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118 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 —
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