DVD PLAYER BASE TO INCREASE FIVE-FOLD IN ASIA-PACIFIC OVER THE NEXT FOUR YEARS TOTAL CONSUMER SPENDING ON VIDEO SOFTWARE FORECAST TO REACH $12

London, February 5, 2003 โ € "DVD ready to sweep the video business in the Asia-Pacific in the same way it does in the U.S. and Europe, according to a new study by Screen Digest. Despite the fact that the digital format faces competition from another disc-based video format โ € "โ € Video CD" in much of Southeast Asia. Helen Davis Jayalath, Screen Digest senior analyst home entertainment, lighting, โ € oeïñ the shorter term, the VCD player will continue to prove popular with many Asia-Pacific consumers because of low cost and wide availability of cheap VCD software. However, the DVD is already becoming the format of choice in the mature markets of Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In the longer term, the DVD-Video player increasingly important in the whole region, our forecasts indicate that by the end of 2006 Asia-Pacific 139m homes will be a DVD-Video player or recorder โ € "more than five times as much on the end of 2002 and have nearly 20% of all TV households in the region. โ € New course means additional hardware to software sales, and total consumer spending on DVD software is expected to increase by 165% over the same period, generating an estimated $ 8.2bn by 2006. This will partly fueled by an expected decline of 16% in the average selling price of a DVD in the same period. The expansion of the DVD industry will boost total consumer spending on all video software (DVD, VCD and VHS) with more than 40%. By the end of the period, DVDs will account for almost 70% of consumer spending, an increase of just over one third in 2002. The sheer size of the Japanese DVD market will mean the Asia-Pacific video-business, says dominate David Scott, author of the report. โ € œJapan remains one of the world's largest video-only territory after the U.S. market and third largest (after the United Kingdom) for Hollywood product. However, China and India have two of the largest potential consumer markets worldwide and the demand for legitimate video product grows in these areas โ €. According to the report, India - along with South Korea and the Philippines - is probably of particular importance for the U.S. studios and other video distributors in the next few years, the revenues of the distributors in the country is expected to increase by almost 130% between 2001 and 2006. For Immediate Release: February 5, 2003 www.screendigest.com 2 However, piracy remains a major threat to the potential of the Asia-Pacific business. The lack of copy protection on VCDs ensures that large numbers of counterfeit discs in the market to flood land prices, making it impossible for the beneficiaries of the increasing price of legitimate discs. Meanwhile, the availability of DVD's offers a perfect digital master criminals to copy, to ensure that the quality of the counterfeit products improves. The DVD will eventually replace both VHS and VCD. The speed with which this happens in each country will depend on how quickly DVD hardware and software decrease, combined with the effectiveness of efforts to combat trafficking in counterfeit discs. Equally important, however, the speed with which consumers in the region has become critical in their attitude towards software quality. As a result, Screen Digest provides a period of coexistence between the two disc-based formats to DVD eventually prevails in the entire Asia-Pacific region. PRESS & MEDIA CONTACT: Elizabeth Phillipson: phone +44 207 424 2820