Media appliance software vendor Mediabolic has agreed to acquire Digital 5, which sells client and server stacks, protocol SDKs, and DRM (digital rights management) stacks for “connected” home entertainment devices. Both companies' products have been deployed in Linux-based media servers, storage servers, and PVRs (personal video recorders), among other home entertainment devices.

Mediabolic says its standards-based media player and media server software enables digital music, photos, videos, and premium content to be distributed between PCs and consumer electronics equipment. Its recent Linux-based design wins include media-enabled NAS (network-attached storage) server reference designs from Freescale and PMC-Sierra, and its software has been used in shipping Linux-based NAS servers from Buffalo and Broadcom, among others. Mediabolic's Network Media Player (NMP), which it announced and demonstrated at the [email protected] conference last year, is pictured above.

Digital 5 offers a variety of networking and software stacks that run on Linux, VxWorks, and Windows embedded OSes, and on ARM, MIPS, and x86 processor architectures. The company says its products, which support standards such as UPnP and Intel NMPR (networked media product requirements), can bring new capabilities and features to DVD players, audio adapters, and digital media adapters. Current customers include Philips, Netgear, Gateway, GoVideo, Oritron, SAE, Broadcom, and Agere.

The companies expect to fold Digital 5's intellectual property into the Mediabolic brand. Digital 5's current products include:

• Client products [architecture diagram]
  • Wireless audio platform
  • Wireless AV platform
  • Wireless DVD platform

• Server products [architecture diagram]
  • PC media server
  • NAS media server

• SDKs (software development kits)
  • UPnP Plugin SDK
  • Media streaming server SDK

• Security
  • DRM security framework

Mediabolic CEO Daniel Putterman stated, “Mediabolic has made noteworthy year-over-year growth and was profitable in 2005.”

Financial terms were not disclosed.

 
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