TELE-TV Launches Digital Service Bureau

September 5, 1996

TELE-TV Launches Digital Service Bureau

Digital Television Provider Offers Multiple Encoding
Services to Third-party Clients

RESTON, VA -- TELE-TV Systems, the systems development
and integration
unit of TELE-TV, announced that its Digital Service Bureau is open for
third-party business to serve a variety of encoding needs. "We are
now
offering our proven services, demonstrated over the last 20 months, to
industry customers," said Ed Grebow, President of TELE-TV Systems.
TELE-TV is a media and technology company created by a partnership of
subsidiaries of Bell Atlantic, NYNEX and Pacific Telesis.

The Digital Service Bureau prepares standard video programming, movies
and syndicated material for digital retrieval and playback. In the
last 20 months of operation, it has encoded over 135,000 minutes of
video, the equivalent of more than 1,200 full-length motion pictures.

"We have engineered and implemented a unique combination of system,
process, and staff design that allows us to deliver a high-quality
product while maintaining high throughput and cost efficiency," said
Rich Schmeltz, Managing Director of TELE-TV Systems' Digital Services
Bureau. "We back this combination with responsive customer service
and a quality guarantee, because a satisfied customer is not an extra
cost option."

The Service Bureau currently services three platforms: the Bell
Atlantic Video Systems' Stargazer interactive television market trial;
Pacific Bell Video Services' Hybrid Fiber/Coax efforts; and
preparation of content for the partner companies' MMDS service launch.

"The variety of our current project base demonstrates our
flexibility," said Grebow. "We can take MPEG standard and
format it
to meet your system requirements, whatever they are, to assure
compatibility and compliance with your system's constraints."

The Service Bureau intends to leverage the expertise it has gained
from working with its three partners and apply it to other industries.
The Service Bureau will target wireless clients; telephone lines and
other wired connections; clients with archival requirements; the
business community via training videos and presentations; and the
education community through interactive classrooms and televised
courses.

The facility is encoding on average 10,000 minutes per month and has
the capability to encode 20,000 minutes. Four encoding rooms have
been built, and the Digital Service Bureau can make rapid capacity
adjustments to meet the demands of a growing industry, to more than
double the facility's output to 50,000 minutes per month.

Each title to be encoded is assigned a highly-skilled Compression
Engineer, who employs proprietary technology and processes from the
Service Bureau's "tool kit" to optimize quality on a
title-by-title,
often scene-by-scene, basis. "We treat every title as a custom
project, so we select the best individual solution for each
project,"
said Schmeltz. "Our techniques have evolved beyond industry
standards."

Programming is encoded into either MPEG-1* or MPEG-2 formats, as
determined by the client's video delivery environment. The encoded
video is then recorded on an 8mm or DLT tape cassette and downloaded
onto a video server for playback on demand. The encoded cassette is
placed in a secure vault with the original source material.

Because current industry MPEG standards vary widely, the Service
Bureau has developed solutions required to make its encoded content
compatible with a wide range of delivery platforms.

"We are marketing a solution, not a commodity," said Grebow.
The
Service Bureau has devised encoding solutions to accommodate multiple
service platforms, set-top boxes, data rates, video resolutions and
audio sample rates. For service information, call the TELE-TV Systems
Digital Service Bureau toll-free at 1-888-2-ENCODE.

TELE-TV, based in New York with offices in Los Angeles and San Ramon,
California, and Reston, Virginia, was created by its partners to
spearhead their entry into the video entertainment and information
markets. TELE-TV Systems is the unit that assembles and integrates
the technology needed to develop and deliver video services. TELE-TV
Media is the unit that acquires, creates, packages and markets
programming for new video services. TELE-TV is a partnership of
subsidiaries of Bell Atlantic
(NYSE:BEL), NYNEX (NYSE:NYN) and Pacific
Telesis (NYSE:PAC). TELE-TV Systems is based in Reston, VA, with
offices in San Ramon, CA. TELE-TV Media is based in Los Angeles.

• MPEG: Motion Picture Experts Group, referring to an
  internationally accepted standard for using data compression
  techniques to prepare video content for air or wire transmission.
  MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are the two most widely accepted MPEG standards.

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Media contact:

Larry Plumb (703) 708-4360
lawrence.d.plumb@bvs.com