Osprey Lives On, ViewCast Disappears

 

By: Jan Ozer    3-3-2014

 

It's no secret that ViewCast, one of the longest tenured veterans in the streaming media marketplace, has been under a lot of financial pressure lately, though their products have always been solid, at least for me. Last August, they formed a strategic alliance with Variosystems, which is Swiss owned but has a manufacturing facility in Texas. At the time, new ViewCast CEO Lance Ouellette stated that "the alliance calls for Variosystems to provide financial and other resources to ViewCast and to carry out administrative and engineering as well as manufacturing of a large number of ViewCast products, while ViewCast personnel continue to focus on marketing and sales."

 

But the goal expressed in the Press Release seemed to indicate that the goal was to run ViewCast as a separate company. The press release stated that "Variosystems is stepping up to help ViewCast stabilize its operations and reduce costs with a goal of returning ViewCast to future growth and profitability."

 

All was quiet until I recieved the following email just a few minutes ago. Very familiar name, unfamiliar branding. If you click the image, you'll open the press release linked to in the email.

 

The relevant bit from the press release states, "For over 18 years, Osprey Video technology has set the industry standard for high-quality, reliable streaming performance. Effective today, Variosystems takes over the technology that helped start the streaming revolution. Osprey by Variosystems will continue to offer capture cards for every need - from single video-only camera feeds to four independent channels of HD SDI A/V content." A visit to the OspreyVideo site reveals, in essence, the ViewCast website without any mention of ViewCast. All Osprey cards will be sold by OspreyVideo, but not the Niagara line of products.

 

Acccording to a press release here, the Niagara line of encoders will be sold by Vancouver-based Valdor Technology, who purchased "the business and all the assets of VideoWare, Inc. ("VideoWare"), a wholly owned subsidiary of ViewCast.com, Inc. ("ViewCast")." The release goes on to state that VideoWare marketed both the Niagara and GoStream product lines, which are the two that Valdor acquired.

 

The ViewCast products that I used were typically stable, reliable, easy to work with products backed by knowledge support reps. It felt like ViewCast was always close to getting over the hump financially, but never quite made it. Hopefully, Variosystems and Valdor will provide the financial muscle necessary to effectively market the remaining products.