PALATINE STARTUP TO EASE SWITCH TO DIGITAL TV

February 14, 2006
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Business Reporter

Mercantile Capital Group, the Northbrook and New York City venture capital group, has launched DTV Innovations, a startup in the emerging digital TV market.

Mercantile started Palatine-based DTV Innovations this month from operations purchased for $2 million from Micronas Semiconductors in Germany.

DTV Innovations makes software and hardware products to help TV stations and cable companies prepare their signals for digital broadcasts.

Andrew Lask, 43, chief executive officer of DTV Innovations, which has a half-dozen employees, said the company's products "ease U.S. TV broadcasters' transition to digital transmission." The Federal Communications Commission has set a deadline requiring broadcasters to switch from analog to digital broadcasts.

He said DTV's products include software that stations use to transmit programming information that ultimately reaches consumers via programming guides on all digital TV receivers and hardware and software to convert a variety of different types of signals into the suitable format for transmission.

Lask said DTV Innovations' customers include Fox WFLD and Univision WGBO TV stations in Chicago.

About DTV Innovations
DTV Innovations is committed to the development of new advancements in digital broadcasting in response to the rapidly changing pace at which technology impacts the needs of television broadcasters. DTV offers true end to end solutions from design, implementation to support and after sales service.

In September 2002, LINX Electronics, created a Broadcast Group to provide support for one of the company’s investors, Liberty Corporation, during Liberty’s transition to Digital Television.  Linx Electronics hired Christopher Knechtel to lead the broadcast group. In June, 2004 LINX Electronics was acquired by Micronas Semiconductors Inc. (MSI), the US subsidiary of the German parent company, Micronas Semiconductors Holding AG. The acquisition was based on the intellectual property owned by Linx. DTV Innovations offers products which are designed to provide cost effective digital broadcast solutions for both the high power and low power TV broadcast markets. DTV’s solutions include a Program & System Information Protocol (PSIP) generator, electronic program guide generation software application, a single PCI card solution, which allows the capture, playback and conversion of MPEG2 transport streams in the ASI and SMPTE 310M formats, and a transport converter which converts MPEG transport streams between ASI, SMPTE 310M & SPI.

In January of 2006, Mercantile Capital Group, a private equity fund based in New York and Chicago purchased Micronas’ Broadcast Group and formed DTV Innovations LLC, a newly created company. For more information, please visit the company’s website www.dtvinnovations.com