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by beagle3 4777 days ago
PrimeSense (the company behind the Kinect IR technology) had a competitor at the time called 3DV systems (or something like that), that made an RGBD TOF camera that worked way, way better than the kinect - but they ran into financing problems, and were bought at-cost by Microsoft (something like $30M, which was the investment). That was in 2007, and even back then they were able to produce them for ~$300/BOM if I remember correctly.

At the time, everyone assumed MS just bought them to shut out competitors - but it appears they actually use the thing.
1 comments
Qworg 4777 days ago
The company was Canesta. ToF sensors were their thing. [1]

Microsoft bought them in 2010, and it seems like they finally got their tech integrated (and cut Primesense out in the process).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canesta

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beagle3 4777 days ago
And I was thinking about 3DV Systems' [1] product called ZCam [2]. I wasn't aware of the Canesta deal - apparently, MS cornered the market of depth cameras. Personally, I think this deserves some kind of regulatory anti-trust action. But that's just me.

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/21/sources-confirm-microsoft-... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZCam

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