The Entertainment Technology Center at USC (ETC)[www.etcenter.org], a non-profit consortium that brings together top entertainment and consumer electronics companies to listen to and evaluate consumer mindshare towards future technologies, announced today that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) [BSE: TCS.BO, NSE: TCS.NS], a global IT services, business solutions, and outsourcing firm, has joined the ETC as an Executive Sponsor. TCS will join ETC’s existing studios and major technology companies as a sponsor – with the main goal of producing new technologies for consumers and of generating new revenue streams for the companies that create entertainment technology.

TCS has a global reach and, much like ETC, has executive relationships across many Fortune 500 organizations and world-leading consumer brands. The company will participate in ETC’s cross-industry CxO Roundtables, ETC’s Anytime/Anywhere Consumer Research, Student Feedback Forums, and in the Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab (AACL), ETC Board and other exclusive meetings, which will aid in the furthering of ETC’s mission. The goal of these sponsorship programs is to provide invaluable guidance and technical resources for the products of the future – and for the companies that make them.

“TCS’ Global Media and Entertainment Practice is committed to working with content companies to help them figure out how to best leverage the exploding digital landscape. ETC is a natural fit – leveraging our footprint in Hollywood and our Digital Media Solutions Center in Burbank – to help us in our quest to better understand convergence and its imperatives from a consumer’s perspective and to proactively take industry-leading solutions to our clients and prospects,” said TCS’ Global Head of its Media and Entertainment Practice, Ed Altman. “We are very excited to be working with everyone at ETC, and we know that ETC’s focus on Anytime/Anywhere consumers will provide great benefits to multiple industries.”

As part of the University of Southern California, the ETC has access to educated consumers of perfect “tech buying” age (18-24). Because of the non-profit status, the ETC is able to get substantial user feedback and information. The neutral forum can bring together companies from multiple industries to create new kinds of entertainment-related products to reach those consumers.

“The ETC is a unique organization comprised of very high-level studio executives and technology partners,” explained ETC executive director, David Wertheimer. “We are very excited to welcome TCS to our Executive Sponsorship board – they bring a unique perspective and access to tremendous development resources in our quest to make sense of the digital future.”

About TCS

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model™, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 108,000 of the world’s best trained IT consultants in 47 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $4.3 billion for the fiscal year ended 31 March, 2007 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. For more information, visit www.tcs.com.

About the Entertainment Technology Center at USC

The Entertainment Technology Center @ USC, founded in 1993 with the help of George Lucas, is a non-profit organization within USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. The ETC brings together the top entertainment, technology and consumer electronic companies to evaluate what consumers really want, which is then translated to the companies that make technology products. The ETC strives to show how technology impacts the next-generation consumer, which will improve the consumer experience and will uncover new revenue streams for entertainment-related products. Current ETC sponsor participants include Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, NBC-Universal, Viacom/Paramount, Warner Bros., along with Cisco, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd., and Thomson.

For more information, email: info@etcenter.org.