News Release：Pioneer Announces the Supply Agreement of the Advanced Analog Converter with Time Warner Cable

TOKYO, Japan, April 1st, 1998 ----- Pioneer Electronic Corporation announced that its subsidiary company in the U.S., Pioneer New Media Technologies, Inc. (California, President Tsutomu Haga ) made an agreement with Time Warner Cable for its supply of up to one million units of the new advanced analog converters by 2000. This new converter is expected to stimulate a new demand for the set-top box market for coming years.

The converter, called the 2000 series, has been developed by the Business Systems Company of Pioneer group in Japan and the system control software used by the operator has been developed by Pioneer Digital Technologies, Inc.(California, President Tatsuo Takahashi ).
The functionality test of the new system has been carried out in Houston since January in 1998 and its performance has been validated.

Pioneer Electronic Corporation entered into CATV business in 1977 for the first time and introduced the world first CATV system (QUBE) in Columbus, Ohio. Since then, the company has devoted itself to this business and has been recognized as one of the leading manufacturers in the field. This time, its technologies and know-how are highly evaluated by Time Warner Cable and in result, Pioneer and Time Warner Cable reached the agreement of the new analogue converter business . In the U.S. today, 65 million h ouseholds are viewing CATV and Time Warner Cable has obtained 13 million subscribers to be one of the biggest CATV operators in the U.S.

One of the main featutres of the new converter is that in the current generation of set-top boxes, the unit itself has to be replaced with new one, every time when new functions and service are added to the system, but in this advanced analog system, the operator can re- write the software, built-in the converter through the connecting cables with ease. Furthermore, in this system, many new functions have been added to, such as one week TV guide and other information data services.

Time Warner Cable is planning to introduce this systems into Houston and New York areas as the first step and then to expand it into other service areas. The advanced analog converter system is expected to grow toward the year of 2000 in parallel with the growth of Digital CATV system, in which Pioneer and Time Warner Cable are also jointly working in the development of the converter

Pioneer Group companies, both in Japan and in the U.S, will make continuous efforts in development of new technologies for CATV industry.