Miranda Technologies Acquires VertigoXmedia

by Geoff Poister~ April 25, 2006

TV TECHNOLOGY

Miranda Technologies announced at its NAB2006 press conference that the company is acquiring VertigoXmedia Inc., a developer of high-end graphics automation software systems. The transaction will be finalized next month subject to customary closing conditions.

The announcement was made by Miranda CTO Michel Proulx, who explained that the company seeks to broaden its reach as new modes of content delivery are emerging.

"Our goal is to stay in tune with the changes and respond accordingly," Proulx said. "Acquiring Vertigo will allow us to strengthen our playout and branding market while also entering into production graphics."

Miranda Technologies is a developer, manufacturer and marketer of software and hardware for the broadcast industry. The CDN $11 million purchase will enable Miranda to deliver a more complete graphics workflow for broadcast and provide more capabilities for customers upgrading to HD.

But the tone of the press conference was clearly on the future and what Miranda calls their NAB2006 theme: "For the Changing Face of Television."

Proulx portrayed Miranda as a company that plans to take advantage of emerging content delivery technologies and turn them into profitable opportunities.

"Never in the history of television has the pace of change been so rapid," Proulx said, particularly over the last five years.

Starting with HDTV, the last five years has brought us TiVo, IPTV, VOD, video iPods, mobile phone TV, and HD DVDs, with an acceleration of new offerings within the last year.

"The demand for live graphics preparation, management and presentation is rapidly increasing as broadcasters strive to create captivating graphics across multiple platforms such as HD, the Web and mobile TV," said Strath Goodship, president and CTO of Miranda Technologies.

PROVIDING MORE TOOLS

By acquiring VertigoXmedia, Miranda will offer more tools to provide branding across multiple formats.

Proulx closed the press conference by summarizing what Miranda sees as the benefits of acquiring VertigoXmedia.

"We will be able to add workflow tools to enhance our existing playout and branding solutions." Proulx said. "And it gives us new solutions for emerging branding applications." Proulx then cited three examples: branding for mobile TV, fully integrated channel-in-a-box for secondary DTV channels, and deep downstream branding and data insertion for cable and IPTV.

In addition, the acquisition creates new opportunities to provide advanced solutions for production graphics and brings experienced R&D personnel to the team, the company said.

Twenty five employees of VertigoXmedia's Montreal-based broadcast division will join Miranda. A 10-person digital signage division was spun off prior to the agreement and will form a separate entity.

During the press conference, the question was raised about the future of the Vertigo brand name.

"It has always been our policy to retain the name of the previous company by using it as a product name," Proulx explained.

In keeping with Miranda's development of multiformat tools, Miranda also announced a number of new products at NAB2006. The Imagestore Intuition+ channel-branding co-processor significantly enhances graphics performance of Imagestore processors for multiple playout.

Miranda is also introducing a wider range of HDV interfaces for studio and on-camera use and the new Imaging XVP-811i up/down/cross converter, which automatically detects the input format and performs the conversion required to maintain consistent output in HD or SD.

© 2006 NAB