Apple's Macworld Keynote Is First Major MPEG-4 Streaming Event

July 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Approximately 50,000 people used QuickTime to watch Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) July 17 live webcast of Steve Jobs' Macworld New York 2002 keynote, which was simulcast in both QuickTime 5 and QuickTime 6. The QuickTime 6 stream was the first ever large-scale web event in the new MPEG-4 open standard and was delivered using a complete end-to-end Apple solution. Four new Apple Xserve servers using the new QuickTime Streaming Server 4.1, QuickTime Broadcaster and QuickTime 6 player software delivered MPEG-4 formatted content to 25,000 of the total viewers.

"Apple's Macworld New York keynote webcast was a major landmark in Internet streaming, one that was made possible by QuickTime 6's end-to-end support for the open standard MPEG-4," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "With MPEG-LA's recent release of reasonable licensing terms, MPEG-4 will succeed as the open format for creating and streaming content to PC's and digital devices."

"It's exciting that MPEG-4 is immediately taking off as the new industry standard for delivering high-quality video and audio," said Larry Horn, MPEG-LA's vice president of Licensing. "MPEG LA is proud to play a supporting role in providing worldwide access to this innovative new technology. With wide support from industry leaders such as Apple, we look forward to MPEG-4's availability for creating and streaming content to PCs, cell phones, PDAs and set-top boxes."

QuickTime is Apple's industry-leading, standards-based software for developing, producing and delivering high-quality audio and video over IP, wireless and broadband networks. Last year, 80 million users downloaded QuickTime Player via the Internet while tens of millions more copies were distributed via digital cameras, software titles and enhanced music CDs. QuickTime 6 is available as a free download to Macintosh and Windows users at http://www.apple.com/quicktime. QuickTime 6 was released on July 15, and Mac and Windows users have downloaded 1.5 million copies in less than seven days.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.