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History
1980s - The Early Days
In the early 1980s, as student president of the Residence Hall Association at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tenn., Ron Johnson developed an analog, closed-circuit television system to inform students about campus-related activities.
Two fellow students, Andre Ancelin and David Cook, shared Johnson's interest in the technology. Together, they developed an automated-control system television stations could use in scheduling videotaped programs. After graduation, the three raised $10,000 and founded Adtec Productions, Inc. in September 1985 in Nashville, Tenn., and began to market their automated broadcast equipment.
As sales surged, Adtec needed larger production facilities. Engineering and manufacturing operations were moved to Jacksonville, Fla. to a 20,000-square-foot facility and the three founders recruited engineer Kevin Ancelin, Andre's brother and an initial investor in the company, to join them. The four still hold the key leadership positions in the company today and make up its board of directors.
During these early years, Adtec manufactured VCR controllers, switchers and text character generators for the closed circuit (hospitals and universities) and cable and broadcast television markets. Products included the Ad-Maestro, Active 64-16, Lite-Ning, Telecaster and AVS-2. Thousands of these analog Adtec products are still in service worldwide.
1990s - We Do It Digital
In the mid 1990s, it became clear to the leadership of Adtec that digital video, particularly MPEG, would become ubiquitous in the industry. After thorough research, the decision was made to embark on a journey to fundamentally change the company and the industry.
The journey began with the knowledge that VCR's, specifically videocassette tapes, were a major source of failure in all video systems. With this in mind, Adtec's initial goal was to design an embedded solution to reliably play MPEG 1 without a PC. The output of this endeavor produced Adtec's Soloist MPEG 1 player.
In 1997, Adtec extended the original the Soloist's success by adding MPEG 2, expanded storage, networking and a host of analog and digital outputs, resulting in the Soloist 2 Broadcast MPEG 2 player and Mirage MPEG 2 players.
In 1999, the scalable, single-channel Duet MPEG 2 Commercial Inserter debuted with internal agile baseband demodulator, eliminating the need for expensive external mainframes. The introduction of the Soloist 2-S Switcher for local origination programming followed the Duet. Both products offer SDI (serial digital) video as an option for emerging markets adhering to the SDI standard.
2000s - The IP and DTV Future
Foreseeing the expansion of network technology, Adtec introduced the edje MPEG digital video player and network appliance in 2001. Designed for integration into IP networks, the edje product line boasts high-quality MPEG playback and control at a price comparable to DVD players. Weighing less than two pounds and a footprint only slightly larger than a hard drive, the embedded technology of the edje offers reliability and performance far exceeding DVD or PC based solutions.
Winner of a NAB AIM award, Adtec's edje-L MPEG digital video player and network appliance with built-in QPSK satellite data receiver was introduced in August of 2002. The edje-L is designed for incorporation into satellite multimedia video networks. Satellite delivery is supported by Adtec's FCMP (File Control Multicast Protocol) server application.
In 2002, Adtec expanded the edje product line with the introduction of the edje-2000 real time streaming encoder, a high quality, low-latency encoding solution for enterprise IP delivery to Adtec's edje decoders, or alternatively to Adtec's SST (Soft Set Top) desktop MPEG 2 decoder software.
The year 2003 yielded Adtec's edje-2100 distribution encoder and edje-3000 multiplexer. The edje-2100 encoder is designed for digital television distribution systems (satellite, cable, terrestrial and IP), supporting high-quality MPEG 2 video and Dolby AC-3 audio with DVB-ASI output. The edje-2100 provides all the amenities of encoders costing five times its price and twice its size.
The edje-3000 transport stream multiplexer, including ten DVB-ASI inputs, is ideal for aggregating MPEG 2 transport streams for digital television distribution, as well as MPE IP data encapsulation. The incredible functionality and features of these products confirm Adtec's ongoing commitment to emerging DTV market.
Today and Tomorrow - Future-Proofing Our Technology
Currently Adtec is developing the next generation of advanced compression standards-based products including WM9 and MPEG 4 Part 10 (H.264), and is continuing to mature the MPEG 2 based products to deliver more standards and features, while retaining the hard earned Adtec reputation of value and reliability.
The broadcast and professional market will benefit from Adtec's newly introduced Soloist-HD High Definition Digital Media Server. The Soloist-HD supports MPEG-2 video in SD and HD as well as advanced compression standards and a rich array of audio formats, including Dolby Digital, AAC, PCM, and WMA.
Adtec's successful expansion into the growing IPTV market is led by the DTA Digital Turn Around Media Routers with integrated QPSK, QAM, and ATSC tuners and conditional access for for enterprise and DTH applications utilizing low-cost IP set tops. The Adtec IPTV solution is further supported by our middleware solution; MAS (Middleware Application Server) delivers electronic program guides to navigate program offerings.
adVantage, Adtec's enterprise ad insertion solution introduced in 2004, is compatible with analog, digital and SDI delivery systems. Components include the TBGS Traffic and Billing Gateway Server with adManage application, the Duet MPEG 2 Commercial Inserter and DPI-1200 Digital Into Transport (DIT) Ad Server. New to adVantage is adCode offering media ingest and prep for storage and distribution to headends. Sources can be tapes, DVDs or content from FireWire™ from nonlinear editors. AdVantage supports Cable Labs VOD and SCTE encoding standards and provides enterprise-level future proofing and offers significant savings over the competition.
With over 40,000 units on every continent, Adtec Digital is the premier developer of innovative digital video technology. We look forward to our technological future and the opportunity to better serve our valued current and new customers.
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