Acorn's TVCentric Technology at the heart of the TV industry Comdex-Japan April 8-11, 1997 Hotel New Otani Makuhari 2-2 Hibino Mihama-ku Chiba 261 Japan Comdex-Japan, Tokyo, April 8-11, 1997 - Acorn demonstrates its TVCentricTM technology and the first working 16bit Asian font technology on network computers. After recent commercial successes and the appointment of an agent in Japan, Acorn will introduce and demonstrate its 16bit (double byte) font support at Comdex-Japan 97. Several Asian fonts including Kanji will be supported within the initial release which will provide system wide support for RISC OS applications, including Acorn's web browser and word-processor technology. Acorn's TVCentricTM technology is already widely licensed and is ideally suited to interlaced displays such as televisions. The technology includes support for anti-aliased, scalable outline fonts for high definition text of variable size, anti-twitter software for stable on screen text, images and video and graphic overlay support which allow semi-transparent digitally generated graphics to be displayed over analogue television displays. Combining Acorn's TVCentricTM technology with that of Bitstream, Acorn has been able to ensure that extensive libraries of Asian character fonts are available to Acorn's OEM technology licensees for use with PAL/NTSC based displays. Commenting on the development, Kevin Coleman, Head of Group Marketing at Acorn, said: "There has been great demand for Asian font technology for some time and the problem up until now has been achieving high quality display on TVs without incurring significant additional product cost. Acorn's TVCentricTM technology with 16bit font support provides a solution which is both low cost and high quality and as a result has been very warmly received." Acorn's 16bit font technology is licensable now and can be distributed as an optional extra which forms part of a RISC OS binary image. As a result of this development, OEMs can produce a wide range of products targeted at broad markets with the same core operating system. Notes to editors: Bitstream TrueDoc Imaging Technology is the latest product of Bitstream's years of experience in the Digital type industry. TrueDoc (PFR) fonts (Portable Font Resources) are generally the smallest and highest quality scalable fonts available for Embedded Systems and the TrueDoc Character Shape Player (CSP) which converts these fonts into characters seen on the screen or display is again generally accepted as the smallest and quickest 'player' for embedded systems, offering full 16 bit character support and various output modules including 'Greyscaling'. Bitstream TrueDoc Imaging Technology supports bitmap printers, postscript and other printing languages. The stable source code is "C". About Acorn: Acorn Computer Group plc, head-quartered in Cambridge, UK, is one of the world's leading developers and suppliers of innovative technology designs and consultancy. Acorn is at the core of some of the world's best digital technology products. TRAMPAMPOLINE Workstations - Table of contents Acorn Group | Consultancy | Software © Acorn Computers Ltd 1998