FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ESCIENT®’S AFFORDABLE SE-SERIES FIREBALL™ PRODUCTS BRING ADVANCED DVD AND MUSIC MANAGEMENT WITHIN THE REACH OF MORE CONSUMERS THAN EVER BEFORE

-- The SE-80 Music Manager and SE-D1 DVD and CD Manager Lets Even More Users “Take Control” of Their Entire Music and Movie Collections --

LAS VEGAS, NV, January 5, 2006 - Escient, the pioneer in digital media management, is bringing its award-winning Fireball media management capabilities within reach of more consumers than ever before with its high-value, high performance SE-Series products. The new Escient FireBall SE-80 Music Manager and FireBall SE-D1 DVD and Music Manager are being demonstrated in the Marantz booth at CES 2006 (South Hall Booth #20407). With suggested retail prices of just $999 each, these SE-Series models bring the most powerful features of Escient’s award-winning Fireball media management systems within reach of more music lovers and home theater enthusiasts than ever before.

Both SE-Series products incorporate the most popular features of Escient’s more expensive FireBall Media Managers, including: highly reliable operation, intuitive on-screen user interfaces for browsing, playing, and managing digital music, DVD, and CD collections. Features such as automatic disc recognition, free Internet Radio, network file sharing, iPod and iTunes support, web browser control and streaming, automatic Internet updating, and multi-zone support are all part of the SE-Series products.

Fireball SE-80 Digital Music Manager
The Escient Fireball SE-80 is an 80 GB Internet-enabled music server that seamlessly integrates into any existing audio system and lets users access and manage their entire digital music collection including up to 1,300 hours of music, all through Escient’s intuitive and award winning on-screen interface. Designed to integrate smoothly into any audio/video system, the SE-80 is compatible with a wide variety of IR remote control and audio distribution systems. Using IR-based control systems, users can instantly access any playlist, genre, artist, album, song title, or Internet Radio station at the touch of a button. In addition to the on-screen interface, the SE-80 can be controlled from any standard web browser, wireless PDA or web pad using standard wireless home networks. The SE-80 comes with file-sharing capabilities enabling the user to transfer digital music files to and from a PC or Mac over any standard home network. By adding a second SE-80 or other FireBall Music Server to the same home network, the audio files of both units are shared, allowing Peer-to-Peer music sharing between the two music servers, doubling the storage capacity and adding a second independent music zone. The SE-80 also includes a built-in DLNA and UPnP compatible music server that allow the latest wave of inexpensive digital media adapters to browse and play music files stored on the SE-80. Escient’s Gapless Track Playback is also included in the SE-80, eliminating the annoying pauses between songs that most digital music players can’t get around.

FireBall SE-D1 DVD and Music Manager
The Escient SE-D1 DVD and Music Manager lets users access and manage up to 400 physical DVDs and/or CDs. Working in conjunction with a Sony DVP-CX777ES DVD/CD changer, the SE-D1 provides users with instant on-screen access to all their DVD movies and CDs through one easy to use on-screen interface.

The SE-D1 utilizes DVD recognition technology from Escient’s own MovieDB™ database, CD recognition technology from the Gracenote CDDB™, as well as CD cover art from All Media Guide (AMG) to automatically catalog and organize your media collection into easy to use on-screen “Guides”, allowing you to instantly find and play any DVD or CD by genre, title, song, artist, and even by cover art.

The SE-D1 integrates smoothly into any IR-based control and audio/video distribution system, whereby users can instantly access any DVD, CD Playlist, album, song, or Internet Radio station at the touch of a button. The built-in video switcher provides changer pass-through and A/V routing to a connected receiver or TV using only one input. Like the SE-80, the SE-D1 can also be controlled from any standard web browser, wireless PDA or web pad using standard wireless home networks. The SE-D1 also supports streaming MP3, WMA and CD-quality FLAC encoded digital music from other FireBall Music Servers (including the SE-80 for MP3 and WMA)) located on the same network.

Escient can be found at the Marantz CES 2006 Booth #20407 in South Hall.

About D&M Holdings Inc.
D&M Holdings Inc. (TSE II: 6735) is based in Tokyo and owns the Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Laboratory, Boston Acoustics, Snell, D&M Professional, ReplayTV?, Rio? and Escient? brands. Denon, Marantz, McIntosh and D&M Professional are global industry leaders in the specialist home theater, audio/video consumer electronics or professional audio markets, with a strong and long-standing heritage of manufacturing and marketing high-performance audio and video components. Boston Acoustics, with its signature Boston Sound™, is a leader in premium loudspeakers for home and audio markets. Snell is a super premium speaker brand. The ReplayTV, Rio and Escient brands represent award-winning technologies in digital home entertainment. Additional information is available at www.dm-holdings.com.


DISCLAIMER
Statements in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may include forward looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution you that such statements are just predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties surrounding competitive and industry conditions, market acceptance for the company's products, risks of litigation, technological changes, developing industry standards and other factors related to the company's businesses.

Escient and the Escient logo are registered trademarks and FireBall is a trademark of Digital Networks North America, Inc.


FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Media Contact:
Michael Raisanen
mraisanen@dba-pr.com
DBA Public Relations
+1-212-388-1400
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