’s choice of camera position sensing system to Everest's internal virtual cameras.

EVEREST is resolution independent and is in use for PAL, NTSC, 16:9 and HDTV productions.

Sherpa is a tool kit for production of external control production interfaces linking data sources, template graphics and virtual sets. Its authoring environment directly connects to the Everest scene, and in production it provides the on-air operator with straightforward access to all the available animations.

Virtual Camera Switcher (VCS) is a hardware product designed to manage the synchronized switching (including required delays) of audio, computer and video equipment in the virtual set. This means the virtual set can be controlled completely from the vision mixer.

Peak has offices and staff in Munich, Hamburg, Florida, New York, Bratislava and London.

Editor's Note: Digital images of EVEREST are available.

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