Cobalt Digital Acquires ImmediaTV
Amsterdam, NL — Cobalt Digital today announced its acquisition of ImmediaTV, a Silicon Valley company focused on IP-centric video-processing solutions in both openGear® and stand-alone formats for broadcast, live event, streaming, and IPTV applications. The two companies have worked together closely for several years creating bundled solutions for mutual customers. By acquiring ImmediaTV's products and video-compression expertise, Cobalt can accelerate the growth of its IP product line.
"ImmediaTV is a respected broadcast-industry brand and a well-established openGear vendor with a large and happy customer base. Sharing our customers and using the same platform creates synergy that will help increase sales, grow revenue, and reduce costs," said Bob McAlpine, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital. "Not only that, but we have great admiration for ImmediaTV's engineering talent, who are veterans in the broadcast and network-equipment industries. We'll be able to develop compression products more quickly and with superior features and benefits in order to meet demand as the industry transitions to IP-based signal transport.”
"This deal represents the first acquisition for Cobalt Digital, supporting our strategic position for growth and expansion," said Gene Zimmerman, founder and president of Cobalt Digital. "We couldn't be happier to have the professionals at ImmediaTV joining Cobalt to assist."
ImmediaTV designs and manufactures high-performance MPEG-4 AVC video compression, digital video transport, and digital video processing equipment with a balanced blend of broadcast and internet features. Cobalt has a long-standing relationship with ImmediaTV, reselling its advanced MPEG encoder, decoder, transcoder, and gateway openGear products as a part of jointly designed, bundled solutions. As a result, Cobalt sales and technical staff are already familiar with ImmediaTV's technology, and there is a strong rapport between the teams.
With this sale, the Cobalt sales and technical teams will become even more proficient in ImmediaTV's MPEG products and solutions and will be better able to assess customer requirements in the field. Between a strong, knowledgeable staff and the addition of ImmediaTV's U.S.-based R&D and manufacturing, Cobalt will be able to offer even better customer support and quicker development of the features and products customers need.
"After working together for several years creating superb solutions that fill an ever-growing need in the industry, the time was right to join forces," said Bill Slattery, CTO and founder, ImmediaTV. "This deal means our customers will have immediate access to Cobalt's diverse range of openGear products."
The sale closed on Sept. 8. ImmediaTV's staff will join Cobalt's organization.
More information about Cobalt Digital and its products is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.
About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning 3G/HD/SD conversion, terminal, throwdown, and multiviewer technology for the broadcast television environment. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative, Cobalt offers a full range of openGear video and audio processing card solutions for applications such as closed-caption compliance monitoring, OB production, master control, HD news production, signal transport, audio loudness, and color correction. Cobalt’s Blue Box Group™ line of interface converter boxes streamlines and simplifies a wide range of 3G/HD/SD conversion and signal transport tasks. The company’s multi-image display processors enable multiviewer capabilities in the most demanding studio and remote broadcasting environments. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. More information is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.