As a sponsor of the American Pavilion at the 50th annual Cannes Film Festival, May 7 through May 18, 1997, Sun Microsystems, Inc. will demonstrate its multimedia and Internet capabilities for film and new media producers. In addition, Sun is the producer of the official American Pavilion web site, and will exclusively cybercast all of the press conferences live from the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival at web site: http://www.ampav.com .

Sun's Java(TM) technology for the film industry, offering cross-platform independence, security and reliability, will be featured at Cannes at the Sun area of the American Pavilion. "Our Cannes presence underscores our commitment to media and entertainment," said John Loiacono, Sun's director of branding and corporate communications. "Sun's Java computing approach will offer JavaSound and Java Advanced Imaging application programming interfaces (APIs), serving the film and entertainment industry the richest Internet and media applications available."

The Sun booth will feature demonstrations of Java Media APIs, VIS(TM) instruction set technology for advanced multimedia capabilities, its family of UltraSPARC(TM) platforms, and the Sun MediaCenter(TM) Video Server streaming video to clients using Java-enabled browsers as video players.

The Java Media Framework provides a unified architecture for media playbacks, capture and conferencing, while the JavaSound engine will provide mixing of multiple formats and channels of audio data and a midi synthesizer. The VIS instruction set multimedia capabilities, embedded in Sun's UltraSPARC processor, continue to be the most robust, high-performance set of multimedia extensions available for imaging, video and audio applications. Sun will also feature Internet capabilities of its network computer product, the JavaStation(TM), a low-cost alternative for Internet access. Visitors to the Sun booth will be able to use the company's technology to send a digital postcard to friends back home over the Internet, complete with a personalized photo.

"Sun Microsystems, Inc. is our dominant technology ally, and we power Internet services at our film sites with Sun(TM) servers," said Gordon Paddison, manager, interactive marketing, New Line Cinema, the leading independent motion picture studio. "We've been impressed with the quality and reliability of the products, and even more importantly, with the service and support of the Sun team; the company truly understands what we need."

Sun will be cybercasting the press conferences live at the American Pavilion for those not making the trip to Cannes. For details, log on to the American Pavilion web site, http://www.ampav.com and click on schedules.

Sun's focus on Digital Media Management (DMM) solutions help media producers leverage the network to manage and distribute video, audio, photographic and text-based content. To learn more about Sun and DMM solutions for media and entertainment, visit our online Digital Media Solutions Center at http://www.sun.com/media .