Escient Enhances Fireball Software

Reprinted from an Escient Convergence press release:

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - August 27, 2002 - Escient Convergence Corp., a leading
force in developing innovative products that combine consumer electronics
with the Internet to enhance the home entertainment experience, today
announced that the company is further augmenting the already formidable
range of features of its groundbreaking digital and physical music system,
FireBall, with the introduction of a new version of software. The new
software will ship on all new FireBalls. Existing users will receive the
new software automatically and free of charge, when their installed
FireBall system performs its weekly software update.

This new software will provide both existing and new FireBall customers
with additional features, including the unique ability to not only view,
but now sort music by their album covers. FireBall now represents the only
available music management and digital hard drive product to offer this
compelling capability. As a result of this upgrade, users can now peruse
their music library by viewing album covers in addition to searching by
album title, song title, artist name, genre and playlist.

In addition to the new album cover management features, numerous
integration features requested by Escient Dealers have been added to ensure
that FireBall’s interoperability with other industry control and audio
distribution systems is optimum. This latest software expands both the
RS-232 and IR commands for FireBall, providing discrete codes for a wide
variety of functions, such as the play modes, view modes, and more.

Escient also offers convenient, pre-built RS-232 and IR control modules for
leading control products such as AMX, Crestron, Philips Pronto, Sonance,
Niles, and RTI, among others, further simplifying product integration.
FireBall supports products from these companies, and Dealers can quickly
download these modules directly from the Escient Convergence website
(www.escientconvergence.com). New integration and control modules are
added in an ongoing basis to this website. The new software version also
adds the ability to control FireBall over a TCP/IP network, when an
external control system is used, a function that will alleviate time and
cost for many installations.

This software also includes FireBall’s compatibility with Sony’s newer
CDP-CX455 changer. Additional features include the ability for
user-entered information on custom created CDs to be encoded onto the disc
and displayed on other players that have a display.

About FireBall:
FireBall is a complete music management product that provides a powerful,
yet simple-to-use, interface for finding and playing CDs, MP3 collections,
and pre-set, style-based Internet radio stations (such as jazz, blues,
rock, and more), now also including the high-speed Sirius satellite
stations. The revolutionary product allows direct access to music stored
on the hard drive, CDs, connected, supported mega-disc CD changers,
music-recognition services from Gracenote’s CDDB database, Internet radio
stations, and on-going, enhanced entertainment services from sister company
OpenGlobe, Inc. OpenGlobe’s entertainment services are delivered through
FireBall, allowing users to learn about artists and their influences,
explore new music from the same or similar artists, and expand their
collection by easily purchasing new music.

Much more than simply a hard-drive-based music product, FireBall
identifies, burns, catalogs, and manages both physical discs and
digital-music files and has a CD-R/RW single internal drive for playback
and for copying music at six times (6x) normal speed. Offering a 40 GB hard
drive, the product delivers selectable compression rates up to 320 kbps,
and provides over 850 hours of music at it’s lowest compression rate.

With a remarkable ability to connect to a variety of home entertainment
devices, FireBall puts all of a user’s music in one place - regardless of
the music’s format. Multiple FireBalls can be networked together for music
throughout a home with existing phone-line wiring or Ethernet, and each
user can have his or her own independent interface to all of the available
music. For more information on FireBall, please visit Escient Convergence
at www.escientconvergence.com. FireBall is currently available at a
suggested retail price of $1,999.