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Distance learning with a SODA

Video Systems - January 1, 2000

According to a Perey Research & Consulting study of Fortune 1,000 companies, 80% of respondents would use video communications if distribution were easier. PRIMEDIA Workplace Learning (PWPL) is one company that has found an easier way to distribute video. A leading provider of industry-specific education, information, and training, PWPL is using technology developed by SightPath, Waltham, MA, to create a new Internet-based curriculum that utilizes TV-quality digital video.

SightPath's SODA (Self-Organizing Distributed Appliances) allows organizations like PWPL to create virtual cable TV channels with full-screen, 30frames/s, MPEG-1 video on the Internet. PWPL started developing pilot programs featuring SightPath's Internet media appliances and scalable, self-organizing distribution architecture for distance learning in the fall of 1999 and will employ the technology in its Healthcare and Industrial Services Technical Safety training curriculum in the first quarter of 2000.

PWPL's Internet training programs enable subscribers to fulfill federal- and state-mandated training and continuing education requirements, and to earn college credit. The company delivers products to approximately 9,000 subscribers and several hundred individual tape customers each month. Approximately 200 hours of original programming are created every month at the company's state-of-the-art production facility in Carrollton, TX. PWPL is a subsidiary of PRIMEDIA, the parent company of Intertec Publishing, which owns Video Systems.

Chris Bond, vice president of technology development at PWPL, says the Internet has taken hold as the preferred communications channel for corporate audiences across the country and SightPath's SODA system has allowed his company to keep up with this demand. "PRIMEDIA Workplace Learning has always prided itself on the use of leading-edge technologies to deliver our products and services to our customers," he says. "Our relationship with SightPath reaffirms our commitment to stay on the leading edge. With Sight-Path, we'll be able to deliver the high-quality video demanded by our customers, right to their desktops, using the efficiencies of the Internet."

Specifically, SightPath's system enables businesses to communicate with TV-quality MPEG video and any other high-bandwidth media file, using the Internet for delivery. To access media, the viewer simply goes to the company's website, in this case www.pwpl.com, and clicks on the SightPath-enabled video link. Full-motion, full-resolution video plays through standard web browsers and media players right at the viewer's desktop. There is no new software to learn and no local administration required at the end-user site.

Developed by a team led by MIT Professor David Gifford, SightPath's network-aware replication and content routing solution enables corporations, media professionals, educators, and government agencies to integrate any high-bandwidth media into existing Intranet and extranet websites, providing a high-impact TV experience to end-users, according to the company. Jim Ricotta, co-founder and CEO of Sight-Path, explains: "SightPath offers a simple, affordable solution for streaming high-bandwidth media files without complex servers, without any new desktop software, and without jeopardizing the network. We plan to bring the vision of 'cable TV for the Internet' to corporate consumers, as well as offer content providers an attractive new distribution channel for reaching target audiences."

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