VisCorp

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VisCorp ( V isual I nformation S ervices Corp oration , Nasdaq: VICP), Chicago (USA), was a manufacturer of set-top boxes . The company hit the headlines in April 1996 when it was planning to take over the then Escom subsidiary Amiga Technologies GmbH (Bensheim). CEOs at that time were Bill Buck and his wife Raquel Velasco.

According to Buck, VisCorp and Escom were already partners and had known each other since the time when Bill Buck and Escom founder Manfred Schmitt attended the Commodore creditors' event in 1995 , where the Amiga was- Rights were auctioned for the first time. After the rights were sold in April 1995, VisCorp started negotiations for an Amiga license agreement with Escom as the winning bidder and new Amiga parent company, in order to be able to use their know-how regarding the production of set-top boxes. They received these licenses in January 1996. After that, Escom AG (Heppenheim) slowly went bankrupt and sales negotiations began - the takeover plans were publicly announced on April 11, 1996. Allegedly Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco paid the salaries, taxes and social security contributions of the Amiga staff out of their own pockets from June to November 1996. Escom itself filed for settlement on July 3, 1996, and filing for subsequent bankruptcy on July 15.

William (Bill) Buck commented on the takeover in April 1996: "The planned purchase is part of the VisCorp strategy that aims to be the market leader in the rapidly growing ITV sector" . (Source: c't magazine)

Already in May 1996 a meeting took place in Toulouse regarding the use of Amiga technology. Viscorp had invited interested parties (press, developers ...) with the aim of introducing themselves and the (planned) VisCorp products to the Amiga community and exchanging ideas. The plan was supposedly to produce its own set top box called "ED", which was about to be ready for production, would work with the Amiga chipset and was due to come onto the market in the fourth quarter of 1996. You should u. a. enable Internet access via the television without computer skills.

Ultimately, however, the VisCorp board decided not to complete the planned Amiga takeover and Buck and Velasco left the company. Instead, on March 27, 1997, Amiga was bought by the PC shipper Gateway 2000 - and VisCorp later went bankrupt.

Bill Buck is now the CEO of Genesi , a Luxembourg company that Global Business Partner of IBM and Freescale Design Alliance Partner is. The products include the PowerPC -based CHRP computer Pegasos .

Among other things, Microsoft founder Paul Allen was one of the VisCorp shareholders - at a time when Microsoft was starting to position itself as a potential competitor with WebTV (long before the Xbox ).

Quotes

"We're committed to the Amiga computer because we think the AMIGA computer represents a valuable choice to the market place and we believe it can be a profitable business."

- Bill Buck : Ex-CEO of VisCorp about the plans for an Amiga-based SetTopBox

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Speech by Bill Buck at the Amiga meeting in Toulouse on May 19, 1996. Accessed May 7, 2012