FUNimation Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Navarre Corporation and the market share leader for home video sales of Japanese animation in the United States, announced today that the company has finalized a distribution agreement with Optical Entertainment Network (OEN), the leading provider of IPTV and broadband services optimized for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). The agreement makes the FUNimation Channel part of the FISION service, OEN's line-up of 400 IPTV channels available in the Houston area. The FUNimation Channel is a 24-hour digital channel featuring programming from top anime brands in the United States and will be added to OEN's FISION lineup in the fall of 2006.

"We are excited with the progress that the FUNimation Channel has made in the last few months," said Gen Fukunaga, president and CEO of FUNimation Entertainment. "Optical Entertainment has designed an offering that will provide the Houston area with a great line-up of alternative programming. Houston area residents will now be able to get top-rated anime programming through our 24-hour digital channel."

"FUNimation's top rated anime programming will be a great addition to our existing line-up of channels and we are thrilled by their belief in our offerings," said Jo-lynn Foo, VP of Programming at OEN. "Offering high quality programming is critical and we believe that the top-quality anime product will be very successful for us."

OEN created FISION, the first and only integrated service for IPTV, Internet, Voice, Video-On-Demand (VOD) and other broadband applications, specifically to deliver on the superior video quality and virtually unlimited bandwidth of FTTH technology and the only service to make all of its content available for license to other communities in the US and abroad. OEN has acquired programming agreements for IPTV distribution from top television networks and will deliver 400 television channels, including over 50 channels of High Definition Television (HDTV) to subscribers, the most channels deployed anywhere to date.

FUNimation is working with OlympuSAT, a leading distributor of independent digital programming networks, for the distribution of the FUNimation Channel. OlympuSAT is the exclusive distributor of the FUNimation Channel, which is now available to video service providers across the nation.