Motorola to buy video-encoding company

Motorola will soon add to its lineup of infrastructure products it can offer network service providers.

Motorola said Thursday it plans to buy the privately held Modulus Video, which makes equipment for compressing and encoding video. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Motorola has been partnering with Modulus Video for more than two years.

Motorola said Modulus will complement its recent acquisitions of Broadbus, Kreatel, Tut Systems and Netopia.

Motorola has been buying video and networking companies to help create an end-to-end product offering that it can sell to phone companies, cable companies and satellite providers. Motorola already sells set-top boxes to these providers.

The acquisition of Modulus will help Motorola address issues that network operators face as they deliver high-definition TV programming and interactive services such as video on demand, which require a lot of bandwidth. Companies delivering such services need to make their networks as efficient as possible.

"As consumers demand more high-definition video and interactive services, the need for advanced compression technology is increasingly important," Dan Moloney, president of Motorola's home and networks mobility business, said in a statement. "As part of its advanced real-time video encoding products, Modulus Video has a powerful architecture and product development framework that is well-suited for continued technological advancement."