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| Founded | April 7, 1959 |
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| Headquarters | Conflans St. Honorine, France |
| Website | Grass Valley |
Grass Valley, previously known as Grass Valley Group, is a subsidiary company of the French company Thomson. Grass Valley produces technology for the broadcast and film markets, from acquisition through production, postproduction, and transmission. On January 29th 2009, Thomson announced its intention to sell the Grass Valley business unit.[1]
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History
Grass Valley was founded as a tiny R&D company in 1959 by Dr. Donald Hare in the small town of Grass Valley, California, in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada range. Hare chose Grass Valley after learning about it from his friend, Charles Litton Sr..[2] 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 SA acquired the Grass Valley Group.[3]
Since coming under the ownership of Thomson, Grass Valley has merged its product line with the existing professional and broadcast products of its new parent company, including the activities of Thales Broadcast & Multimedia.
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 Microsoft 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 Kayak Video Production Center and video routers.
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[1]. The sale was made public on Sept. 9, 2008 and completed on Dec. 1, 2008. The new head quarters is in Weiterstadt. Parter Capital Group will continue to have world wide offices to support products from Weiterstadt, Germany[4][5] 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-Honorine, France (World Headquarters)
- Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
- Jacksonville, Florida, USA
- Woburn, Massachusetts, USA
- Beaverton, Oregon, USA
- Nevada City, California, USA - (Previous headquarters, near the original home of Grass Valley, California)
- Breda, The Netherlands
- Weiterstadt, Germany
- Rennes, France
- Kobe, Japan
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
See also
- Telecine
- Digital intermediate
- VTR
- Professional video camera
- Hard disk recorder
- Film production
- Post-production
References
- ^ "Thomson to Sell Grass Valley". tvtechnology.com. January 29, 2009. http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/73816.
- ^ by James E. O'Neal (November 15, 2006). "Grass Valley: From the Movies to the Movies". tvtechnology.com. http://hdnews.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0042/t.471.html.
- ^ Thomson History Timeline: 1990-2003, Retrieved on 2009-08-23
- ^ Videography, Thomson Sells Thomson Grass Valley Digital Film Transfer Equipment Business - Published in 2008
- ^ Parter Capital Group web site
Further reading
- 2002. "Share the News Three New Systems from Grass Valley Group Are Intended to Facilitate Work Flow". Broadcasting & Cable. 132: 35.
- 2001. "EQUIPMENT PURCHASE French Manufacturer Thomson Multimedia Acquires Grass Valley Group". Broadcasting & Cable. 131: 12.
External links
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