FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, January 23, 2006

Widevine® Technologies, Sigma Designs® Enter Partnership Agreement

Sigma Designs’ Media Processors Now Widevine Ready: High Definition MPEG-4.10 (H.264), VC-1, WMV9, MPEG-4.2 and MPEG-2

Seattle, WA and Milipitas, Calif., January 23, 2006 –Widevine Technologies, the world’s most deployed provider of downloadable content protection and digital forensic solutions, and Sigma Designs (Nasdaq: SIGM), a leader in digital media processing solutions for consumer electronics, today announced they have entered into a partnership agreement.

Under the agreement, the patented Widevine Cypher® Virtual SmartCard™ is pre-integrated with Sigma Designs’ EM8620 and SMP8630 series. This enables telco, cable, satellite, Internet and wireless service providers to offer secure content delivery to consumer devices powered by Sigma Designs’ chipsets. The Widevine Digital Media Processor Partner Program enables consumer electronics manufacturers a faster time to market with content protection for video operators around the world.

Widevine Ready and Widevine Secure partners represent the widest range of consumer premises equipment, middleware and VOD vendors for IP video in the world, offering operators the broadest flexibility, choice and control over their IP video business.

“We believe there is significant value in a partnership between Sigma Designs and Widevine,” said Ken Lowe, VP of strategic marketing, Sigma Designs. “Our combined market focus and expertise in IPTV will enable powerful solutions to be brought to market quickly.”

Sigma Designs' EM8620 digital media processors currently powers approximately 70% of all IPTV set top boxes and are also used in a wide variety of consumer products including Blu-ray players, DVD players, digital media adapters, and portable media players.

According to Widevine’s CEO Brian Baker, “Consumers increasingly are demanding flexible consumption of content on devices such as personal video recorders, portable media players, home media centers, PCs and digital televisions. Our partnership with Sigma Designs embeds Widevine protection capabilities into the chipsets that drive these devices and moves us rapidly toward being ubiquitous with a large device footprint. This gives operators the studio-mandated protection they need to get premium content and the flexibility to expand their customer’s choices of how they want to consume content—securely.”

Widevine’s open content protection platform offers interoperability with major middleware, VOD and consumer premises equipment; choice and options to deploy a multi-vendor environment; and the flexibility required to swap video distribution equipment while maintaining content protection. In 2005 Widevine’s subscribers exceeded 1.5 million, spread over more than 90 current customers.

About Sigma Designs, Inc.
Sigma Designs (Nasdaq: SIGM) specializes in silicon-based media processors for IPTV set-top boxes, digital media receivers, high definition DVD players, HDTV, and portable media players. The company's award-winning REALmagic® Video Streaming Technology is used in a variety of consumer applications providing highly integrated solutions for high-quality decoding of H.264, WMV9, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., the company also has sales offices in China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. For more information, please visit www.sigmadesigns.com.

About Widevine Technologies, Inc.
Widevine is the most widely deployed provider of content security solutions for IP video operators worldwide. Widevine enables telco, cable, fiber, satellite, internet and wireless service operators to generate new revenue opportunities through the secure distribution, identification and tracking of digital content.

Utilizing a combination of hardware and software-based encryption, Cypher persistently encrypts both digital broadcast and video-on-demand (VOD) content, regardless of video infrastructure, network protocols or compression technologies. An innovator in the industry, Widevine invented the downloadable, software-based Cypher Virtual SmartCard™ client which today protects more IP video set-top boxes and devices in the industry than any other vendor. Cypher Virtual SmartCard clients quickly and affordably enable operators to combat piracy on set-top boxes, personal video recorders and other devices within the home. Widevine Secure operators are guaranteed to encrypt studio and broadcaster content across any video distribution network and on any Widevine Secure device.

Widevine is a privately held corporation headquartered in Seattle, WA, funded by Charter Ventures, Constellation Ventures, PaceSetter Capital Group, Phoenix Capital Partners, and VantagePoint Venture Partners and Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd (DNP).

For more information see Widevine Technologies at www.widevine.com.

Contact:

Eric Moser
Ruder Finn Chicago (for Widevine Technologies)
Tel: +1 312 329 3908
mosere@ruderfinn.com

All trade names, trademarks, and/or service marks appearing herein are owned by their respective holders.