PhatNoise Digital Car Audio System for Volkswagen of America Honored With 2004 Innovations Award From CES

PhatBox Digital Media Player Deemed a 2004 Design and Engineering Showcase Honoree in the Mobile Electronics Category

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 15 -- PhatNoise Inc., the leading provider of automotive digital entertainment solutions, has been honored by the Consumer Electronics Association with an International CES Innovations 2004 Design and Engineering Award in the Mobile Electronics category, recognizing the Volkswagen of America version of the company's signature product, the PhatBox(R).

The International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Showcase annually recognizes new consumer electronics products that exhibit excellence in both design and engineering. The program is endorsed by the Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA).

"We are honored that our work with Volkswagen of America to offer a great digital music experience to their customers has led to this prestigious award," said Sharon Graves, CEO of PhatNoise. "We have an exciting partnership and a terrific product, and this recognition by our peers in the industry is a wonderful validation for everyone involved."

"The PhatBox is a breakthrough product offering for our industry, and we are very pleased that we could bring it to Volkswagen of America and Audi customers first," said Philippe Bauduc, Accessories Team Leader, Volkswagen of America, Inc. "Innovation and quality are a key part of why we chose to work with PhatNoise, and this award is a great testament to their product excellence and talented team."

The PhatBox is a hard drive-based digital music player that stores thousands of songs on a palm-sized portable cartridge that is inserted into a trunk-mounted player. Using the car stereo CD changer controls the user can quickly browse their entire music collection as the voice-enabled search announces the playlist, album, artist and/or genre. The award-winning Volkswagen system includes pre-loaded songs from EMI Recorded Music, support for spoken word content from Audible.com, AT&T Natural Voices speech technology, music recognition services from Gracenote and additional music information from Muze.

The PhatNoise product family also includes the new PhatNoise(R) Home Digital Media Player and the new PocketBox(TM) Portable Digital Media Player, allowing consumers for the first time to enjoy their music collection literally wherever they go.

Complete product information can be found at www.drivergear.com and www.phatnoise.com.

About PhatNoise

PhatNoise Inc. is an innovator in the drive to create seamless automotive access to the digital world. The company's advanced platforms and software for digital media offer complete solutions for introducing digital content and technology into the automobile in intuitive and highly integrated applications to enhance the consumer entertainment experience. PhatNoise creates products and technology for license and distribution by leading partners in the automotive, consumer electronics, and multimedia industries, including the Kenwood Music Keg and the Volkswagen of America/Audi Digital Car Audio System. For more information on PhatNoise and its technologies and products, visit www.phatnoise.com .