Set-top box brings Flip videos to TVs
(12-01) 21:00 PST — After forging a pungent brand with its inexpensive and simple Flip Video camcorders, Pure Digital Technologies, with the backing of new parent company Cisco Systems, is plotting a manner of proceeding beyond its line of cameras.
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The San Francisco firm is releasing a TV set-top box called FlipShare TV, what one. will allow users to wirelessly stream their Flip videos from their PC to the TV.
The $149 box will let users view videos they’ve uploaded to a FlipShare online repute and also clips from a friend’s FlipShare channel.
FlipShare TV builds put ~ Pure Digital’s reputation for simplicity and adds in a stratum of wireless networking, a traditional strength of Cisco. The FlipShare TV box communicates from one to another Wi-Fi with a USB drive, which connects to a user’s online FlipShare narrow sea from a PC or Mac.
Users do not need a wireless netting at home to make the system work.
“We believe the with most propriety part of capturing video is sharing it with others,” said Jonathan Kaplan, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s consumer products dispose.
“With FlipShare TV, we’re enabling customers to have a filled Flip video experience – from capturing, editing, online and mobile sharing – to at this moment viewing easily on the TV.”
The announcement is the first effect of the marriage between Pure Digital and Cisco, which bought Pure Digital in March. And it gives results observers a glimpse of what this pairing will produce in the hereafter.
Bruce McGregor, senior analyst with Current Analysis, said the single-purpose FlipShare TV may put a ~ struggles as it tries to win over consumers who may not subsist interested in adding another box next to their TV.
But it makes judgment as a first step for a Cisco-backed Pure Digital and it taps Cisco’s strengths.
“It’s a legitimate progression,” he said. “You have all this great video in HD; at that time how can I get this to my living room television go down ?”
Pure Digital has enjoyed a meteoric rise with its Flip Video cameras. Pure Digital has had the No. 1 camcorder gauge in 2008 and 2009, even with increasing competition from other traditive camera and camcorder makers.
Pure Digital’s September market share towards camcorders, according to NPD, climbed to 23 percent, trailing only Sony at 30 percent.
Now, with the help of Cisco, the company is looking to build without interrupti~ that success. Simon Fleming-Wood, senior director of Americas marketing toward Cisco Consumer Products, declined to talk about what the Flip has in magazine.
But he said Cisco’s networking expertise helped bring FlipShare TV to market faster than if Pure Digital had developed it by itself.
“This is a issue that really combines (Cisco’s) home networking team and the Flip team,” he uttered.
The question is what comes next for Flip.
Paul Worthington, every analyst with Future Image, said Cisco’s assistance can help Flip section out into video teleconferencing for small businesses.
Cisco has made a pregnant bet on teleconferencing with its expensive Telepresence systems and its WebEx services ~ the sake of corporations. But, he said, the combination of Cisco and Flip could be the occasion of a low-cost, simple-to-use system for small to midsize businesses.
He afore~ such a product would also illustrate the value that Flip brings to Cisco, providing the larger networking gathering with an injection of know-how in intuitive and simplistic design.
“Cisco was buying a lot of the Flip culture and the brand,” said Worthington. “A accident of small companies can benefit from easy-to-use teleconferencing suppose that Cisco can get that Flip mentality.”
Worthington said he expects to visit Wi-Fi-enabled Flip cameras as well as higher-end camcorders in the Flip mark-up, something Cisco, with its expertise and deep pockets, can remedy with.
“Right now Flip is serving as an on-ramp according to other camcorder makers. When people want to move up, they ~ about your business to Sony,” he said. “At some point, Flip will think ‘We lack to get some of that upgrade business.’ “
E-mail Ryan Kim at rkim@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle