Agfa Monotype to Demonstrate iType™ on Set-Top Box at NAB 2002
Font rendering subsystem integrated in ANT Fresco™ browser on Scientific-Atlanta set top box
Las Vegas, Nevada, April 8, 2002, (NAB 2002)
Agfa Monotype Corporation, a major provider of fonts and font technologies worldwide, will be showcasing its iType font rendering technology at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas, April 8-11. iType's capabilities will be demonstrated using the ANT Fresco browser on a Scientific-Atlanta (NYSE: SFA) Explorer® digital interactive set top box connected to a television monitor.
Attendees are advised to call Kathy McCarthy at 978-284-5972 to schedule a demonstration.
"Television is one of the most challenging environments for high-quality text display," said Jack Murphy, director of New Enterprises at Agfa Monotype. "With iType, OEM customers can be assured of achieving superior display quality because our fonts have been engineered specifically for enhanced readability on TV and other low-resolution devices. Now that iType can be included as part of the Fresco browser, fonts can be integrated immediately without delays associated with porting or implementation."
"ANT welcomes iType as a powerful solution to the difficult problem of rendering text efficiently on television," said Jon Hoskin, chief operating officer of ANT Limited. "Both iType and Fresco have been optimized to deliver the high standards of performance and display demanded by Scientific-Atlanta and other set top box and consumer electronics manufacturers. To make things easier, ANT's flexible and quick-to-port architecture enables our licensees to integrate superior browsing technology with the middleware of their choice."
Agfa Monotype's iType
iType is a highly compact, extremely portable font scaling technology that allows for the generation of characters at virtually any point size. By integrating iType in memory-constrained environments such as set top boxes, Internet appliances and smart phones, OEMs are able to rapidly build products that can quickly generate high-quality text for on-screen displays.
iType has two main components: a high-speed TrueType® font rasterizer and a suite of fonts. OEMs can select from four prepackaged font sets: a Microsoft® Windows®-compatible core set that provides metrically equivalent designs; a collection of high-quality, delta-hinted display fonts engineered for optimal readability on television screens; a closed caption set that meets FCC requirements (EIA-708B standard) for closed captioning on analog and digital TVs; and Agfa Monotype's stroke-based package, a set of composite Japanese, Chinese, and Korean fonts that allows OEMs to meet stringent size requirements while achieving storage savings of 90 percent. OEMs can also work with Agfa Monotype to implement custom fonts, or select from the company's comprehensive selection of over 1,300 TrueType fonts.
Additional features of iType include character caching for improved character generation performance, embedded bitmap font support for enhanced screen quality at exceptionally small point sizes, concurrent disk/ROM support for dynamically storing additional fonts, and capabilities for including special effects and characters such as the musical note used in closed captioning.
ANT Fresco Browser
ANT Fresco is a platform-independent browser, specifically designed for digital TV and other consumer electronics appliances. The core browser code resides within ANT's unique, patent-pending, three-layer software architecture, which consists of a portability environment to manage the interface to the hardware platform, an applications layer to house the browser core and other applications, and a graphical user interface layer to enable customization.
About ANT Software Limited
ANT plc (www.antplc.com) is a leading provider of digital TV client and consumer electronic software solutions. ANT's unique client solutions allow robust and consistent delivery of digital-media, user interfaces, interactive services and applications to the TV and portable media devices. ANT enables service providers to efficiently create and deploy successful solutions to the market that deliver high value and clear differentiation.
ANT's products are pre-integrated with many industry-leading solutions and are based upon open standards, enabling low-risk, cost-effective roll-out of services, while ensuring flexible client hardware choice with efficient bill of materials. ANT software has been extensively deployed by customers throughout the world including Chunghwa Telecom, Foxconn, France Telecom, Humax, LG/Nortel, Philips, Sagem, Samsung, SaskTel, Telecom Italia and Thomson.
ANT plc's shares are listed on AIM, a London Stock Exchange regulated market, under the ticker ANTP (Reuters: ANTP.L, Bloomberg: ANTP.LN).
About Agfa Monotype Corporation
Agfa Monotype Corporation is a major provider of digital content for graphics professionals. The company is a recognized leader in fonts and font technologies and an innovator in color and screening technologies. Agfa Monotype is a wholly owned subsidiary of Agfa Corporation and is part of Agfa's Graphic Systems business unit. Agfa Corporation is part of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, one of the world's leading imaging companies, headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium. Agfa develops, produces and markets analogue and digital systems, primarily for the graphics, medical imaging, non-destructive testing and consumer imaging and photography markets. Worldwide, sales for 2000 were 5.26 billion euros. In the U.S., Agfa is headquartered in Ridgefield Park, N.J. and employs approximately 4,000 people. Additional information about Agfa Monotype and its products can be found on the company's Web sites at www.agfamonotype.com and www.fonts.com.
Trademarks
ANT, the ANT logo, Galio, Fresco and PurePlay are all trademarks or registered trademarks of ANT Software Limited. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
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