Ericsson Television
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| Type | subsidiary of Ericsson |
|---|---|
| Industry | Digital Video |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Headquarters | Southampton, UK |
| Key people | CEO: Staffan Pehrson |
| Products | Advanced compression on-demand and interactive television systems |
| Revenue | US$400m |
| Employees | Over 1100 |
| Website | http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products/television |
Ericsson Television, formerly Tandberg Television, is a company providing MPEG-4[1] video on demand, and interactive television systems to telecommunications network operators and broadcasters. It was acquired by Swedish company, Ericsson in 2007, and was re-branded as Ericsson Television in 2010.
The company has over 1100 employees world wide. The global headquarters are located in Southampton, England with additional offices in Atlanta, Georgia and Hong Kong, SAR. Research and development offices are located in the UK, USA and Hungary while sales and support operations are provided across Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas.
The company was honored at the 2008 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for development of interactive Video-on-Demand infrastructure and signaling, leading to large scale VOD implementations.
[edit] History
Tandberg is a long standing Norwegian company whose history goes back to the 1930s when it supplied domestic radio equipment. It grew into other areas during the decades after WW2 including a well respected audio equipment manufacturer and its reel to reel tape recorders were sought after by HiFi enthusiasts.
Tandberg Television, originally with headquarters in Lillestrom near Oslo, Norway, was formed in 1979 when the original Tandberg company split into Tandberg, Tandberg Data, and Tandberg Television.
In 1999 Tandberg Television entered into a £170 million agreement to acquire all the assets of NDS Group’s Digital-TV products business, the Digital Broadcasting Business (DBB), a subsidiary of The News Corporation group. After the acquisition, Tandberg Television could offer digital video compression encoders, multiplexers and modulation products for large satellite DTH systems, terrestrial networks and mobile news gathering solutions.[2]
NDS Group itself was a merger in 1996 between News Corp's existing News Data Communications (NDC) based in Israel, a company that supplied smart cards to pay TV operators like Sky TV, and Digi-Media Vision (DMV) a video compression company that News had acquired in 1995 and had been the Advanced Products Division [APD] of National Transcommunications Limited [NTL] in the UK. NTL was itself established in 1990 as the privatised Engineering arm of the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA] the UK commercial broadcasting regulator and operator of all commercial terrestrial television and radio transmitters. APD was the R&D department of the IBA.
Much earlier, in 1987, Tandberg Television and the IBA's R&D and Satellite Engineering groups had worked together to build a satellite broadcasting system for the UK based on the ill fated MAC system operated by Sky's rival British Satellite Broadcasting [BSB]. BSB and Sky merged in 1990 to form British Sky Broadcasting [BSkyB] which has become a significant broadcaster in the UK.
Since 1999 Tandberg Television has acquired four U.S-based digital media companies. In December 2004 Tandberg Television acquired Atlanta-based N2 Broadband, a provider of open-platform solutions for video-on-demand. In October 2005, they acquired Los Angeles-based Goldpocket Interactive, an interactive technology provider for digital television, the Internet and wireless/mobile networks. Further, in February 2006, they acquired SkyStream Networks, a provider of IP MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC video delivery solutions, based in Sunnyvale, California. Later the same year, they acquired Los Angeles-based Internet TV software developer Zetools.
In April 2007, Tandberg Television was acquired by Ericsson. Tandberg Television operated as an independent entity within the Ericsson Business Unit Multimedia until January 25, 2010, when its name was changed to Ericsson Television Ltd.[3]
