Sunplus Selects Sonic CinePlayer BD Navigator for its Blu-ray SoC

NOVATO, California — Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC), the leader in digital media software, today announced an agreement to license the Sonic® CinePlayer® BD Navigator software to Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd., one of the world’s premier consumer electronics IC designers. Already a leading vendor of chips for the DVD player market, Sunplus is integrating Sonic’s HDMV and BD-J technology to enable interactive playback and navigation in its new System-On-a-Chip (SoC) solutions aimed at the burgeoning Blu-ray Disc player market.

“Sonic’s proven technology was a natural choice as Sunplus looked to develop new chip solutions for the high-definition video playback market,” said Ho-Jung Ou, General Manager of the Home Entertainment Business Unit, Sunplus. “CinePlayer is not only reliable, but also easy to integrate into our Blu-ray IC solutions, which speeds our time to market.”

Backed by Sonic’s Hollywood-proven playback compatibility and quality, the CinePlayer BD Navigator SDK provides application developers a trouble-free way to add rich, Blu-ray Disc playback to their video applications and entertainment systems. CinePlayer-enabled products comply fully with the BD specification to offer exceptional high-definition audio, video, and interactive component playback.

“With broad expertise in interactive high-definition video and years of experience developing software for consumer electronics devices, Sonic is the ideal choice for companies entering the high-definition player market,” said Jim Taylor, chief technologist and general manager of Sonic’s Advanced Technology Group. “We are proud to be working with Sunplus, a respected leader in CE devices. As our agreement affirms, CinePlayer BD represents a compelling solution for consumer electronics component and device manufacturers wishing to compete successfully in the BD market.”

A new report from Strategy Analytics, an international research and consulting firm, forecasts nearly 30 million BD-enabled households worldwide by the end of 2008 – a number they expect to quadruple by 2012. The report also predicts shipments of 19 million BD-enabled playback devices this year. Although the group expects the majority of these units to be game consoles, they expect stand-alone BD players to become the dominant segment in 2009.