Blackmagic Design continues to expand its product and patent portfolio and aggressively grow the company through new acquisitions where they make sense. In its latest move, Blackmagic Design has acquired the assets of Teranex Systems, a provider of video processing products for the television post-production and broadcast industries.
Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO, called it a “strategic acquisition” that will give it entry into new markets and enhance its product line with improved image quality capabilities. This includes the addition of Teranex's patented single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) technology, which employs multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously. The Teranex SIMD array processing technology delivers real-time processing with reprogrammable products.
The SIMD technology dates back to the early 1980s, when Lockheed Martin undertook a project to develop real-time video processing capability for the U.S. military. The project was completed over a period of 15 years, with more than $100M spent and 34 patents granted. The result was a SIMD array processor designed specifically to execute sophisticated algorithms in real time on digital video signals.
In 1998 Teranex was set up as an independent company to develop commercial applications for the technology. Teranex has continued to develop the basic platform and has also developed new products that provide format and frame rate conversion, video noise reduction, film restoration and pre/post compression conditioning.
Along with the sale comes the Teranex VC100 series of broadcast image processor products, which will continue to carry the Teranex brand name for the foreseeable future. This includes a series of modules that address deinterlacing, up conversion, down conversion, SD and HD cross conversion, SD and HD standards conversion, noise reduction, adjustable scaling, aspect ratio conversion and aspect ratio conversion (4:3 to 16:9). Teranex also offers a 3-D toolkit that includes 3-D camera alignment, 3-D dual channel conversions and new patent pending 3-D simulation software.
Mike Poirier, General Manager of Teranex, said his company, headquartered in Orlando, Fla., would now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Blackmagic Design and retain all of its employees. The company will also continue to support existing customers while growing its sales channels by leveraging Blackmagic Design's established organization.
