Radiobox

Radiobox and Radiobox Pro

In France, the company Broadcast Associes takes Exstreamer-100 and Instreamer-100 products and resells these under the name "Radiobox". These are the 100% same products as the originals, with the exception of a Sticker on them ... of course, if you call Broadcast Associes, they will not say so.

At IBC2008, Barix invited Broadcast Associes to the Barix booth, because they claimed they will use the Exstreamer 1000 PCB as the basis for a new product, "Radiobox Pro". They even showed a prototype and Barix was dumb enough to share the visitors with them and do a press release about the "Radiobox Pro" product, which Broadcast Associes promised to finish. The Exstreamer 1000, Barix' broadcast "flagship", is designed using a space saving 1/2 width 19 case, which can easily be rack mounted. Broadcast Associes claims that broadcast customers can not live with a product which uses DB9 connectors and not space hungry XLR connectors for an STL and generic broadcast product - and that there must be a Compact Flash and not a USB memory for backup. That's the difference of the alledged "Radiobox Pro", besides the price (about 70% more of what Barix charges for the Exstreamer 1000.

Well, seems there has not been much interest by customers for an overpriced Exstreamer-1000 with XLR connectors, so Broadcast Associes has decided to NOT build the Radiobox Pro as originally planned and showcased at IBC2008. It will be interesting to see if Sylvain Cavet and Fabrice Gauthier, the founders of Broadcast Associes, can continue with their strategy of using well priced Barix (and maybe other) products, obscuring the make of the products, and selling them at higher prices as "their" invention.

And it will be interesting if Barix will run in such a trap again and believe wanna-be OEMs, providing marketing help with a well known brand for Vaporware ...

Radiobox Pro, definitely, is Broadcast-associes vaporware. The Exstreamer 1000 is providing the same functionality and is shipping, making Broadcasters happy around the world.