Trident Partners With Yahoo! to Deliver the First Connected Cinema TV Into the Home

Cinema TVs Provide a TV Viewing Experience Previously Only Found on the Big Screen in Movie Theaters

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Trident Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRID), a leading provider of set-top box and TV semiconductor solutions, today announced that it has ported a cinema version of the Yahoo! Connected TV (Nasdaq: YHOO) experience onto the Trident DTV platform that will be powering top-brand Cinema TVs scheduled to begin shipping in early 2011. These new Cinema TVs deliver a TV viewing experience previously found only on the big screen in movie theaters. Combined with access to the best of the Web, including more than 50,000 TV shows and movies on demand and thousands of Internet content sources specifically created for the TV, Cinema TVs deliver the ultimate home viewing platform.

Up until now, movies designed for the big screen needed to be altered in order to be displayed on home digital televisions since these TVs use a 16:9 aspect ratio. With a Cinema TV, which uses a 21:9 aspect ratio, the movie can — for the first time — be displayed on the TV exactly as it appears on the movie screen. This means that all the vivid details, picture quality and realism that consumers go to the movie theatre to experience, can now be achieved at home. Furthermore, these new TVs also deliver an Internet-connected platform, enabling consumers to view a wide variety of Web content from leading publishers by scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen and clicking a remote control to access TV Apps for streaming video, movies, gaming, weather, sports, news, stock quotes, social networking and much more.

Trident also has plans to incorporate the Yahoo! Connected TV broadcast interactivity feature into its SXL platform. With the broadcast interactivity feature, TV viewers will be able to interact with broadcast programming in new ways, such as voting for a reality TV participant, accessing information about characters, or making ecommerce purchases of merchandise such as clothing, music, and more.

“Trident technology is once again at the forefront of enabling a fully-immersive and connected platform that provides access — right from your living room — to TV shows, 3D content, movies, music, games, photos, videos and extensive Internet content,” said Christos Lagomichos, president of Trident Microsystems. “We not only deliver the underlying semiconductor technology for the world’s leading TVs and STBs, but we also partner with global leaders such as Yahoo! to build the entire ecosystem around the next generation connected home multimedia system.”

“We are extremely pleased to see Yahoo! Connected TV featured on Trident’s platform solutions designed to enhance the Connected Home,” said Ron Jacoby, vice president of Yahoo! Connected TV. “The availability of our extensive selection of TV Apps on the first Cinema TV will deliver a whole new level of interactivity and television viewing experiences to users across the country.”

Trident: The Underlying Technology

As the only company in the world with leadership positions in both set-top box and TV semiconductor solutions, Trident is driving technologies for the extended, connected home, where any content can be enjoyed on any display, from any device at any time. From spectacular 2D and 3D picture quality, stereo-sound audio, Internet-ready connectivity platforms, to the most advanced features on your television or set-top box, Trident is the driving force and underlying technology behind these exciting new capabilities.

Yahoo! Connected TV

Yahoo! Connected TV has partnerships with six of the top 10 TV manufacturers worldwide, including Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, LG, VIZIO and HiSense, and the product is available in 135 markets worldwide.