BARRY RUBERY, joint founder of Pace Micro Technology, is to go head-to-head with the set-top box manufacturer as he prepares to launch a series of high-tech products for the television industry.

Mr Rubery, who made about £80 million from the flotation of Pace, has set up Fusion Digital Technology with many former Pace employees.

The company, which is moving to headquarters near Bradford, has just launched its first product, a digital personal video recorder (PVR) for Freeview, the free-to-air digital terrestrial television service.

The device allows viewers to record up to 40 hours of television from Freeview’s 35 channels. Freeview is in three million UK homes, with four million predicted by the end of this year.

Fusion provides an electronic programme guide. Users point a remote control at the screen to record programmes at the click of a button.

“I’m so happy to be back,” said Mr Rubery, 57, who left Pace in 1997.

Since leaving Pace, Mr Rubery bought and sold Huddersfield Town Football Club, a deal that lost him about £7 million. He has also been involved in profitable property developments in Barbados.

The entrepreneur, who was responsible for marketing and finance at Pace alongside Hood, the co-founder, who specialised in technology, has returned to the industry because he believes an exciting era is opening up.

Mr Rubery said: “I believe the new consumer electronic products are going to determine the future of television rather than the other way around.”

Pace produces digital receivers including video recorders for satellite television.

Mr Rubery’s new company is a joint venture with the Turkish television set manufacturer Beko Electronik, part of Koc Group, the conglomerate.

The Pace founder owns 30 per cent of Fusion with Beko holding the rest. Fusion designs products for manufacture in Turkey.

The new Digifusion PVR box, which costs about £250, also contains a digital terrestrial receiver. It is aimed initially at the UK market but will eventually be marketed to viewers of digital terrestrial services across Europe.

The Fusion chief executive said that the company planned a raft of new products including a portable PVR, a media console that delivers pay TV services and the internet to every TV in the house and a video phone for internet television services.

Mr Rubery acknowledged that he would be increasingly competing against his former company. “And we don’t have anything like the overheads they have,” he said.

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