Sand Video to Demonstrate First-Ever Real Time High Definition H.264 Decoder at 2003 Consumer Electronics Show

ANDOVER, MA ‚ January 6, 2003 ‚ Sand Video, Inc. Sand Video, Inc. announced it would demonstrate its high definition H.264 video decoder this week during the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The Company's demonstration is an industry first, extending Sand Video's lead in next generation digital video compression, a market analysts such as IDC, Dataquest, In-Stat and CIBC have projected to be valued at more than 200 million units and $2.3 billion by 2005.

Sand Video said product development is on schedule and discussions with potential OEMs are taking place that should see its full silicon based codec available in consumer products by early 2004. Sand Video's H.264 products are ideally suited for consumer electronics such as DVDs, set-top-boxes, digital cameras and camcorders, and HDTV. The technology can also be applied to Internet and broadcast applications, such as streaming video, video conferencing, and digital video-on-demand.

"Our engineering team is comprised of a talented blend of ASIC and algorithm designers who have solved the complexity of the new H.264 standard, creating a new architecture that will bring the advantages of next generation high definition video compression to bear in the consumer and commercial markets," said Peter Besen, president and CEO, Sand Video. "Our leadership position in the field of digital video compression is pushing the limits of this important technology and is setting the pace for innovation that will result in dramatic improvements in digital video performance and image quality."

The complexity of the new H.264 standard requires a completely new architecture to fully realize its performance benefits ‚ a 2x-3x coding gain over current standards. Sand Video's implementation of H.264 provides the full compression benefit of the standard while maintaining complete backwards compatibility with the MPEG standards currently used in todayís consumer electronics.

About Sand Video, Inc.: Sand Video is a fabless semiconductor manufacturer focused on developing and marketing superior next generation, standards-based semiconductor video compression technology for a broad range of video applications. Sand Video is a privately held, venture-backed company based in Andover, Mass. For more information on Sand Video, visit www.sandvideo.com.