Trade.Information

Company Name: Linear Systems Ltd.

Company Type: Linear Systems is a world leader in research, develpment and manufacturing of advanced digital video solutions for the broadcast industry

Company Profile

Tom and Linda Thorsteinson founded Linear Systems Ltd. in Winnipeg in 1979. Initially it operated as an engineering consultancy company, doing work for the mining industry, and repairing NC machines. Microcomputers were first used by Linear in 1981 when a Multibus computer "Tripper Control System" system was designed for Allan Potash in Saskatchewan. Linear developed more Potash instruments such as the Portable Ore Grade Analyzer (POGA).

Linear started designing iSBX modules for the Multibus as a result of this early exposure to the power of the microcomputer. Products such as the LSBX Clock and the LSBX Ram were developed by Linear and starting in 1983, for sale to the industrial computer marketplace, through a company in California called Industrial Modules. This company later became Computer Modules and continues to market Linear's Products today.

In 1986, as the Multibus market began to fade, Linear started to develop serial communications products to work in the IBM PC. These PC bus cards used the RS-422/485 or T1 interface standard and the HDLC protocol, and were used for wide area networking. It as at this time in the mid-1980s and early 1990s that Linear began to use the FPGA and to use DMA as a transfer engine for data. Linear developed a range of products using the HDLC protocol but found that the marketplace was changing again.

In 1998 Linear developed the DVB Master Send, which was the first of a series of DVB ASI cards for the IBM PCI bus. The DVB Master Receive and the DVB Master FD followed and quickly established themselves as industry standards for PCI based DVB cards. Linear's designs, which uses a half-sized card format, an FPGA for interface to the PCI Bus interface and scatter-gather DMA for data transfer, proved to be a powerful and efficient design approach. The firmware design is unique, giving minimum transmit latency and is Patent Pending. Linear now has a line of DVB Master cards with many options.

When these PCI cards were first introduced, the PC was not accepted as being reliable enough for the broadcast industry, but as time went on that has changed. Linear's cards and drivers have evolved to the point where reliability is extremely high, due to the many number of hours of testing and use, and are now accepted and used in critical applications.

Over the last two years Linear has developed application software and complete PC box solutions based on the DVB Master cards. The Time Shifter, DVB Guardian, IP Caster and the Quad Mux are now available. In addition Linear has recently developed Video over IP solutions including the ASI2IP and the MuxMaster S/A.

At Linear, we will continue to listen to its customers and to develop unique and reliable solutions for the broadcast industry.

About Company

Since Linear Systems was started in 1979, we have learned to evolve and change; first from our industrial control work, then to wide area networking, and now with our DVB products. We released our first DVB ASI card for the PCI bus in 1999 and I have been very pleased to see our continuous growth since then. Our original DVB Master transmitter card has now grown to be a complete line of cards, with various input/output options. To this we have added products for ATSC, SDI and HD SDI. More recently we have developed systems and software and also new IP related products.

In the last few years I have been pleased to see our staff grow, with the addition of talented engineers and support personnel, recruited mostly from our local university. We have had to adapt and change our internal systems and evolve into a larger company.

Through all of this we have kept our goal constant, that is to give the best personal service and product quality that we can possibly provide to our customers. We strive to listen to our customers, and work with them to develop new ideas. I think this philosophy has served us well and it will continue.