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Grass Valley (company)
Encyclopedia
Grass Valley, previously known as Grass Valley Group, is a privately held company based in California, USA. Grass Valley produces technology for the video and broadcast industry. On January 29, 2009, Thomson announced its intention to sell the Grass Valley business unit. On July 26, 2010, Technicolor (formerly Thomson) received a binding offer from the private equity firm Francisco Partners
to purchase the Grass Valley business unit, not including the headend and transmission businesses. After Francisco Partners
completed the acquisition from Technicolor at the end of 2010, Grass Valley resumed doing business as a fully independent company again, on January 1, 2011. The Company is now Grass Valley Sarl headquartered in Luxembourg, legally known in the USA as Grass Valley USA, LLC.
, in the foothills of California
’s Sierra Nevada range. Hare chose Grass Valley after learning about it from his friend, Charles Litton Sr.
. In 1964, Grass Valley demonstrated its first video product, a Video Distribution Amplifier in a hotel room at the National Association of Broadcasters
convention. By 1968, the Grass Valley Group had introduced its first vision mixer
, the flagship product that helped build the company’s reputation.
The company merged with Tektronix
in 1974, and was very successful for the next fifteen years. Then Tektronix sold its video business to a private investor (Terry Gooding of San Diego, CA), who reincorporated it under the name Grass Valley Group Inc. The sale closed on September 24, 1999.
In 2002, the French electronics giant Thomson Multimedia, now known as Technicolor SA, acquired the Grass Valley Group.
After coming under the ownership of Thomson, Grass Valley was forced to merge its product line with the existing professional and broadcast products of its new parent company, with mixed results. By 2008, the once-profitable Grass Valley division was operating at a net loss of over $100 million per year, and on January 29, 2009, Thomson announced that they were putting the Grass Valley division up for sale.
In 2010, the Grass Valley business unit, not including the headend and transmission businesses, was acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners
and resumed operating as an independent company on January 1, 2011.
Windows NT
and Wind River Systems
VxWorks
along with standard PC and custom video hardware, these machines were an instant hit providing up to four video input/outputs in a box about the size of a Betacam
video recorder.
Grass Valley now offers a number of video server products. The previous Profile family, the PVS3000 and PVS3500, which supported high definition
and standard definition video, is now being replaced by the K2 Media Server and Media Client system, which Grass Valley launched in 2005. Alongside the Profile and K2 products, Grass Valley also offers "iVDR" products, such as the M-Series, which are intended as full-featured replacements for analog video tape recorder
(VTR) systems.
As well as video disk systems, Grass Valley markets switchers and effects systems, such as the Kayenne and Karrera Video Production Centers, and video routers. Grass Valley was recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the 2011 Global Market Leadership of the Year Award in video switchers. Grass Valley also manufactures video cameras, such as the LDK 8000 and LDK 8300.
Grass Valley also produces digital audio routing systems, such as the APEX line.
Thomson's Film Division, located in Weiterstadt including the product line of Spirit DataCine
, Bones Work station and LUTher 3D Color Space converter, was sold to Parter Capital Group http://www.parter-capital.de/en/index.php. The sale was made public on Sept. 9, 2008 and completed on Dec. 1, 2008. The new headquarters is in Weiterstadt. Parter Capital Group will continue to have world wide offices to support products from Weiterstadt, Germany The new name of the company is Digital Film Technology.
Francisco Partners
Francisco Partners is a private equity firm focusing on structured investments in the information technology sector.Francisco Partners Management LLC was founded in August 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco and maintains an additional office in London, United Kingdom...
to purchase the Grass Valley business unit, not including the headend and transmission businesses. After Francisco Partners
Francisco Partners
Francisco Partners is a private equity firm focusing on structured investments in the information technology sector.Francisco Partners Management LLC was founded in August 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco and maintains an additional office in London, United Kingdom...
completed the acquisition from Technicolor at the end of 2010, Grass Valley resumed doing business as a fully independent company again, on January 1, 2011. The Company is now Grass Valley Sarl headquartered in Luxembourg, legally known in the USA as Grass Valley USA, LLC.
History
Grass Valley was founded as a tiny R&D company in 1959 by Dr. Donald Hare in the small town of Grass Valley, CaliforniaGrass Valley, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Grass Valley had a population of 12,860. The population density was 2,711.3 people per square mile . The racial makeup of Grass Valley was 11,493 White, 46 African American, 208 Native American, 188 Asian, 9 Pacific Islander, 419 from other...
, in the foothills of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
’s Sierra Nevada range. Hare chose Grass Valley after learning about it from his friend, Charles Litton Sr.
Charles Litton Sr.
Charles Vincent Litton, Sr was an engineer and inventor from the area now known as Silicon Valley.-Biography:Charles Vincent Litton was born, March 13, 1904, in San Francisco. His mother was Alice J. Vincent and father was Charles A...
. In 1964, Grass Valley demonstrated its first video product, a Video Distribution Amplifier in a hotel room at the National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Broadcasters
The National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association, workers union, and lobby group representing the interests of for-profit, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States...
convention. By 1968, the Grass Valley Group had introduced its first vision mixer
Vision mixer
A vision mixer is a device used to select between several different video sources and in some cases Compositing video sources together to create special effects...
, the flagship product that helped build the company’s reputation.
The company merged with Tektronix
Tektronix
Tektronix, Inc. is an American company best known for its test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. In November 2007, Tektronix became a subsidiary of Danaher Corporation....
in 1974, and was very successful for the next fifteen years. Then Tektronix sold its video business to a private investor (Terry Gooding of San Diego, CA), who reincorporated it under the name Grass Valley Group Inc. The sale closed on September 24, 1999.
In 2002, the French electronics giant Thomson Multimedia, now known as Technicolor SA, acquired the Grass Valley Group.
After coming under the ownership of Thomson, Grass Valley was forced to merge its product line with the existing professional and broadcast products of its new parent company, with mixed results. By 2008, the once-profitable Grass Valley division was operating at a net loss of over $100 million per year, and on January 29, 2009, Thomson announced that they were putting the Grass Valley division up for sale.
In 2010, the Grass Valley business unit, not including the headend and transmission businesses, was acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners
Francisco Partners
Francisco Partners is a private equity firm focusing on structured investments in the information technology sector.Francisco Partners Management LLC was founded in August 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco and maintains an additional office in London, United Kingdom...
and resumed operating as an independent company on January 1, 2011.
Broadcast products
With the acquisition of the video product line from Tektronix, Grass Valley branded the former Tektronix Profile as a Grass Valley product. This was one of the first video disk server products on the market in the mid 1990s, marketed under the "Profile" brand and given the name "PDR" (Professional Disk Recorder). Based on MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
and Wind River Systems
Wind River Systems
Wind River Systems, Inc. is a company providing embedded systems, development tools for embedded systems, middleware, and other types of software. The company was founded in Berkeley, California in 1981 by Jerry Fiddler and David Wilner. On June 4, 2009, Wind River announced that Intel had bought...
VxWorks
VxWorks
VxWorks is a real-time operating system developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems of Alameda, California, USA. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems.- History :...
along with standard PC and custom video hardware, these machines were an instant hit providing up to four video input/outputs in a box about the size of a Betacam
Betacam
Betacam is family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself....
video recorder.
Grass Valley now offers a number of video server products. The previous Profile family, the PVS3000 and PVS3500, which supported high definition
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
and standard definition video, is now being replaced by the K2 Media Server and Media Client system, which Grass Valley launched in 2005. Alongside the Profile and K2 products, Grass Valley also offers "iVDR" products, such as the M-Series, which are intended as full-featured replacements for analog video tape recorder
Video tape recorder
A video tape recorder is a tape recorder that can record video material, usually on a magnetic tape. VTRs originated as individual tape reels, serving as a replacement for motion picture film stock and making recording for television applications cheaper and quicker. An improved form included the...
(VTR) systems.
As well as video disk systems, Grass Valley markets switchers and effects systems, such as the Kayenne and Karrera Video Production Centers, and video routers. Grass Valley was recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the 2011 Global Market Leadership of the Year Award in video switchers. Grass Valley also manufactures video cameras, such as the LDK 8000 and LDK 8300.
Grass Valley also produces digital audio routing systems, such as the APEX line.
Thomson's Film Division, located in Weiterstadt including the product line of Spirit DataCine
Spirit DataCine
Spirit DataCine is a telecine and/or a motion picture film scanner. This device is able to transfer 16mm and 35mm motion picture film to NTSC or PAL standards or one of many High-definition television standards. With the data transfer option a Spirit DataCine can output DPX data files. The Spirit...
, Bones Work station and LUTher 3D Color Space converter, was sold to Parter Capital Group http://www.parter-capital.de/en/index.php. The sale was made public on Sept. 9, 2008 and completed on Dec. 1, 2008. The new headquarters is in Weiterstadt. Parter Capital Group will continue to have world wide offices to support products from Weiterstadt, Germany The new name of the company is Digital Film Technology.
Locations
Grass Valley has engineering centres throughout the world, concentrating on specific products or product groups:- Conflans-Sainte-HonorineConflans-Sainte-HonorineConflans-Sainte-Honorine is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the north-western suburbs of Paris from the center....
, FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... - Salt Lake City, UtahSalt Lake City, UtahSalt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... - Jacksonville, FloridaJacksonville, FloridaJacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, United States - (Permanent office now closed, some personnel relocated to Nevada City) - Woburn, MassachusettsWoburn, MassachusettsWoburn is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. The population was 38,120 at the 2010 census. Woburn is located north of Boston, Massachusetts, and just south of the intersection of I-93 and I-95.- History :...
, United States - Beaverton, OregonBeaverton, OregonBeaverton is a city in Washington County, Oregon, United States, seven miles west of Portland in the Tualatin River Valley.As of the 2010 census, the population is 90,267. This makes it the second-largest city in the county and Oregon's sixth-largest city...
, United States - Nevada City, CaliforniaNevada City, California-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Nevada City had a population of 3,068. The population density was 1,399.7 people per square mile . The racial makeup of Nevada City was 2,837 White, 26 African American, 28 Native American, 46 Asian, 0 Pacific Islander, 40 from other races,...
, United States - (Previous headquarters, near the original home of Grass Valley, CaliforniaGrass Valley, California-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Grass Valley had a population of 12,860. The population density was 2,711.3 people per square mile . The racial makeup of Grass Valley was 11,493 White, 46 African American, 208 Native American, 188 Asian, 9 Pacific Islander, 419 from other...
) - Breda, NetherlandsNetherlandsThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
- WeiterstadtWeiterstadtWeiterstadt is a town in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, in Hesse, Germany. It is situated approx. 6 km northwest of Darmstadt.....
, GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... - KobeKobe, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
, JapanJapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south... - Kuala LumpurKuala LumpurKuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
, Malaysia - Homebush WestHomebush West, New South WalesHomebush West is an inner western suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Homebush West is located 16 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Strathfield...
, SydneySydneySydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... - Notting HillNotting Hill, VictoriaNotting Hill is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 19 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Monash. At the 2006 Census, Notting Hill had a population of 18,901.-History:...
, MelbourneMelbourneMelbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia - PenrosePenrose, New ZealandPenrose is an industrial suburb in Auckland City, New Zealand. It is located to the southeast of the city centre, at a distance of about nine kilometres, between the suburbs of Oranga and Mount Wellington, and close to the Mangere Inlet, an arm of the Manukau Harbour...
, AucklandAucklandThe Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
, New ZealandNew ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
- (Permanent office now closed, most responsibilities shifted to the Australian offices)
See also
- TelecineTelecineTelecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process....
- Digital intermediateDigital intermediateDigital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie...
- VTR
- Professional video cameraProfessional video cameraA professional video camera is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images...
- Hard disk recorderHard disk recorderA hard disk recorder is a type of direct to disk recording system that uses a high-capacity hard disk to record digital audio or digital video. Hard disk recording systems represent an alternative to more traditional reel-to-reel tape or cassette multitrack systems, and provide editing...
- Film production
- Post-productionPost-productionPost-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...