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REALNETWORKS’ HELIX PLAYER PROJECT WINS AWARD FOR BEST OPEN SOURCE PROJECT
Helix Player Fast Becoming the Standard for Linux Audio and Video
Seattle, WA, January 28, 2004 — RealNetworks®, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK), the leading creator of digital media services and software, today announced that the Helix™ Player, the first commercial grade, open source and multi-format digital media player, has been awarded top honors by the LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards, as unveiled at LinuxWorld Conference & Expo® 2004 held last week in New York. The Helix Player was recognized for being the 'Best Open Source Project'.
Innovative products across 10 categories were nominated for awards. The Helix Player project, https://player.helixcommunity.org, was singled out to receive the award for best open source project over; KDE 3.2, Gentoo Linux, and Sun’s JXTA.
"Linux is increasingly becoming the operating system of choice to drive mobile handsets, living room devices as well as desktops. The engine inside the open source Helix Player - the Helix DNA Client - is today powering digital media playback on those same devices," said Nagesh Pabbisetty, vice president, Consumer Products and Services, RealNetworks. Inc. "With the proliferation of media-enabled devices already available, content developers and broadcasters can now deliver their content directly to millions of consumers wherever they may be".
"I’m happy to see the open source community become aware of the Helix Player project. The Helix Player is showing promise to be the foremost open source media player," said Christopher (Monty) Montgomery, Technical Director, Xiph.org Foundation. "The point of the Helix Community is to produce and deliver multimedia using a seamless, entirely open source stream from production tools to server to client. The latest version of the Helix Player provides first class support of our open source Ogg codec".
The Xiph.org Foundation, (www.xiph.org) has worked with RealNetworks since the launch of the Helix initiative in 2002 and the formation of Helix Player project in 2003. In addition to supporting leading industry standard codecs, the open source Helix Player also supports the leading open source codecs developed by the Xiph.org Foundation: Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora.
As the first, multi-format open source platform for digital playback, the Helix DNA Client provides manufacturers with easy access to the most flexible solution for creating compelling audio and video functionality tailored to unique customer and product requirements. Today the Helix DNA Client supports RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, MPEG-4, AAC, AMR, H.263, Flash, and SMIL file formats and is currently available on Windows, Macintosh and Linux, as well as the leading wireless platforms: Linux, OpenWave, Palm and Symbian. Additional porting projects are underway for the Solaris, HP-UX, WinCE, iTRON, VxWorks and PSOS operating systems.
The LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards represent major areas of innovation in the Linux and open source community. Judging the nominations were: Alan Fedder of UniForum Association, Dee-Ann LeBlanc of LinuxWorld Magazine, and Brian Profitt of Linux Today.
The Helix Community is a collaborative effort among RealNetworks, independent developers, and leading companies to extend the Helix DNA platform. Helix DNA is available within the Helix Community, (www.helixcommunity.org) under either a commercial or open source license.
For More Information:
Lisa Strong, RealNetworks, 206-892-6585, lstrong@real.com
ABOUT HELIX
Helix is a platform and a community for the standardization and expansion of digital media. The Helix platform, Helix DNA, consists of source code for creation, delivery and playback of digital media developed by RealNetworks over the past decade, as well as a set of interfaces for building media-enabled applications. Helix Community members are able to use this source code to build media-capable products with industry-leading technology and commonly used interfaces. The Helix Community offers source code of Helix DNA Client under commercial community and open source licenses. RealNetworks has also released a family of commercial products built on top of the Helix DNA platform, including the free RealPlayer, the RealProducer and the Helix Universal Server.
ABOUT REALNETWORKS, INC.
RealNetworks, Inc. is the leading creator of digital media services and software including the award-winning Rhapsody Internet jukebox service and RealPlayer 10, the first product to integrate finding, organizing, buying, playing and managing digital audio and video in a single product. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks’ consumer software at http://www.real.com. Broadcasters, network operators, media companies and enterprises use RealNetworks’ products and services to create and deliver digital media to PCs, mobile phones and consumer electronics devices. RealNetworks’ systems and corporate information is located at http://www.realnetworks.com.
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