Haenlein

Haenlein

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  ■ 116 117TELE-audiovision International— The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 03-04/2015 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志 • Developing software since 1999 • Offering specialized PVR software since 2001 • Device-independent software since 2004 • Internationalization of the software through menus in every language • Attractive offers for repeat customers and receiver manufacturers Haenlein: PVR Software for Digital TV Receivers Haenlein Software's headquarters. Ralf Haenlein, owner of the company, and his family live in this private house. His son Sascha Haenlein is responsible for software development. An additional software developer also works from home not to far from here. COMPANY REPORT Software Developer Haenlein, Germany
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  ëFrankfurt ■ 118 TELE-audiovision International— The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com Ralf Haenlein is owner of Haenlein Software. The company develops PVR software for digital TV receivers. The Video Software Specialists for Receivers Almost every digital TV receiver today, regardless if it‘s for satellite, cable or terrestrial reception, has a PVR function. And just the fact that it‘s digital means that these digital TV programs can eas- ily be recorded. Many TV viewers create an archive and store TV programs on a hard drive. And this is fine as long as the same receiver continues to be used. But if you get a new receiver, then the questions start to pop up: are all of my recordings compatible with the new re- ceiver? And then along the same lines, many viewers like to be able to edit their recordings, whether it‘s to shorten them or cut out the commercials. Some re- ceivers can do this through one of the menus but it‘s rarely easy to use. The software company Haenlein fo- cused themselves precisely on this niche and offers software for both of these situations: the compatibility of TV recordings be- tween different receivers as well as a comfortable and intuitive user interface for editing TV recordings. The company Haenlein has been so successful at this that we decided to take a closer look at their operation. In a small town west of Frankfurt in the Haenlein family‘s home you‘ll find the company‘s headquarters. In addition to the company‘s owner Ralf Haenlein and his son Sascha Haenlein who is the actual software programmer, there‘s a third employee, Tobias Muel- ler, who lives nearby and is responsible for the HD technology. Even though the Haenlein team lives very close to each other, they still communicate with each other as is typical today through Skype. Ralf Haenlein explains to us how it all got started: „I‘m an X-ray technician by trade. I built my first satellite system in 1992.“ But his first go-around with software was not with TV channels for satellite reception, rather it was macro programs for the Excel spreadsheet pro- gram. „In 1999 I founded a small com- pany and sold my programs as a side job.“ As you can see, Ralf Haenlein start- COMPANY REPORT Software Developer Haenlein, Germany
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  ■ ■ 120 TELE-audiovision International— The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com ed writing software programs early on. When the first digital PVR satellite re- ceiver began appearing on the market back in 2001, the Micronik 1380S, Ralf Haenlein was one of the first to take a much closer look at this receiver. The Micronik had no external connec- tions so in order to gain access to the recorded TV programs, the hard drive had to removed. A friend of his already had software for this and Ralf Haenlein came up with the idea to market this software through his small company. „We developed copy protection and in- troduced the software to the market.“ This software was called ‚@micA‘ and it became the cornerstone of today‘s DVR software. „We managed to sell around 200 copies of the software“, recalls Ralf Haenlein when it all started. In 2002 the Topfield TF4000 made its debut on the market. It contained a significantly improved PVR function that resulted in greater distribution. „For this receiver we developed the DVR-TopA software and were able to sell roughly 500 licenses for it.“ Up to this point the software programs developed were only device-specific, it soon became clear In the 11-12/2014 issue of TELE-audiovision we reported on the latest version of Haenlein's PVR software. www.tele-audiovision.com/TELE-audiovision-1411/eng/dvr-studio.pdf Software programmer Sascha Haenlein at work in his office: „I‘m using a MAC in which I work in a virtual Windows 7 environment. The MAC lets me test our products under every other Windows operating system.“ The actual software programming takes place in the MAC OS but Haenlein‘s DVR software is conceived for Windows. that a solution was needed that would work with all kinds of different receivers: „In 2005 we released DVR-Studio; this could be used with many different re- ceivers.“ This software version was sold 2000 times and it showed for the first time that the sale of software could be profitable. Up until this point Ralf Haen- lein was developing and selling his soft- ware as a side job in the evenings and on weekends; he still had his regular job. „In 2007 we released the DVR-Studio Pro1 version, in 2008 came the Pro2 ver- sion and later on in the same year came the HD version.“ In the meantime Ralf Haenlein started earning more money selling software than he did with his regular job. He had to make a decision since both endeavors were taking up too much of his time. In the meantime,
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  1 2 3 122 123TELE-audiovision International— The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 03-04/2015 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志 Ralf‘s son Sascha completed his training and in 2010 the decision was made: the father/son team opted to become self- sufficient; they even hired an additional programmer. Since then the small team devel- oped and released the HD3 version of the software. It can be proudly report- ed that since 2006 over 5000 licenses have been sold each year. „Most of our customers are from German-speaking countries but we also have customers from almost every country in the world.“ Haenlein is in the process of further in- ternationalizing the software by expand- ing the number of different menu lan- guages available such that nearly every language is covered. „We also offer an editor that can, for example, be used by dealers to localize the software.“ Haenlein above all utilizes local deal- ers and distributors for the interna- tionalization and export: „We offer two sales models: the direct sale of licenses with a 20% commission and for receiver manufacturers the sale through promo versions and promo store with a 15% commission. This system is fully auto- matic and doesn‘t require any work from the provider.“ And it‘s this last variant that provides PVR receiver manufactur- ers with another indirect advantage: „The manufacturers no longer need to worry about handling customer inquir- ies on PVR functions; this is automati- cally taken care of by Haenlein.“ Another advantage is that Haenlein‘s software is much easier to use compared to a built- in video editor provided by a receiver manufacturer. Software programmer Sascha Haen- lein highlights yet another very impor- tant argument: „Our software is receiv- er-independent - it can be used with many different receivers; the specifica- tions of many of the available PVR re- ceivers have been stored on our Inter- net servers.“ What‘s so great about this? Simple: TV programs that were recorded in a receiver‘s own format can be con- verted to another receiver‘s format. This makes it extremely easy to exchange TV recordings among different receivers. The TV recordings are thereby compat- ible with each other. Sascha Haenlein explains: „Basically, every receiver just records the transponder stream signal but each receiver manufacturer expands these streams through specific data. Our software recognizes this additional data and can adjust it so that the transponder stream can be played back on a differ- ent receiver.“ Haenlein has been operat- ing this centralized server since 2009. It currently contains the information from 829 different receiver models from 225 different receivers manufacturers. The small software company Haenlein has shown quite impressively that you can have success even with a very small niche product like a PVR Video Editor program for digital receivers. If a com- pany manages to further advance the internationalization of its product, it can easily become the market leader in that particular segment. 1. From the roof window you can see the 1.2-meter antenna with dual LNB that is used by Haenlein. 2. To test their software with real TV signals, Haenlein installed a well-thought- out satellite system: here you can see the multiswitch that distributes the signals from three satellites throughout the house. 3. An example of the cooperation with receiver manufacturers: the manufacturers include their own CD-ROM in the package which includes a test version of Haenlein's software on the CD. As soon as the customer purchases the full version of the software, the receiver manufacturer receives a commission. An added advantage for the manufacturer: customer questions regarding the PVR functions are handled by Haenlein, and not the manufacturer.