Is Focus Enhancements still in business?

[Gary Bettan]

Big news! Focus enhancements has been purchased by Vitec multimedia

Press Release

VITEC Multimedia Announces Acquisition of Focus Enhancements Systems Group
VITEC adds industry-leading video acquisition and management products to its lineup
Atlanta, GA.–July, 2010—VITEC Multimedia—a worldwide leader in advanced digital video solutions—announced the purchase of the Focus Enhancements’ Systems Group. With this purchase, VITEC now adds industry-leading video acquisition and management products to its lineup, including FS Portable DTE Recorders, ProxSys Media Asset Management solutions, media converters, and OEM-ready media hardware and software. Now, customers can depend on VITEC throughout the entire video production process including acquisition, conversion, image processing, MPEG compression, recording, media asset management, streaming, decoding and delivery.

“The acquisition of Focus’ Systems Group, including its product lines, brand, and key employees, further positions VITEC Multimedia as a worldwide leader in advanced digital video solutions,” said Philippe Wetzel, CEO of VITEC Multimedia. “In combination with our recent acquisition of Optibase, this acquisition furthers our objective to provide a complete line of advanced digital video solutions to our customers around the globe. With innovation at its core, the VITEC R&D division—now with more than 100 esteemed engineers—is uniquely positioned to deliver innovative solutions for a wide range of advanced digital video applications—managing the entire video process from source to display.”
“Focus has partnered with VITEC Multimedia in the past, and given our successful history, we concluded that sale of Focus’ Systems Group to VITEC was the right decision,” commented Brett Moyer, president and CEO of Focus Enhancements. “As a market leader in digital video and audio solutions, we wanted to be sure that current Focus Enhancements video customers and partners would be well taken care of, while Focus’ Semiconductor Group continues to develop solutions for the wireless audio distribution and the TV-out video encoder markets.”
About VITEC Multimedia

VITEC specializes in the development and industrialization of advanced digital video solutions in the MPEG field for OEMs and integrators. Since 1988, VITEC Multimedia has been devoted to the development of MPEG encoding and decoding solutions and the creation of innovative concepts intended for digital video applications. Since 1990, VITEC has focused its efforts on digital video and conforming to ISO standards such as MPEG.

Since its creation, VITEC Multimedia has been universally recognized for its groundbreaking product development. Its strengths are based on a team of skilled and experienced engineers who understand the challenges and nature of demanding customer requirements.
VITEC Multimedia's main objectives are to provide high-end technology and complete solutions to the digital video market. For more information visit VITEC Multimedia
About Focus Enhancements, Inc.

Focus Enhancements is a fabless semiconductor company developing award-winning audio and video integrated circuits for wireless home audio applications and the TV-out video encoder markets. Summit Wireless™ integrated circuit (IC) is the industry’s only 7.1 high-definition wireless surround sound solution, delivering distortion-free audio with ease. Summit is designed to be integrated into home theater speakers, sound bars, audio/video recorders, digital television, DVD players, MP3 players, set-top boxes, PC, and PC gaming systems. More information on Focus Enhancements may be obtained by visiting Focus Enhancements or Superior Surround Sound Made Simple | Summit Wireless

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Company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. © 2010 VITEC Multimedia. A

[Dave Burckhard]

Thanks for the VITEX press release. I also received a copy yesterday. I was having doubts about Focus Enhancements future and even rode my motorcycle by their Dell Avenue HQ building in Campbell on Tuesday to see if they were still around. Now I see they've been acquired. Good.

Not quite sure what the acquisition means to current users, product support and development and the Focus Enhancement brand. When I rode by, I noticed that a "Building Available" sign was posted in front of the business.

I have been a long-time user of Focus Enhancements products and continue to use the FS-5. Calls to Focus have gone unanswered and emails to them have bounced. I'm guessing this may have been consistent with a "blackout" period in which a company goes incommunicado for a number reasons prior to a merger, acquisition or financial restructure. I'm hoping that someone from Focus might enlighten us.

Dave Burckhard

[David Morgan]

Any thoughts on whether this acquisition will mean more robust products from Focus? Most of the time, I felt a little woosey when dealing with Focus. Seemed like they were on thin ice.

[David Morgan]

They have been purchased by a larger company---Vitec

read the press release on the Focus site....oops, old news already!

[Dave Burckhard]

I've visited and met with folks at Focus Enhancements. They have always been helpful. Their products have served a niche and they were certainly the ones providing file-based workflow on cameras at prices more affordably than memory card based cameras. I continue to use a DTE to enable my workflow.

Yes, they were in thin ice for the last two years but they've continued to create upgrade paths for those who still use tape and for those who needed more capability. I love that my FS-5 DTE allows a PA to imbed useful and comprehensive metadata wirelessly into a recording while comfortably stationed at a table rather than having to take notes on a paper tablet while hovering over the camera operator and then having to manually enter data or provide confusing notes to an editor. I can't think of any way that's easier using any other system.

I look forward to Focus being able to capture higher quality signals from camera HD-SDI and HDMI outputs at rates greater than 24Mbps. I'd love to see a DTE recording 4:2:2 in FCP native (and even iMovie native) formats up to 50Mbps on cheap memory RAID cards that users can build themselves from OTS cards.

Dave

[David Morgan]

Amen....to that.