Microsoft Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic) today announced that leading consumer electronics manufacturers, integrated circuit vendors and software providers will ship new products with support for HighMAT (TM) technology. Specifically, Apex Digital Inc., Malata North America and Panasonic announced support for HighMAT on new DVD players, DVD recorders, home theater systems and portable CD players. Also, ALi Corp., Analog Devices Inc., Equator Technologies Inc., MediaTek Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and Zoran Corp. announced support for HighMAT on integrated circuits that will power next-generation DVD players and home theater appliances. In addition, software providers BHA Corp., CyberLink Corp. and Ulead Systems Inc. today announced support for HighMAT in their products.

HighMAT stands for High-performance Media Access Technology, which Microsoft and Panasonic jointly developed and introduced to the market last year to significantly improve interoperability for photos, music and video between PCs and popular electronic devices using storage media such as CDs and DVDs. To date, more than 20 companies spanning content creation software publishers, consumer device manufacturers and integrated circuit vendors have announced their plans to support HighMAT in their products.