[July 26, 2005] Inlet Technologies Secures $5 Million Series B Funding; Expansion Capital Follows Second Generation Product Release, Industry Validation and Customer Success Tweet RALEIGH, N.C. --(Business Wire)-- July 26, 2005 -- Inlet Technologies, a provider of professional encoding solutions for next-generation content creation and distribution, today announced that it has closed a $5 million round of venture financing. Inlet's Series B investors include Technology Venture Partners (TVP), Telecommunications Development Fund (TDF) and North Carolina-based Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC). Inlet intends to use this capital to extend the market reach and penetration of its advanced encoding technology in the fast-growing digital media market. This patent-pending technology provides significant productivity benefits to customers who create content for distribution via video on demand, and next generation DVDs. Inlet will build upon its existing sales and marketing success in the post production market and accelerate its entry into the broadcast and cable markets where the benefits of its advanced encoding deliver significant bandwidth and cost savings. "Inlet has already achieved significant milestones in a relatively short period of time, including a solid product pipeline, customer success and a top-notch management team," stated Bryson Hollimon, managing general partner of Technology Venture Partners. "We are very excited about the market potential and the opportunity to help Inlet deliver high-value products and create a high-value company." "The transition to digital television is inevitable and is in fact, progressing rapidly," explained Jim Pastoriza, managing partner, TDF. "We are also seeing increasing amounts of content created in High Definition. However, there are still missing pieces of the value chain and Inlet solves the crucial problem of 'time to quality output.'" "For years we had been looking for an application to ease the bandwidth bottleneck that HD content creates, especially in electronic news gathering and mobile production," said Jimmy Goodmon, vice president and general manager, CBC New Media Group LLC. "It was obvious to us early on that HD would cause similar problems for other companies throughout various levels of the industry. Television is the business we know best, and when the Inlet team approached us, we were confident that they had the capability to produce a rock solid product that could solve our bottleneck problems and also generate interest throughout the marketplace." The funding follows on the heels of strong momentum for Inlet. The company recently released the second generation of its Fathom advanced encoding solution, and secured key industry validation as one of millimeter magazine's NAB 2005 Pick Hits. Inlet has also built a solid customer foundation with customers including Akimbo, CinemaNow, Microsoft Studios and others. "Inlet has come a long way in a short period of time, and we are truly excited about moving ahead more rapidly with 'smart money' behind us," explained Neal Page, Inlet CEO. "It was important for us to add financial partners to the team who have a strong national network of business leaders, a solid grasp of the market opportunity and the depth and breadth of experience to help guide the company to the next level. It is a real privilege to have Technology Venture Partners, Telecommunications Development Fund, and Capitol Broadcasting as financial partners." About Capitol Broadcasting Company Capitol Broadcasting Company, Inc. is a diversified communications company which owns and/or operates WRAL-TV , WRAL Digital , WRAL-FM , Microspace , the North Carolina News Network, CBC New Media Group LLC and Wolfpack Sports Marketing in Raleigh, NC; WJZY-TV and WWWB-TV in Charlotte, NC; WILM-TV in Wilmington, NC; WRAZ-TV and The Durham Bulls in Durham, NC; the Myrtle Beach Pelicans Baseball Club in Myrtle Beach, SC; and various interests in North Carolina. About Telecommunications Development Fund The TDF is a venture capital fund with $50M under management and focused on investments in the Communications Sector. Based in Washington, D.C., the fund is focused on technology and services companies in the seed and early stages and in select later stages. About Technology Venture Partners Technology Venture Partners (TVP) is an $85 million venture capital fund investing in early to mid-stage venture opportunities in the areas of networking, communications, software and semiconductor technologies. TVP's investment focus is concentrated around high-growth opportunities in areas such as enterprise applications, network infrastructure, network management and security, VoIP chipsets, software and IT infrastructure. Technology Venture Partners is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. About Inlet Technologies Inlet Technologies provides award-winning professional encoding solutions for next-generation content distribution. Inlet's Optimized Compression, Encoding and Analysis (OCEAN(TM)) platform combines advanced compression formats with a proprietary encoding engine and analysis tools to enable intelligent, real-time encoding of high-definition content for the post-production and broadcast markets. Inlet's Fathom(TM) professional VC-1 encoder delivers high-performance advanced compression to the post-production market and was recently selected as one of millimeter magazine's NAB 2005 Pick Hits. Inlet Technologies is based in Raleigh, NC. For more information, visit www.inlethd.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]