Amino Acquires Tilgin's STB Division
November 2008
In November, set-top box maker Amino Communications acquired Tilgin’s IPTV STB division for US$3.7 million. Tilgin is keeping its home gateway business, but is selling off its range of “Mood” IPTV set-top boxes.
Roy Kirsopp, VP & General Manager at Amino, said that Tilgin’s product line will enhance the company’s portfolio and bring access to new middleware solution, including Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. The combined assets of both Tilgin and Amino will expand their overall market share as well. However, Tilgin’s main IPTV customer, Belgacom, recently switched over to Motorola’s STBs instead.
Kirsopp said that the acquisition will help Amino grow not just its STB line, but beyond. “Clearly it’s an STB play, but what we saw in Tilgin is…a strong technology base that’s complementary to what we do,” he said. “We’re going to take the best of Amino and the best of Tilgin and merge them together to produce significantly better products.” Beyond the STB world is the future of IP networks, with addressable advertising, Over-the-Top Internet content, convergence applications and more.
Source: MRG, Inc., November 2008 IPTV Bulletin
TiVo Made a Deal With Netflix
November 2008
TiVo made a deal with Netflix to allow TiVo users to download movies and TV shows from Netflix. TiVo already has a similar deal with Amazon’s video service, which means that TiVo is becoming a de facto all-in-one streaming box into the home. This means users won’t need to buy a separate Roku box (US$99), and can just use their existing TiVo set-tops. TiVo deserves attention over the next 12-18 months regarding whether it can break into the VOD market with a significant revenue increase.
{Note: analyst comments are italicized}
Source: MRG, Inc., November 2008 IPTV Bulletin
Logitech Acquires SightSpeed
November 2008
Logitech announced it was acquiring video communications company SightSpeed for US$30 million. Logitech already sells Webcams and other video-related products, so the SightSpeed acquisition would allow an even further push into real-time video communications.
Source: MRG, Inc., November 2008 IPTV Bulletin
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