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Sharp Technology Ventures Offers Video Summarization Software for Commercialization by Third Parties

Sharp targets sports and entertainment industry with HiMPACT™ Sports, to give viewers more sporting events in less time.

CAMAS, Wash., March 23, 2004 – Sharp Technology Ventures, the business development group initiative for Sharp Laboratories of America, announced today its plans to release a novel video summarization software technology for commercialization by third parties. Called HiMPACT™ Sports, the software is one of the first proprietary technologies to be offered for commercialization by the newly established organization, Sharp Technology Ventures. HiMPACT Sports is a patented technology, developed by researchers at Sharp Laboratories of America, and is ideally suited to content developers in the sports and entertainment industry, including broadcast media, online content distributors, and more.

HiMPACT Sports includes algorithms that automatically interpret and detect every key event in a video clip, and tag each event with a unique identifier that can be searched on or edited into a video digest. One application for HiMPACT Sports is for summarizing sports broadcast video, such as every play in football or every pitch in baseball. This technology can be used to summarize multiple sports, including soccer, baseball and more, to provide a viewer with a summary of the key moments in a single game. For the Japanese market, HiMPACT Sports can be applied to Sumo wrestling. Beyond sports and entertainment, HiMPACT also can be applied to other industries, such as security and surveillance.

“HiMPACT Sports adapts video to fit within the busy lifestyle of a viewer, so they can watch their favorite sports in a condensed timeframe,” said Ibrahim Sezan, Ph.D., the director of Sharp Labs’ Information Systems Technologies department where the HiMPACT Sports technology was developed. “For example, our technology can extract the meaningful plays in a three hour baseball game and distill the content into a 45 minute digest.  There is tremendous value to busy viewers and sports fans who want to watch more and more sports.”

The HiMPACT Sports technology has already garnered tremendous interest from the professional sports, broadcast and entertainment industry, with organizations like Dixon Sports Computing and IBE, Inc. validating the technology. 

About Sharp Technology Ventures

Sharp Laboratories of America through its Sharp Technology Ventures initiative pursues business development opportunities with partners who are developing new products or process technologies. The intellectual property is focused in the core research areas of digital audio/video systems, multimedia and wireless communications, digital imaging systems, information technology systems, integrated circuit process technology and liquid crystal display process technology. Sharp Technology Ventures leverages the brand strength and technical expertise of Sharp Corporation, and thereputation for innovation from Sharp Laboratories of America, where its technologies are developed. 

For more information about the Sharp Technology Ventures initiative, please contact 360-817-7410, or visit www.sharptechnologyventures.com.

Media contact:
Becky Engel
Young & Roehr Group
503.222.0626 ext. 711

Industry comments about HiMPACT Sports:

"Sharp's HiMPACT system is amazing technology and fits perfectly with Dixon Logging products, seamlessly adding value to our product and saving loads of time for the customer."
Michael Dixon, President, Dixon Sports Computing

“In these days, broadcasters who have many outputs like broadband, DVD, mobile, etc., have to produce contents for those outputs with small budget.  HiMPACT Sports will provide such broadcasters of a quick and effortless way to make a digest video.”
Noboru Takematsu, CTO, IBE, Inc.