STOCKHOLM—Edgeware today said it is buying Swedish subtitling expert Cavena Image Products, acquiring 100 percent of the company’s shares for 8 million Swedish Krona (or about $900,000 U.S.) on a cash and debt-free basis.
The move broadens Edgeware’s origin offering to broadcasters by enabling the company to integrate Cavena’s subtitling solutions.
Adding subtitling technology will allow broadcasters to build a higher-value origin system that can enable personalized advertising, support any type of device and automate the subtitling process, the company said.
“Our growing numbers of broadcaster customers are demanding the highest quality from their OTT services,” said Edgeware CEO Karl Thedéen. “We already work alongside Cavena’s systems in some of our largest deployments, such as myTV SUPER in Hong Kong.”
Integrating Cavena technology to serve the needs of broadcasters “makes sense,” he said, adding that the acquisition also offers “the opportunity to introduce our respective technologies to each other’s customers.”
Cavena, which has sold its subtitling products for more than 10 years to broadcasters, counts among its customers Sky, Canal+ and HBO Asia. Its technology delivers high-quality subtitles across any screen format to any client in any character set.
The company’s technology uses Optical Character Recognition to convert subtitles from image to text formats, which provides a higher-quality experience for OTT viewers. The system can also transcode different subtitle formats within milliseconds, scaling to support hundreds of channels.
Cavena-generated text is then passed on to Edgeware’s TV Repackager system, to create OTT content. The combined solution supports any language, including more complex Asian character sets.
According to Edgeware, the acquisition will have only a minor impact on its 2019 forecasted revenues and profitability. The deal is expected to close during Q1 2019. More information is expected to be available Feb. 1 with the presentation of Edgeware’s 2018 year-end report.
More information is available on the Edgeware website.
