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New York, NY, November 23, 2000: Viewers tuned in to either CBS News or Univision's coverage of the presidential elections were watching vizrt's solutions, producing all the election night graphics for both networks. CBS, a long-time customer of vizrt and Univison a new customer used the complete graphic package extensively during all the election coverage.

Mark Harris, Director of News Systems and Engineering, CBS said "This year's election put an extra level of work on our equipment - with the broadcast on the air, live, for 12 hours. Since the vizrt solution is also used by our artists for ‘The Early Show,' ‘CBS Evening News,' and ‘CBS Market watch,' our artists have great familiarity with these tools, and that allows them to be very flexible and creative in their work. And when it comes time to do something as intense as election graphics, having that experience on this software is invaluable."

The news department of Univision Network, the largest national Hispanic broadcasting network, also generated the entire graphic look of its nationwide presidential election night coverage using vizrt's vi[z] modelling real-time modelling and rendering solution for 3D and 2D graphics. Univision's election coverage on November 7th marked the first time the broadcaster had utilized vizrt software for graphic creation and production and the first time Univision was able to animate real-time 3D graphics on-air.

CBS, a long-time customer of vizrt running vi[z] modeling and vi[z] content pilot for CBS News and CBS Sports, used vizrt solutions extensively for CBS News' graphics broadcast on election night. vi[z] modeling real-time modeling and rendering solution for 3D and 2D graphics and vi[z] content pilot for the composition, database management and playback of graphics were both used throughout the broadcast to create and render all of the network's maps, charts and projected results. CBS News used their own SGI based equipment, as well as two of CBS Sports' computers through its existing corporate network for the broadcast.

The flexibility of the vizrt solutions allowed CBS News to custom write a proprietary interface to drive the computers in the exact way the network's coverage required. "One of the reasons we selected vizrt's again was based on its flexibility of design and control," said Harris. "With all of the election data coming from external sources that changes constantly, we appreciate the controllability vizrt software provides. The software can be easily controlled externally, which is critical in election coverage."

The news department of Univision Network, the largest national Hispanic broadcasting network, also generated the entire graphic look of its nationwide presidential election night coverage using vizrt's vi[z] modeling real-time modeling and rendering solution for 3D and 2D graphics. Univision's election coverage on November 7th marked the first time the broadcaster had utilized vizrt software for graphic creation and production and the first time Univision was able to animate real-time 3D graphics on-air.

Real-time 3D graphics depicting all of the night's electoral projections, the electoral maps, results and polling were generated with the vizrt software. vizrt solution was running on its unique Windows NT based OC as well as SGI computers. When Univision's election coverage broke away for local updates, the graphics for the localized west coast broadcasts were run from the NT computer, and those for the rest of the country were generated through an SGI.

Univision was looking for a new, updated graphic look for their elections coverage that employed real-time 3D animation. Univision had approximately two weeks prior to election night to become familiar with the software, and election night was the first time the vizrt software was used on-air.

Univision displayed all of its candidate projections with real-time 3D animated graphics. The real-time aspect of vizrt's software enabled the artists at Univision to instantly animate and select the order of the graphics, an element crucial in dealing with news as time-sensitive as election results.

"The US market size potential for our solutions, is tremendous. We're very pleased to have been a part of CBS and Univision's election night broadcasts," said Shlomo Nimrodi, vizrt President and CEO. "I'm especially pleased with the audience acceptance of this extensive usage of powerful graphics tools, by this two very successful networks. It proved again the need for easy to use and operate tools that enable to create, manage and deliver Template based On-Air broadcast graphics. We look forward to the continuous work with Univision and CBS again."