Imerge Ltd, a Cambridge, UK developer of applications and systems software for audio/visual consumer electronics goods, has received first round funding of 1m pounds from Residentie Investments, the venture capital subsidiary of Dutch investment group Achmea. The funding, which follows seed corn capital from former parent, the Cambridge technology consultancy, Scientific Generics Ltd, will fund further research and development, and a recruitment drive to build Imerge’s staffing from 12 today to 20 by the end of next year.
By then the company ought also to be making significant sales. Imerge has already licensed applications software to two major consumer electronics companies according to sales and marketing director, Robin Courtenay, and these companies are expected to demonstrate the first products based on these licenses at the CS Show in Las Vegas next month.
According to Courtenay, Imerge’s next generation audio/visual hard drive controller systems and software will be used to power smart consumer audio systems which will probably be available in stores in the middle of next year. These products will include hard-drive CD bunkers, capable of recording the content of as many as 2000 audio CDs to an onboard database, and playing back music according to sophisticated profiles programmed into the database by users. Imerge’s software, and its own design remote control handset, will make it simple for consumers to use such audio devices.
Further out, but still possibly by the end of next year, Imerge applications will also appear on AV-drive based video recorders, and television sets. Such products, which enable programs to be recorded from two channels simultaneously, are already available from California companies Replay TV and Tivo, but Imerge says it will help its licensees go a step further by writing software that enables TVs to be controlled via the internet. By this means, Courtenay said, a consumer electronics manufacturer’s web portal could become the chief interface between the customer and a an entire world of TV programming, which the portal site would automatically sift and deliver according to the customers own viewing preferences.
