Quantel Paintbox

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The Quantel Paintbox is a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Its design emphasizes the studio workflow efficiency required for live news production. Following its initial launch in 1981, it revolutionised the production of television graphics, and is still in widespread use today^[vague].

Initially running on custom-designed hardware, it now runs on standard servers^{[citation needed]}. Many features of earlier generations are now considered standard on personal computers^{[citation needed]}. It is still the industry standard among professionals in the field of TV production.

It was used by six artists and designers, including David Hockney and Richard Hamilton, to create original artwork in the 1986 BBC Series "Painting With Light".

In the late 1980s Quantel embarked on lawsuits against the Adobe "Photoshop" software package and the Spaceward Graphics "Matisse" system in an attempt to protect patented aspects of the Paintbox system. They won the initial case against Spaceward in 1990, but finally lost the case against Adobe in 1997 following depositions and demonstrations by a number of Computer Graphics pioneers including Alvy Ray Smith and Dick Phillips.

In the 90s, Quantel was widely use in Arte, the European Network. François Vautier was one of their most talented designers.