Industry Leaders Join Together to Strengthen the Digital Camera Ecosystem

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), an association dedicated to recordable optical storage technologies and products, and its MPV Committee today announced the first Digital Camera Plugfest on October 17 & 18, 2004, bringing together leading camera and consumer electronics device manufactures to test media sharing compatibility. The goal of the Digital Camera Plugfest is to improve the consumer experience of transferring digital photos and media collections to and from digital cameras and devices such as DVD players, personal media players, camera phones, portable media, photo software applications and printers.

The Digital Camera Plugfest is scheduled for October 17 from 4 - 9 p.m. and October 18 from 8 - 11:30 a.m. at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, in conjunction with the OSTA Optical Storage Symposium (OSS), which is being held Oct. 18 and 19 at the same location. Both OSTA Members and Non-Members who are engineers and marketing professionals are invited to bring their non-PC electronics devices and participate in the Digital Camera Plugfest at no charge. The OSS event is co-located with the Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) Industry Forum to enable attendees of both events to participate in sessions from the two conferences and selected joint activities.

"The Digital Camera Plugfest is designed to support the rapid expansion of the digital camera ecosystem, as slide shows, photo applications and interaction among non-PC devices increases," said Parker Lee chairman of OSTA. "Manufacturers are looking to industry standards, such as USB and MPV, combined with events like this to help ensure compatibility between numerous devices. Plugfest provides both a forum for discussion and a hands-on opportunity to test digital camera interactions with multiple devices in a short period of time."

"We are looking forward to the opportunity to test our personal media player photo edition platform with various cameras, DVD players and televisions," stated Michael Maia, vice president of sales and marketing for PortalPlayer, Inc. "We look forward to spending time testing and networking with industry leaders such as Olympus and Sonic Solutions."

About Optical Storage Technology Association
The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) was incorporated as an international trade association in 1992 to promote the use of recordable optical technologies and products. The organization's membership includes optical product manufacturers and resellers from three continents, representing more than 85 percent of worldwide writable optical product shipments. They work to shape the future of the industry through regular meetings of DVD Compatibility, Commercial Optical Storage Applications (COSA), Marketing, MPV (MusicPhotoVideo), Planning and UDF committees. Interested companies worldwide are invited to join the organization and participate in its programs by contacting an OSTA representative at 408-253-3695, by fax at 408-253-9938, or by addressing its Web site at http://www.osta.org .