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