Tim Brooksbank, chairman at Calibre UK commented, "Achieving this milestone has been immense fun. We've sold a lot of great products and have built some valued relationships. Here's to the next 25 years."
Founded on 8 August 1988, Calibre UK established itself as a small business in the technology and software sector and quickly built a reputation for electronics excellence.
Calibre UK originally designed and manufactured custom test equipment for CRT monitor and television factories, primarily for automated picture analysis and calibration on production lines. This spun out initial product lines such as I2C-Bus development and associated test tools. In the early 1990s Calibre UK progressed to making specialist CRT video displays for the oil and gas industries as well as for general industrial purposes - a key market being displays for remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) as well as specialist security and surveillance projects such as the Dartford River Crossing.
In the mid 1990s, Calibre UK introduced its very first video processor to market. This was a deinterlacer and format converter for use on the then-common Gem80 industrial programmable logic controller, which had a unique video output format incompatible with most computer displays.
Around this time Calibre UK was also the first British company to market with a high-resolution LCD flat panel display capable of showing live video. This was Calibre UK's second true video processing and scaling product, developed in-house and able to de-interlace and scale PAL or NTSC to the 640x480 progressive format that at that time considered high resolution for the newly emerging TFT-LCD technology. Additionally, a range of specialist LCD driver boards was developed for industrial, medical and military needs, a market Calibre UK is still active in.
Also in the mid 1990's other manufacturers' products were also sold on a distribution basis, particularly those from US scaler manufacturers Folsom Research and PC Video Conversion.
Calibre UK then progressed to designing and manufacturing its own scalers, initially for the emerging LED videowall market, then for specialist projection and medical as well as super-premium home theatre.
"Calibre UK's export success was officially recognised when the company received a Queen's Award for Enterprise in International Trade in 2012. Our staff, peers and customers are justifiably proud of the achievement," adds Brooksbank.
Today, Calibre UK offers a comprehensive range of processors to broadcast and professional audio visualcompanies alike throughout the world. Despite the current economic climate, Calibre UK's continues to expand with further investments being made into R&D through 2013.
(Jim Evans)
