Zodiac Interactive Announces EBIF Players for Tru2way™ and PowerTV

Ensequence Create Authoring Software Supports New Zodiac Player

VALLEY STREAM, NY — Zodiac Interactive today announced the release of an ETV/EBIF™ (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) player for PowerTV and the tru2way™. With EBIF as a common approach for interactive TV and advanced advertising, this player will help advance the deployment of standards-based interactive television experiences. Zodiac Interactive and Ensequence have been working together to ensure that Ensequence’s Create authoring software fully supports the EBIF player for PowerTV, and that the Player is fully compliant with the CableLabs ETV/EBIF IO4 specification.

Canoe Ventures, the joint venture among six cable operators to develop advanced advertising services and technologies, has adopted EBIF as the initial platform for the rollout of addressable and interactive TV advertising. EBIF players are required to reach more than 40 million existing digital cable TV subscribers. Zodiac’s EBIF player for Scientific Atlanta’s (Cisco) PowerTV set-top box is widely available today and has been successfully tested with multiple interactive TV experiences, which were developed for the EBIF standard. The company is also planning to make a tru2way player available in the first quarter of 2009.

“As one of the leading application developers of tru2way technology, Zodiac has supported CableLabs initiatives for many years, and we are now pleased to also support EBIF through a generally available EBIF player,” said Michael Rivkin, Zodiac’s CEO. “The EBIF player we’re announcing today is the lightest, least memory intensive, and highest performing player on the market, and it’s 100% compliant to the EBIF specification.”

EBIF, which has been adopted by CableLabs®, a non-profit research and development consortium for cable telecommunications technologies, is fully deployable on all the digital set-top boxes in subscribers’ homes today. Furthermore, Comcast and Time Warner Cable recently announced plans to support interactive TV standards on more than 10 million set-top boxes by the end of 2009, encouraging a flurry of interactive television development for the EBIF standard. Ensequence is the premier authoring solution for EBIF and supports the complete set of EBIF players and distribution systems in use today.

“We’re excited to see broad adoption of the EBIF standard across the industry, and we are proud to support Zodiac’s new EBIF player,” said Dalen Harrison, Ensequence CEO. “This is another example of how Ensequence is bringing the most dynamic and engaging viewing experiences to the broadest audience across the widest range of set-top boxes. Ensequence software and services enable distributors to build a scalable interactive TV business, which dramatically increases viewer engagement and advertising revenues.”