29 September 2003, Cleveland Ohio, USA

The superior sound and coding power of MPEG AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) in Telos’ Zephyr Xstream ISDN Codecs is winning industry professionals around the world. The latest major broadcaster to select Zephyr Xstream is NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai) — the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Japan’s oldest and largest public broadcasting network (www.nhk.or.jp).

NHK’s Zephyr Xstream purchase comprises three rack-mount Zephyrs and one Zephyr Xstream MXP, a full-featured portable ISDN transceiver that includes an integrated four-channelstereo mixer, and DSP audio processing by Omnia Audio for voice and music. NHK’s Nagoya studios will use the combination of portable and studio-style Zephyr Xstream models for remote broadcasts of news, sports and talk programming, as well as transmission of programming between NHK studio facilities.

In addition to the Zephyr Xstream family’s use of high-quality MPEG AAC coding – resulting in indistinguishable output-from-source at a data rate of only 64 kbps per channel – Zephyr includes a unique Low-Delay MPEG AAC implementation. LD-AAC delivers audio comparable to MPEG Layer 3, but shrinks encoding delay by up to 70%. This combination oflow delay is tailor-made for broadcasters who produce highly interactive remotes, virtually eliminating the annoying time-lag common when using les sophisticated coding methods, and is a key factor in NHK’s selection of Zephyr Xstream according to Hiroyuki Ishihara of Sound Craft Inc. (www.soundcraft.co.jp), Japan’s Telos representative.

“NHK produces many live two-way remotes. One of the main reasons they chose Zephyr Xstream is that it has the advanced LD-AAC algorithm,” explains Ishihara. “They love LD-AACfor its excellent sound quality and lower delay. They also like Zephyr Xstream’s user-friendly operation and operational stability.”

Telos Zephyr is the world’s most popular family of digital network transceivers. Along with CD-quality MPEG AAC and AAC-LD coding for high quality, low delay bi-directional remotes, Zephyr Xstream includes industry-standard MPEG Layer 3, Layer 2 and G.722 coding; features include MP3 streaming and decoding via IP connections, and Ethernet remote control. Additionally, Zephyr Xstream can receive POTS calls from the Zephyr Xport POTS + ISDN codec, using SpectralBandReplication aacPlus coding for FMquality audio. For more details, please visit www.zephyr.com.

Telos Systems, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with offices in Europe and Canada, is a leading manufacturer of ISDN, coded audio and telephone interface products for talk-shows, teleconferencing, audio production, remote broadcasts, and intercom applications.