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Grass Valley Announces Collaborative Development Effort with Avid to Integrate Infinity Series with Avid Editing Systems (11/5/2006)

Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS) today announced a collaborative development effort with Avid Technology, Inc. to provide interoperability between the Grass Valley(tm) Infinity Series of IT-immersed digital media camcorders, digital media recorders, and removable media, and Avid(r) digital nonlinear editing systems.

The collaborative development effort includes Avid's participation in the Grass Valley Open Alliance Partner (OAP) initiative, which supports new, more open and more flexible approaches to newsgathering and field production. By participating in the OAP initiative, Avid plans to work with Grass Valley to create a tightly integrated workflow between the Infinity Series products and Avid editing systems. This integration means that broadcasters and video professionals can look forward to using the Infinity series of products with Avid's industry-leading editing solutions.

The Grass Valley Infinity Series of products complements Avid's NLE systems by allowing users to efficiently edit material acquired with the Infinity camcorder and removable media products (REV PRO drives and disks, professional-grade, solid-state CompactFlash, or USB storage devices).

"We're thrilled that a leader in digital nonlinear editing technology such as Avid, which is at the core of professional digital video production and newsroom production today, has joined us in supporting the Infinity Series," said Marc Valentin, president of the Grass Valley business within Thomson. "Avid's support sends a clear message to the industry that this open, flexible, IT-based approach is being supported to address a variety of production processes."

"Avid is working with Thomson to make sure our customers always have the ability to choose their ingest formats based on their needs and preferences," said James Frantzreb, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Avid Broadcast and Workgroups." Integrating full IT connectivity, compression choices, true contribution-quality high-definition format support, and the unique ability to freely use off-the-shelf removable recording media such as REV PRO(tm) cartridges or standard, professional grade CompactFlash memory, the Infinity Series of digital media camcorders and digital media recorders is at the core of the OAP program.

www.thomsongrassvalley.com

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