Pace (Company)

Information about Pace (Company)

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Pace Micro Technology plc (LSE: PIC) is a British developer of set top boxes for digital satellite, cable and IPTV operators, founded in 1982. They took over from Amstrad as the main supplier for BSkyB. They were the first manufacturer to ship boxes for Sky Digital in 1998 and for a time were the only provider of Sky+ boxes. Pace is also the main supplier of set-top boxes for Sky Network Broadcasting in New Zealand.

The company started off making dial up modems, and claims to have developed the first consumer modems.

Overview

Pace's head office is in Saltaire in its home county of Yorkshire. It occupies a large proportion of the Victorian Salt's Mill site. The floor layout of the site is extremely confusing, and many employees refer to it as the "rabbit warren", due to its many passages.

In 1995, they manufactured the world's first DVB decoders for Australian satellite company Galaxy, and had shipped a million DVB units by 1997. By 1998, they were developing solely digital decoders.

Pace was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. The modem division was dissolved in 2000.

Being an indigenous manufacturer, UK media providers are more likely to use Pace equipment. As a result the company had, for many years, close to a monopoly on the supply of cable decoders, DTT equipment, ADSL based VOD systems and satellite decoders suitable for use on UK networks. Pace do not tend to produce retail products, but did produce the first freeview PVR, the Twin.

In 1999, Pace purchased the set top box division of Acorn Computers, this becoming its Cambridge office. As a result, for a number of years, Pace owned RISC OS, and used technologies based on it in its decoder equipment. The Cambridge office was closed down in 2003 for cost cutting reasons. [1].

In 2001, Pace announced that it was outsourcing the last 25 percent of manufacturing output which remained at Saltaire. Thus the head office is now an administration and design/development centre.

In March 2002, Pace became the first company to market a free-to-view DTT receiver via the Pace DTVA. This, technically, was the first Freeview receiver on the market, although Freeview didn't begin until October that year.

In 2005, Pace in conjunction with Australian subscription television provider Foxtel launched the first DVB-C Personal Digital Recorder with Foxtel iQ[1]

In April 2006 Neil Gaydon became CEO, taking over from John Dyson, and Mike McTighe became the new Chairman, taking over from Sir Michael Bett.

The most recent development for Pace has been a breakthrough in the US market where it is now delivering products to Comcast and DirecTV - the largest cable and satellite operators in the world.

Customers

Notes

1. ^ Pace Press Release - [2]

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London Stock Exchange or LSE is a stock exchange located in London, England, United Kingdom. Founded in 1801, it is one of the largest stock exchanges in the world, with many overseas listings as well as British companies.
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Motto
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A set-top box (STB) or set-top unit (STU) is a device that connects to a television and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen.
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satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon.
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cable is one or more wires or optical fibers bound together, typically in a common protective jacket or sheath. The individual wires or fibers inside the jacket may be covered or insulated. Combination cables may contain both electrical wires and optical fibers.
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Amstrad plc

Public ( LSE:AMT )
Founded 1968
Headquarters Brentwood, Essex, UK

Key people Alan Sugar, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Simon Sugar, Commercial Director
Industry Electronics
Revenue £91.65 million GBP (2006)
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British Sky Broadcasting Group plc

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Sky Digital is the brand name for British Sky Broadcasting's digital satellite television service, transmitted from SES Astra satellites located at 28.2°E (Astra 2A/2B/2D) and Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 satellite at 28.5°E.
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Sky+, or Sky Plus, is a personal video recorder (PVR) service for Sky Digital. Launched in September 2001, Sky+ allows the user to record, pause and instantly rewind live TV. The system performs these functions using an internal hard drive inside the Sky+ set top box.
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Modem (from modulate and demodulate) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information.
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State Party United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Type Cultural
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Reference 1028
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Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England, and the largest historic county in Great Britain. Although Yorkshire is a historic county, with no current official standing (except as part of the name of the English region of Yorkshire and the Humber), the name is
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Victorian era of the United Kingdom marked the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire. Although commonly used to refer to the period of Queen Victoria's rule between 1837 and 1901, scholars debate whether the Victorian period—as defined
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Salt's Mill (or Salts Mill) is an art gallery, shopping and restaurant complex located in Saltaire, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is inside a former mill, built by Sir Titus Salt. The 1853 gallery takes its name from the date of the building in which it is housed.
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DVB, short for Digital Video Broadcasting, is a suite of internationally accepted open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an industry consortium with more than 270 members, and they are published by a
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Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV or DTT) is an implementation of digital technology to provide a greater number of channels and/or better quality of picture and sound using aerial broadcasts to a conventional antenna (or aerial) instead of a satellite dish or
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The PACE Twin PVR (Personal Video Recorder) was launched in the UK in March 2003 and was the first to offer hard disk recording of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT or DVB-T) with no subscription. It was also known as the Pace 'Puma'.
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Acorn Computers was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK. These included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro and the Acorn Archimedes.
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