Beacon, N.Y – February 22, 2005 – Beacon City School District (CSD) today unveiled Beacon IPTV, an advanced video network powered by the EtherneTV system from VBrick Systems, (www.VBrick.com), and TekConnect, (www.TekConnect.com) for multicasting live and on-demand video both throughout the district to its 3,600 students and via the Internet to the surrounding community. The announcement ushers Beacon CSD into a new wave of video technology swiftly being adopted as a cutting edge tool to enhance curriculum while cutting the costs of expansive video networking.

Beacon CSD is using VBrick’s EtherneTV system to simultaneously record and broadcast DVD-quality video across its Beacon IPTV network to every classroom and networked facility across its eight campuses. Students and faculty will enjoy state-of-the-art digital educational programming approved for teachers’ curriculums, student-produced news and campus-related programming, staff messages and videoconferences, as well as live cable television feeds at every desktop and network-connected television across the district. In addition, members of the surrounding communities will be able to view weather-related school updates and community programming over the Internet on a low-bandwidth government education Beacon IPTV channel.

“IP Video is the wave of the future for organizations such as ours, allowing us to advance our lesson plans and stretch our IT budget by three times,” said Charles Symon, Director of Technology for the Beacon City School District. “We are now able to present our teachers and students with a system that delivers digital video at a higher level of quality that will not diminish over time, as happens with videotape and standard cable. Our VBrick-powered IPTV system has transformed our homegrown district television network into a cutting-edge digital video system.”

Beacon CSD found it necessary to upgrade its existing system of AV carts and commercial television feeds after 10 years of wear on the aging circuit of coaxial cable and squeaky VHS video carts. The district had recently upgraded to a high-bandwidth data network capable of carrying full-screen DVD-quality video without interrupting routine academic and administrative data or Internet-related activities. Certain irreplaceable or rare educational videos also needed to be archived in a format that prevented future loss and allowed multiple teachers to access a video for a particular lesson. Additionally, the district saw a need to control the content of channels being carried into classrooms over a commercial cable feed. The EtherneTV system allows the district to store approved videos digitally for on-demand viewing, broadcast approved cable channels digitally and also multicast student and community productions to any number of sites on its network.

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