May 31, 2007

- All fights of "Dynamite!! USA", fighting sport event held on June 2, 2007 will be distributed via VOD free of charge" -

TV Bank Corporation (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Masayoshi Son, hereinafter "TV Bank"), a member of SOFTBANK Group, announced that it has developed "gridvod (tentative name) (beta version)", a P2P (Peer to Peer) technology-based streaming type VOD (Video On Demand) distribution system. Starting from today, TV Bank distributes about 50 titles of high-quality (1.5Mbps, partially 1Mbps) content such as animation, idol video, drama, etc. free of charge utilizing this system at TV Bank’s trial site (http://lab.tv-bank.com/gridtrial/). Also, TV Bank will distribute all fights of "Dynamite!! USA", the largest fighting sport event held in Los Angeles, USA on June 2, 2007 (local time), from June 5, 2007 (from 0:00 am, JST) free of charge.

May 22, 2007

Enjoy various genres of video content free of information charge!

SOFTBANK Group 3 companies, SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Masayoshi Son, hereinafter "SBM"), TV Bank Corporation (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Masayoshi Son, hereinafter "TV Bank"), and Yahoo Japan Corporation (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Masahiro Inoue, hereinafter "Yahoo! JAPAN") announced that they have launched "Yahoo! Streaming (Beta version)", video content service for mobile phone free of information charge* at "Yahoo! Keitai", a portal site for SBM handsets, from May 22, 2007.

March 28, 2007

Promote worldwide rollout of fighting sport content including "K-1" on the SOFTBANK Group network

G.T. Entertainment, Inc (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Tomotaka Nakagawa, hereinafter "GTE"), a wholly owned subsidiary of SOFTBANK CORP. and FEG Inc. (Head office: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Sadaharu Tanigawa, hereinafter "FEG") concluded a business tie-up for the worldwide rollout of all the content of fighting sport held, planned and operated by FEG including "K-1".

February 16, 2007

"Waking The Dead," an International Emmy award-winning drama, the popular UK comedy, "Coupling," and many other titles that will be shown for the first time in Japan will turn up on the websites.

TV Bank Corporation. (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereinafter TV Bank) and Club iT Corporation (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; President & CEO: Taro Hashimoto; hereinafter Club iT) will start distributing popular drama and comedy titles of BBC Worldwide Japan Limited (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; President: Katsuhiko Waza; hereinafter BBC Worldwide) on February 16, 2007. These titles will be distributed by TV Bank at Yahoo! Streaming*1 (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal website provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation, and by Club iT at Club iT Arena*2 (http://www.clubit-arena.net), a video streaming website for PCs.

February 9, 2007

To start the service, the system will be used for free-of-charge live distribution of "TBS BooBo Box" content

TV Bank Corporation., a company of the SOFTBANK Group, (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereinafter TV Bank) will start a service to distribute content by signing up content holders and employing the BBbroadcast multi-user concurrent video streaming system based on peer to peer (P2P) technology. TV Bank will support concurrent distribution of video content to viewers numbering tens of thousands by providing the video streaming system for operators that distribute video content on the Internet. For the first undertaking of the service, it was decided that the system would be used for TBS BooBo Box (http://www.tbs.co.jp/bbbox/), an Internet pay-to-view video distribution service operated by TBS. The service using the BBbroadcast system will start live content distribution (Windows Media Player, 768kbps) from 9:00 a.m. on February 11, 2007.

October 16, 2006

The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters vs. Fukuoka Softbank Hawks Pacific League second-stage playoffs were multicasted via the Yahoo! Streaming video content portal (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/) provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masahiro Inoue) on October 11 and 12. The total audience ratings marked 105,986 for the first game and 88,744 for the second game

September 26, 2006

EXILE Concert Multicast Marks Peak Audience of 25,302 and Total Audience Rating of 46,904

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masayoshi Son), a Softbank group company, has successfully developed BB Broadcast, which delivers high quality video content simultaneously to tens of thousands of viewers through broadband (i.e., fast mass volume telecommunication) networks, in collaboration with Roxbeam Media Network Corporation (Head Office: Beijing, China; Chairman and CEO: Li Zhou), another Softbank group company. On September 22, a concert by EXILE, a popular Japanese music and dance group, was multicasted at 768 Kbps (high quality) via the Yahoo! Streaming video content portal (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/) provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation. Using this multicast technology, the traffic volume for streaming the concert was approximately one-fifth that of conventional unicast streaming, enabling the peak audience (the maximum number of concurrent viewers) to reach 25,302, with a total audience rating of 46,904. The special EXILE Web site published on September 15 scored approximately 1.3 million page views by September 24. In addition, the total accesses for the video content within the site, including a message video from the EXILE members, numbered approximately 170,000 by the same date.

September 15, 2006

"EXILE Vocal Battle Audition 2006 – Asian Dream –" in Nippon Budokan
Free View of the Final Stage of Singing Auditions with a 9-Section Screen

TV Bank Corporation and the Yahoo! Streaming video content portal operated by Yahoo Japan Corporation will exclusively multicast the live "EXILE Vocal Battle Audition 2006 – Asian Dream –" (in Nippon Budokan), which is the final stage of singing auditions to select a new singer for popular Japanese music and dance group EXILE at 6:30 p.m. on September 22 (Fri) via the Yahoo! Streaming.

September 8, 2006

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masayoshi Son) will multicast, live and exclusively, K-1 Fighting Network Khan 2006 in Seoul at 5:00 p.m. on September 16 (Sat) via the Yahoo! Streaming video content portal(http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/) provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation. Anyone can enjoy the dynamic fight free of charge at quality as high as 768 Kbps.

July 20, 2006

The Computer Graphic Arts society (Head Office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Chairman: Keiji Nagata; hereinafter CG-ARTS) and TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son) today jointly launched a streaming service for the awarded works of past Student CG Contests on Yahoo! Streaming (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal site provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation.

June 9, 2006

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son) will begin to stream Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters home games held in the Sapporo Dome (26 games in total during the regular season, except those on June 17, 18 and 30) on Yahoo! Streaming (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal site provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masahiro Inoue), from June 16 of this year. The distribution bit rate is 768 kbps, and the program is available, free of charge, to all broadband users. About two-thirds of the games will be broadcast live, and the rest of the games will be streamed about one hour behind the actual game (delayed streaming).

May 31, 2006

- Winners of various awards decided by voting of Yahoo! Streaming viewers and a gorgeous panel of judges -

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son) and Digital Hollywood, Inc. (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Shinsuke Fujimoto) announced today the winners of the Short Movie Contest held jointly by the two companies. The award-winning works can be seen at http://yahoo.tv-bank.com/contest/ on Yahoo! Streaming.

March 23, 2006

- Tracing the road of Japan’s national team to the WBC championship -

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son) today began the free streaming of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games on Yahoo! Streaming (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal site provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masahiro Inoue), ahead of any other portal operators. The exciting games of the Japan national team will be shown in several phases from today.

March 23, 2006

- Discovering new stars through Yahoo! Streaming viewer voting -

The Internet Beauty Contest Executive Committee today began accepting applications for the 1st Internet Beauty Contest as a means of discovering new stars of the Internet age. Applications to enter a regional preliminary can be made via either the mobile or PC Internet site. Viewers can see regional preliminary winners and take part in selecting the champions at the finals on Yahoo! Streaming. This is a new type of beauty contest, in which the whole process from application to screening is conducted through mobile phones and PCs.

February 22, 2006

- Featuring a renewed user interface, a new narrowing-down search based on genres and play time, and a recommended keyword display -

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereinafter TV Bank) upgraded its β-version video search function introduced in October last year and made it available to the public today. This new video search function enables crawling over not only video contents themselves but also their accompanied text, and thanks to the unique algorithm, is capable of displaying video contents that match the keywords input by a user on top of the list at high accuracy. The new video search function is available on the top page of Yahoo! Streaming (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal site provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation.

February 15, 2006

- Discovering next-generation creators through screenings by Yahoo! Streaming viewers, Mr. Sugiyama (Director and Head of Digital Hollywood) and other judges -

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereinafter TV Bank) and Digital Hollywood, Inc. (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Shinsuke Fujimoto; hereinafter Digital Hollywood), a company running an IT and digital content school, today began to accept entries for a short movie contest (no theme restrictions) being jointly held by the two companies.

February 1, 2006

- The themes of the first contest are "pet’s performance" and "travel report"; viewer voting will be conducted, and each Grand Award winner will receive one million yen -

TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereinafter TV Bank) upgraded its β-version video search function introduced in October last year and made it available to the public today. This new video search function enables crawling over not only video contents themselves but also their accompanied text, and thanks to the unique algorithm, is capable of displaying video contents that match the keywords input by a user on top of the list at high accuracy. The new video search function is available on the top page of Yahoo! Streaming (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal site provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation.

January 25, 2006

- The weather information channel that is both informative and entertaining is now available free of charge for 24 hours a day -

Life & Business Weather Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President; Katsutoshi Ishikawa; hereinafter LBW) today launched a new Internet weather information channel called "Sky Ribbon" on Yahoo! Streaming (http://streaming.yahoo.co.jp/), a video portal site provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation, to deliver weather forecasts and various other information regarding the weather. This was realized as part of the efforts of TV Bank Corporation (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son) to procure attractive video content.

December 19, 2005

- "Yahoo! Streaming" portal starts offering 100,000 content titles, mostly free of charge -

SOFTBANK CORP. (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereafter SOFTBANK) and Yahoo Japan Corporation (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Masahiro Inoue; hereafter Yahoo Japan) today began operating TV Bank Corp. (Head Office: Minato-Ku, Tokyo; Representative and President: Masayoshi Son; hereafter TV Bank), a joint venture established by the two Internet companies.
SOFTBANK and Yahoo! Japan will concentrate their human resources and know-how related to moving-picture content services on TV Bank in order to strengthen the SOFTBANK Group's business in such services. Specifically, TV Bank will procure moving-picture contents, develop distribution and search systems for moving-pictures, operate the systems, and create and operate web pages for the services.