Nero and Avayon Technologies, a growing marketer of DVD players, today announced that Avayon's DXP-1000 DVD player is the first Nero Digital Certified player to ship in North America.

The new Avayon DXP-1000 will be showcased at Nero's CES booth (South Hall 1 #21568).

Nero Digital(TM), co-developed by Nero and ATEME, is completely based on MPEG-4 standards adding to many DVD-like features that consumers expect in a home theater experience such as multiple AAC audio tracks, surround sound, chapters, and subtitles. Avayon DXP-1000 customers and users world-wide are offered a 30-Day Trial download of Nero Digital(TM) on www.nerodigital.com which includes Nero's top 3 applications to create, play and share Nero Digital(TM) content: Nero Recode, which facilitates the direct import of most video file formats and non-copy protected DVDs for coding and/or transcoding in Nero Digital(TM); Nero ShowTime, which plays all digital recordings (films, TV programs, home movies and DVD formats) in excellent picture and sound quality; and finally Nero MediaHome, which allows users to stream videos, music and pictures.

"Due to its superior compression technology, Nero Digital delivers better video quality than other codecs in far less disc space," said Udo Eberlein, President, Nero Inc. "This, along with its universal MPEG-4 compatibility, is part of what makes Nero Digital the ideal format for home video enthusiasts who want to burn their home videos and recorded shows onto disc for enjoying in a quality player like this AVAYON DXP-1000 product."

The Avayon DXP-1000 with Nero Digital(TM) compatibility will be available to the North American market starting mid-December through all the participating Avayon channels. Additionally, Nero and Avayon announced that a Nero Digital update program for Avayon DXP-1000 existing customers was launched in December. Under this program, DXP-1000 customers can add Nero Digital(TM) functionality to their previously purchased players.

"Consistent with its mission to bring leading edge technology to the consumer electronics market, Avayon seized the opportunity to add Nero Digital support to its already feature rich DXP-1000 DVD player," said Jeff Babington, President and CEO of Avayon. Babington adds, "Nero Digital is important technology and we wanted to be the first producer of DVD players to bring it to the North American market for both our existing and future customers."

For more information on Nero Digital, visit www.nerodigital.com. For more information on where to find Avayon's product, on the upgrade program and for technical support, visit www.avayon.com