News Article | 1/17/2006

DALLAS’ VICTORY PARK DISTRICT UNVEILS PLANS FOR INNOVATIVE, MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR VICTORY MEDIA NETWORK

DALLAS — Hillwood, a Perot Company, and Hicks Holdings, LLC, a Tom Hicks Company, have announced the selection of Barco to provide the technology for an innovative, landmark outdoor media space for the 75-acre, $3-billion plus Victory Park development, which is currently under construction in Dallas’ urban core.

Opening in 2006, Victory Park will redefine city living in Dallas with the W Dallas Victory Hotel & Residences, emerging and reputation retail, distinctive dining, modern office space and numerous entertainment venues, including the American Airlines Center. Located in the open-air Victory Plaza, adjacent to American Airlines Center, the Barco LED walls will offer visitors an interactive mix of, education, entertainment and digital art and will provide brand advertisers with an opportunity to create unprecedented immersive environments and captivating experiences.

Eleven, individual LED screens, totaling over 4,600 square feet, will be constructed at Victory Park, offering potential sponsors an innovative platform to communicate messages to consumers. The Victory Media Network will be interlaced with a multi-million dollar collection of extraordinary design and technology components, including two fixed 20′ x 20′ tower displays, a digital portal, eight movable 15′ x 26′ LED walls (installed in two four-panel groups that face each other across the 100-foot wide Victory Plaza) with over 46,000 OLITE 510 outdoor LED modules.

The movable media displays will be mounted on rails and stacked two-on- two. Using the Barco Screen Movement System, the panels can be choreographed individually with discreet video and surround-sound feeds, or locked together to form 30′ x 50′ HD screens with true 16:9 aspect ratios. The entire project uses four million individual OLITE SMT (Surface Mount Technology) LEDs, each with a capability of 185 trillion colors.

President of Hillwood Capital commented on the Plaza’s potential. “We expect 17 million-plus visitors annually through Victory Plaza,” said Jonas Woods. “The Victory Media Network will offer intriguing and engaging video entertainment. Our programming will be rich with cultural and artistic content — but continually changing in order to keep it different and fresh. To do that, we’ll be showcasing film and digital art from local and national artists, as well as Dallas museums and galleries.”

For the Victory Media Network, video ingest and scheduling will be managed on site, but high-definition content will be created by outside agencies. According to Woods, “This Plaza can be a stage, and a new motive for art, music and events. It gives the creative agencies and artists an opportunity to really push the envelope when it comes to this new medium. With the Barco walls, the Victory Media Network has a real ‘wow’ factor. It will be something that the world has never seen, something that celebrates Dallas.”

“Dallas is rapidly emerging as one of the nation’s most important cultural communities, and destinations, with such exciting new venues as the Performing Arts Center and Opera House, The Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art,” added Kristin Gray, Director of Business Development for Victory Media Network. “The Victory Media Network provides an additional new medium for local and national artists to showcase their works in an innovative environment.”

“The project’s biggest challenge was the proximity of the crowd,” said Steve Simard, Barco’s Branding Market Manager for the Media market. “With a maximum viewing distance of 100 feet and sharp viewing angles, Victory Park needed a technology with the highest perceived resolution, and that’s why the OLITE 510 was selected. With the physical limitations in this Plaza, the OLITE proved to be the very best for resolution at short distances,” noted Simard. “Equally important, the OLITE gives this project the cutting-edge display technology that won’t be outdated.”

Barco’s specialized visualization solutions targeted to the needs of the media and entertainment industries are used at high-profile venues and events. Barco counts names such as U2, Ferrari, Louis Vuitton, Madonna, Daimler Chrysler, Clear Channel Spectacolor, as well as installations for Merrill Lynch, Kinepolis, China Film Group, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Reliant Park Stadium (Houston, TX) and Miami Heat NBA, amongst some of its key references.

About Victory Park

Located in the heart of Dallas, Victory Park is one of the country’s most significant and innovative master-planned urban developments. Victory Park is creating a new urban environment with a carefully crafted collection of emerging and reputation retail, distinctive dining, modern office space, dramatic residential units, hotels and signature entertainment venues, including the American Airlines Center. Victory Park is owned by Hillwood, a Perot Company, and Hicks Holdings, LLC, owned by Tom Hicks.

About Barco

Barco, an international company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, provides visualization and display solutions for professional markets. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications and systems for visual inspection. Barco is active worldwide and has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is quoted on Euronext Brussels and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company (Euronext: BAR; Reuters: BARBt.BR; Bloomberg: BAR BB).