Snell (company)

Snell Limited, branded as Snell Advanced Media or SAM, is a company that designs and develops solutions for the media production market including applications for central operations, live production, post production, playout and media management. They are head-quartered in Newbury, UK.

The company's product portfolio include standards and format conversion; real-time HD video restoration, live production switching; routing and infrastructure for digital, HDTV and IPTV broadcasting; video compression; control and monitoring, and playout automation and content repurposing for a variety of delivery platforms such as broadcast, IPTV and mobile.

Snell, owned by bankers LDC, was created from the merger of Snell & Wilcox and Pro-Bel in 2009. In March 2014 Snell was acquired by another company owned by LDC Quantel Ltd. Following LDC's replacement of Snell CEO Simon Derry with Quantel CEO Ray Cross, the process of merging the companies began. LDC had previously in 2006 appointed Cross to replace Quantel CEO Richard Taylor. However within a year LDC then replaced Cross with new CEO Tim Thorstenstein. The departure of the former Quantel Board of Directors and other senior Quantel staff ensued, with the two companies operating under the Snell name, trading as Snell Advanced Media or SAM, from September 2015. Following the merger, SAM continues to carry the Quantel name on its Quantel Rio, formerly Pablo Rio, line of post-production solutions.