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© 1997-2006
Gareth Knight
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VisCorp Overview

For a short time during 1996 Viscorp were set to be the Amigas owners, buying Amiga Technologies from the troubled Escom. But where did the company come from and what was it about? This page examines the Amigas brief relationship with the VisCorp and what might have become if they had bought the Amiga.

The company's origins can be traced back to its formation in Chicago, Illinois on May 1st, 1990 under the name Information on Command, Inc. The name lasted for less than three weeks, changing it to Visual Information Service Corporation on May 22nd, 1990. The first years were spent assessing the developing set-top market and producing a market plan for the companies future in that market. After deciding that the set-top market could be profitable Viscorp began development of the ED technology, producing the first prototype in May 1993.
The next year was a time of rapid expansion for Viscorp, hiring a number of people for its management team. It was a time of expansion for the company, when they established a relationship with its first interactive service provider, NTN Communications, Inc. during December 1994. The companies development continued in 1995 when Viscorp licensed the rights to the former Commodore Amiga technology, from its German owners, Escom AG. Their choice was based upon Amigas efficient chipset and operating system, which they chose to incorporate into the ED box. The set-top market relied upon cheap hardware, making the Amiga the perfect choice at the time for an efficient hardware design. The choice would also enable the ED box to utilize the vast library of Amiga software, allowing Viscorp to break into the commercial market.

Amiga ED

The ED project finally made it into the final stages of development during 1995. The machine was aimed at a different market than the Amiga, Macintosh, and Windows platforms of the time. The set-top boxes name was derived from this market, being dubbed the ED, or Electronic Device. The products market lay in simple consumer electronic devices that proliferate every home, such as a calculator. The user does not have to understand how the machine works to use it. To measure the devices response in this new market, Viscorp conducted a six-month market trial in conjunction with focus group studies in up to 25 homes on a cable system in a Detroit suburb. After this study was completed and making a few refinements and modifications to the ED, VisCorp planned to license the hardware to a range of communication companies.

The ED's market

The ED is unique among "Classic" Amiga technology, being aimed at the information appliance rather than home computer market. Viscorp estimated that the online market would increase at a rate of 20% every month. The mid-90s was a time of new technologies being tested by a range of cable and telephone companies, which were launching trials of broad band video-on-demand interactive technologies. The set-top market was based upon the desire to bring interactive television and the world wide web to the masses. Studies of the time suggested the price and complexity of computers prevented the average John and Jane from using the internet.
It is VisCorp's belief that there is a market opportunity to provide
revenue producing interactive services to the mass market that do not
involve deployment of such technologies and which are far cheaper and
easier to use than the typical PC.
The efficient nature of the Amiga allowed VisCorp to create a system that had both an efficient hardware and software design,  greatly reducing the amount of memory needed to manipulate graphics. The choice of the Amiga was deeply grounded in the cost of hardware at the time. Although chip cost repeatedly dropped, memory was the one irreducible cost in digital electronics. By reducing a dependence on memory, VisCorp suggested they had reduced the cost of the device to a point where it could penetrate the mass market.

Licensing

One of Commodore's biggest mistakes was not licensing the Amigas operating system and hardware to other manufacturers. For the ED to succeed VisCorp realized they would not be successful unless they took advantage of the marketing power of several manufacturers. VisCorp had preliminary discussions with several manufacturers, including Pioneer, Zenith, Toshiba and Freedom Star. The company believed licensing allowed greater market penetration, making the Amiga ED a success.
The set-top market differs in many ways from the home computer market. For cheap hardware to succeed it must make profit somewhere else. Nintendo hardly make any money from selling the Nintendo 64 console, balancing the low price with the cost of third party payments to develop for their machine. Similarly, VisCorp expected a relatively low revenue stream from manufacturing licenses, instead planning to receive revenue from the variety of services they intended to make available through the ED, such as unique telephone management features, on-screen TV program guides, fax and e-mail, Internet access, and the ability to download and play arcade quality video games right on the TV.
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