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116 117TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 03-04/2015 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志
• Developing software
since 1999
• Offering specialized
PVR software since
2001
• Device-independent
software since 2004
• Internationalization
of the software
through menus in
every language
• Attractive offers for
repeat customers and
receiver manufacturers
Haenlein:
PVR Software
for Digital TV
Receivers
Haenlein Software's headquarters. Ralf
Haenlein, owner of the company, and
his family live in this private house. His
son Sascha Haenlein is responsible for
software development. An additional
software developer also works from
home not to far from here.
COMPANY REPORT Software Developer Haenlein, Germany

2. ëFrankfurt
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118 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com
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

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120 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com
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.
www.tele-audiovision.com/TELE-audiovision-1411/eng/dvr-studio.pdf
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,

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122 123TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication — 03-04/2015 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 03-04/2015 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志
Ralf‘s son Sascha completed his training
and in 2010 the decision was made: the
father/son team opted to become self-
sufficient; they even hired an additional
programmer.
Since then the small team devel-
oped and released the HD3 version of
the software. It can be proudly report-
ed that since 2006 over 5000 licenses
have been sold each year. „Most of our
customers are from German-speaking
countries but we also have customers
from almost every country in the world.“
Haenlein is in the process of further in-
ternationalizing the software by expand-
ing the number of different menu lan-
guages available such that nearly every
language is covered. „We also offer an
editor that can, for example, be used by
dealers to localize the software.“
Haenlein above all utilizes local deal-
ers and distributors for the interna-
tionalization and export: „We offer two
sales models: the direct sale of licenses
with a 20% commission and for receiver
manufacturers the sale through promo
versions and promo store with a 15%
commission. This system is fully auto-
matic and doesn‘t require any work from
the provider.“ And it‘s this last variant
that provides PVR receiver manufactur-
ers with another indirect advantage:
„The manufacturers no longer need to
worry about handling customer inquir-
ies on PVR functions; this is automati-
cally taken care of by Haenlein.“ Another
advantage is that Haenlein‘s software is
much easier to use compared to a built-
in video editor provided by a receiver
manufacturer.
Software programmer Sascha Haen-
lein highlights yet another very impor-
tant argument: „Our software is receiv-
er-independent - it can be used with
many different receivers; the specifica-
tions of many of the available PVR re-
ceivers have been stored on our Inter-
net servers.“ What‘s so great about this?
Simple: TV programs that were recorded
in a receiver‘s own format can be con-
verted to another receiver‘s format. This
makes it extremely easy to exchange TV
recordings among different receivers.
The TV recordings are thereby compat-
ible with each other. Sascha Haenlein
explains: „Basically, every receiver just
records the transponder stream signal
but each receiver manufacturer expands
these streams through specific data. Our
software recognizes this additional data
and can adjust it so that the transponder
stream can be played back on a differ-
ent receiver.“ Haenlein has been operat-
ing this centralized server since 2009. It
currently contains the information from
829 different receiver models from 225
different receivers manufacturers.
The small software company Haenlein
has shown quite impressively that you
can have success even with a very small
niche product like a PVR Video Editor
program for digital receivers. If a com-
pany manages to further advance the
internationalization of its product, it can
easily become the market leader in that
particular segment.
1. From the roof window you can see the
1.2-meter antenna with dual LNB that is
used by Haenlein.
2. To test their software with real TV
signals, Haenlein installed a well-thought-
out satellite system: here you can see the
multiswitch that distributes the signals
from three satellites throughout the house.
3. An example of the cooperation with
receiver manufacturers: the manufacturers
include their own CD-ROM in the package
which includes a test version of Haenlein's
software on the CD. As soon as the customer
purchases the full version of the software,
the receiver manufacturer receives a
commission. An added advantage for the
manufacturer: customer questions regarding
the PVR functions are handled by Haenlein,
and not the manufacturer.