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Imerge Acquired by Pro Sound Co.
With today's news of Imerge's demise, we should ask again: doe the media server category have legs? View this discussion thread.
The acquisition marks Prism Sound’s first effort in the consumer market.
Grant Rummell, chairman & CEO of Linear LLC, says the sale will “ensure ongoing support for our former customers.”
Although the other Linear companies, including Elan Home Systems, Niles and Xantech, had OEMed Imerge’s Xiva technology for many years, the platform lost favor among those groups, as well as other former OEMers such as Onkyo, Integra, Crestron and Meridian.
SpeakerCraft, yet another Linear company, became the master distributor of Imerge in 2009, but did not renew that arrangement when it expired this year. At the time, SpeakerCraft president Jeremy Burkhardt would not comment on that decision, other than to say, “You know how we feel about iPod. Our dealers have been very successful using it as a whole-house source.”
Imerge joined a spate of other music and video server manufacturers that dropped out of the market over the past couple of years -- Sunfire , Colorado vNet and Escient, among others.
Imerge is “one of the world's premier brands of movie and music-focused entertainment servers,” says Graham Boswell, director of sales and marketing at Prism Sound. “Our challenge is to tell the story to a global audience and to make the product accessible to new markets. We will be extending the former distribution structure into new and untapped markets in the coming months.”
Prism Sound also promises that “customer support will be maintained for all former customers of Imerge Ltd, including OEM partners Elan, Speakercraft, Xantech and Revox.”
According to a statement issued today:
The acquisition takes the Prism Sound group into the home entertainment sector for the first time with audio and video media distribution products for high-end custom installers and high-street retailers. Prism Sound has over 20 years experience working with clients in audio research & development, manufacturing of audio products, broadcast television and radio, music recording and the public sector.
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Article Topics
News · Product News · Video · Digital Media · Media Servers · Mergers and Acquisitions · Speakercraft · Imerge · Linear · Linear Avc ·About the Author
22 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
And who cares - all the nice and good guys incl. their spirit are gone…
@storage-guy - Well spoken sir.!!
What is this? Brit bashing season? its not BP. The article is clearly biased for what ever reason. Seems to me that Julie has some kind of vendetta against these guys and takes great joy in trashing them at every opportunity. Why nothing positive? after all they did invent the category some years ago.
Bias? Check the linked stories. Lots of positive things about Imerge’s direction.
Thanks Julie.
After all to lots of dealers around the world, the Imerge news is very good news. I hope you agree.
Ron.
It is a great day! It is excellent and reliable product. I have great experience with it and I am glad the story continues. This means that the product will develop and all the installers will have easier life.
This is a good and positive news for several dealers and installers active on the business,it seems that everybody forget the hard roads that this guys have been passed to develop the market for the HIFI/Integration Audio servers and later Video several years ago.
Wish all the best for the new reborn
FM
This is great to see this come through.
We have several of projects that where waiting for this. Many K customers came to Imerge since they had a working BD solution. Congrats!
Ron leslie obviously likes to skip the trouble which the latest products made and last years had been going on…
apart from tecn. issues - the distribution toogles had been no help…
But good luck to a fresh start with new products and hopefully less tecn. issues….
tr
Ah, well, yes every CE vendor has had its share of troubles, some much nastier than others.
As long as we’ve been posting on the Web, I’ve never seen anyone comment: Ya know, that company was awesomely awesome to every dealer around the globe. It’s truly astounding that they went out of business ...
Glad to see that the news of Prism Sound Group’s Imerge asset acquisition has started an interesting dialogue. If “traveller” would care to contact me directly at Prism, I will be more than happy to help him in any way I can.
At Prism we highly value our customer base, and we will endeavour to support all Imerge products already in the field as when required to do so.
I will be more than happy to cover off any questions or comments your readers may have.
Thanks to everyone that has commented so far. At Prism Sound Group we value all comments good and bad. We appreciate the good ones and act on the bad ones.
Ronnie Turpie .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
SALES MANAGER, IMERGE MEDIA SERVER DIVISION, PRISM SOUND GROUP
Too bad Escient can’t “pull an Imerge”
Or pull a vnet ... or an NHT ... or M&K ... or Phllips Pronto?
We’ve taken or are taking out every single Imerge product we’ve ever installed and replacing them with Kaleidescapes.
We were doing it before Imerge were closed down and I’m not inclined to reverse that process now that someone has revived the brand. The MS5000 and MP1000 combination was a disgrace. I have no idea how robust the MS1 and players were and I suspect there isn’t much of an installed history to ask.
I don’t understand Prism Sound’s motivation. It’s not a market leader, it doesn’t sound better than anyone else and it’s got a shocking reliability record. I’ve got 4 x MS5000s that are headed for eBay if anyone’s interested.
Oh J. - what a great refurbishing…
Why would SpeakerCraft be that dump for a third time with release no 7.3.4.5.635 and still just beta !?
“The acquisition takes the Prism Sound group into the home entertainment sector for the first time” ... means they have no idea what a mess they bought ....and what exactly means takes them into that market as they had been out for ages.
Even better…:
“Grant Rummell Chairman & CEO of Linear LLC commented, “We are delighted at being able to complete this sale to”
As for a long time nobody else had been interested properly ... Thanks guys…
...
Does it mean at least now somebody will finish my old “old” MS1 from last year ?! and will develop finished products ?!
GL