Craig,
Baraka was funded by a combination Merchant Bank financing and considerable equity by foreign investors. It has spent the last two years researching and developing it's stable of products, each based on MPEG and wavlet technology. The first software products developed went to internet sales in the last half of last year. The video survaillance products which are made up of hardware and software went to market primarily through Direct sales to known Security/Survaillance companies. Since the early versions of the products were still being improved upon, no mass marketing effort was initiated. I believe cumulative sales for the half a year was in the $600k area.
Apparently the attraction for Baraka's investors and bank to Corsaire was Corsaire's very strong finacial backers. Institutional and individuals. The aquisition was made entirely with Corsaire's restricted stock.
The real key to the streaming products is that the applications developed by the technical staff uses MPEG4 technology, thought the applications also recognize wavelet. This is very "state of the art" and is exclusivly licensed for streaming from the Sarnoff group. (of RCA fame). If you havn't tried the cinemail yet, I strongly suggest you do. The compression compared to MPEG2 is five or more fold and the quality is unbelievable vs the size of the streaming image. The other products also use this MPEG4 codec.
Since my primary responsibility was helping in putting the Baraka deal together, I can only address your Satellite Access question based on hearsay. But from what I understand it uses direct wireless "L" band technology, similar to a digital cell phone to access the satellite via an antenna connected to the "modem". From what the company announced, this makes it some 103 time faster then a "T-1" which in turn is several hundred times faster then a 56k modem. Obviously this speed would not be necessary for just a standard internet connection, but for uses such as downloading two hour movies full screen, which is measured in multiple gigabytes, the potential is pretty large.
Hope this helped, gotta go to the dentist now.
Art |
