Commodore poised for a comeback

It may be time for a Commodore comeback.

And no, Lionel Ritchie isn't signing up with his old band. We're talking about Commodore, the venerable computer brand.

A Dutch consumer media company is hoping it can tap the power of the VIC 20, the PET and the Commodore 64 to launch a new wave of products, including a home media centre device and a portable GPS unit and media player.

Yeahronimo Media Ventures, which has offices in Los Angeles and Baarn in the Netherlands, acquired the rights to the Commodore name late last year in a deal worth just over $32.7m. Earlier this year, it took on Commodore as its own corporate moniker. The rebranded company already has some products available on its Web site, but hopes to make a bigger splash at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

"We are excited to be launching our initial offerings at this year's CES," Commodore CEO Ben van Wijhe said in a statement. He said that the three new products will both advance the well known brand as well as "uphold the world-class quality of yesteryear's Commodore products".

The company has said it plans to launch three products at the show. The Commodore MediaBox is an all-in-one home entertainment box with an Internet connection, digital TV tuner and hard drive for playing music downloads, games or on-demand video. The Commodore Navigator is a Windows CE-based portable device with a 20GB hard drive for music and video storage as well as built-in GPS and a 91mm (3.6-inch) touch screen.

"Never before has a brand come out of hibernation and truly reinvented itself to position competitively in an ever-evolving digital media marketplace," van Wijhe said.

This is far from the first attempted comeback in tech, however. The Amiga, Commodore's onetime PC brand, has had its own decades-long history as fans tried to preserve both the computer's operating system and brand despite the lack of strong corporate backing.

Gateway had hopes of reinvigorating the Amiga PC when it bought the name and technology in 1997, but eventually scrapped its plans and sold the brand in 1999. Efforts to keep the computer's OS alive, however, have continued into the current decade.

Another '80s game name, Atari, bounced among several owners before making a comeback earlier this decade. Gamemaker Infogrames acquired Atari's name and game titles in 2001 and began using Atari as its own corporate name in May 2003. Meanwhile, Atari's classic games have also found new life in low-end TV consoles and mobile phones.

Napster is perhaps one of the best-known recent transformations, with an authorised music subscription service taking on the brand built as the first of many rebel peer-to-peer file sharing systems.