Sponsored by:
The DVD Entertainment Group
2:30 PM - 3:45 PM
Track D:
DVD as a Web Enabled and Games Device
While the market for DVD-Audio and Video is maturing, DVD as a web device as well as a games device is just starting to take shape. With the games industry and its treasure-trove of online plans just now coming off the drawing boards, the DVD industry is likely to have an entirely new and vast marketplace opening up. Added to that, the now developing Internet enabled DVD concepts, the next year should bring many interesting opportunities.
Ken Soohoo, CEO, Planetweb
Geoffrey Tully, President, Geoffrey Tulley Inc.
Todd Collart, President & CEO, InterActual Technologies, Inc.
Scott Epstein, VP Marketing and Business Development, Broadcast DVD
Geoffrey Tully is president of a consulting firm specializing in multimedia technology. The firm assists clients in formulating product, marketing, and technology strategies for multimedia products and services. Most recently, Mr. Tully was Senior Vice-President of Production for Divx Entertainment, a subsidiary of Circuit City Stores. The company developed and marketed a unique DVD-based home video rental system. Mr. Tully was co-inventor of a portion of the underlying Divx technology (awarded US patent), and managed the video production for over 500 titles that Divx manufactured for retail sales. Prior to starting his own consulting firm, he was Senior Vice President of the Multimedia Systems Division at Pioneer Communications of America. As such, he managed the sales, marketing, and engineering support for Pioneer’s industrial laser disc products, CD-ROM drives, and professional videodisc recorder in the United States and Canada. Mr. Tully joined Pioneer in 1982, and held positions in engineering, technical support, and market development; including his position as Vice-President of Engineering, where he managed technical support and product development for Pioneer’s industrial laser disc operations for nearly five years. Mr. Tully joined Pioneer when it took over the operations of DiscoVision Associates (DVA), the IBM-MCA joint venture company that launched industrial videodisc in the United States market in the early 1980s. At DVA, he worked in technical support and market development. His first involvement with multimedia (interactive video) was with one of the earliest systems integration companies, Coloney Productions in Tallahassee, Florida. Mr. Tully earned a bachelor’s degree in Systems Science from Michigan State University in 1972, and a master of science in Educational Policy Studies from Florida State University in 1975.
Todd Collart, President & CEO, InterActual Technologies, Inc.: Mr. Collart serves as President and CEO of InterActual, the company that pioneered Internet- connected DVDs under the product name PCFriendly. Mr. Collart has over 14 years experience in software development and marketing, and is the co-inventor of 15 of the 25 patents filed by the Company. In addition to his role as an evangelist, speaker, and developer in the DVD community for the last 4 years, Mr. Collart was recently chosen by insider publications DVD Report and Tape Disc Business as one of the 21 most influential executives in the DVD industry since DVD’s introduction in December 1995. Prior to co-founding InterActual, Mr. Collart served in managerial roles with NEC Technologies, Synopsys, and Anderson Consulting. Mr. Collart received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Ken Soohoo, Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, PlanetWeb: Ken Soohoo was named president and CEO of Planetweb, Inc. in March, 2000. In this capacity, he is responsible for leading all business and technical aspects of the company including overall management of Planetweb. Mr. Soohoo brings over twelve years of software engineering and programming experience including holding key executive positions with Planetweb, Inc., Digital Pictures, Inc., and engineering positions with Momenta Corporation and Atari. Mr. Soohoo has led the technical evolution of the company since its inception applying his software engineering and programming expertise. Under his technical leadership, Planetweb has grown from a small team of software developers delivering their first product in Oct. 1996 to becoming the industry's volume leader for information appliance Internet software as Sega's Dreamcast recently topped 1.5 million units shipped in less than 4 months. Planetweb is also positioned to lead in the iDVD(TM) information appliance category with announcements of partnerships in place with C-Cube, National Semiconductor and LuxSonar along with other major industry partners. Before co-founding Planetweb in March of 1996, Mr. Soohoo was vice president of engineering at Digital Pictures, Inc. where he led the company's program to develop games for 32-bit video game consoles and was awarded two patents for Digital Video Editing. Mr. Soohoo is personally credited with developing nine video game titles. Prior to Digital Pictures, Mr. Soohoo held engineering positions with Momenta Corporation and Atari. His specialty at Digital Pictures was image processing. He currently holds three patents. During his career, he has pursued his life long passion of creating media that makes a difference. Specifically, he has developed a vision of bringing Internet access to the masses through consumer electronic devices such as gaming consoles, iDVD players, web phones, and set-top boxes. He has been programming video games since he was eleven years old. Mr. Soohoo is well recognized in industry and has spoken at numerous industry events, including Agenda '97, Harvard Business School, COMDEX, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), E3, Internet World, ETV World, Internet Expo and Wescon. In addition, Mr. Soohoo has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, GameWEEK, (a leading game industry publication) and quoted extensively in other trade publications such as Red Herring. Mr. Soohoo holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Scott Epstein, is co-founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development for BroadcastDVD; the leading developer of advertising and e-commerce supported DVDs. Mr. Epstein is uniquely familiar with the marketplace for alternative entertainment DVDs. As the former Director of Marketing for DVDMAGS Inc., producers of the critically acclaimed SHORT cinema journal, Mr. Epstein forged relationships, which brought the company to the forefront of DVD in the press and in the DVD community. A featured speaker at DVD Entertainment 2000, the VSDA's DVD Supersession in July of 2000, and the 1998 DVD PRO conference focusing on his expertise on "DVD Video - Beyond Movies", Mr. Epstein has an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business and a background which includes work in technology sales, product development, finance and marketing.