Imagine Communications, the video encoding and transcoding arm of what used to be called Harris Broadcasting, stayed on the M&A path Monday with a deal to acquire Digital Rapids, a Canadian company that will flesh out Imagine’s TV Everywhere platform.
The deal gives Imagine a range of IP and file-based media processing systems for live streaming and broadcast and video capture and ingest, as well as workflow management technologies. It also brings in a customer list that includes CBS, CNN, Comcast, Fox, HBO, NBCUNiversal, Google, MobiTV, Netflix, and Rogers Communications, among others.
Imagine did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
UPDATE: Digital Rapids' main location is in Toronto, which is located less than five miles from Imagine's existing development center. "The majority of Digital Rapids’ employees are based there and the majority of them will move to the Imagine Communications facility nearby. Digital Rapids employees in the US, Hong Kong and the UK also align well to our global workforce strategy and existing employee presence," Imagine CEO Charlie Vogt said in a statement to Multichannel News. "The vast majority of employees are engineers who will support key R&D developments underway at Imagine, but also included are customer support, key sales, and other employees."
Vogt added that Digital Rapids president and CEO Brick Eksten and his management team are joining Imagine, with Eksten to "leadefforts for a significant portion of our next generation cloud-based workflow platform," Vogt noted.
The acquisition comes less than a month after Harris Broadcast split itself into two separate operational units – Imagine Communications and GatesAir. Harris Broadcast bought digital video vendor Imagine in January, and rolled out its TV Everywhere platform last month.
As part of its plan to create a full-featured TV Everywhere platform, Imagine said it will integrate Digital Rapids’ software-based workflow management, transcoding and encoding products with its existing mezzanine quality original encoding, adaptive bit rate transcoding technology.
