Steve:
Good point, Steve.
Thanks for the update regarding the additional information on the Ampex Web Site. I'm glad they added Bramson's letters to
shareholders in addition to the link to the public EDGAR. I wish,
though, that they'd add the 94 and 95 10Qs because I think these show,
among other things, how carefully this company, has managed the release of information regarding keepered media, from the lab to the field trials to the current state of affairs.
On the video production equipment front, I found this 1995 excerpt
particularly relevant with the imminent adoption of the HDTV standard.
"Our DCT(r) systems for video post-production, for example, are the culmination of our forty years of technological leadership in video recording. The digital component television market is fairly specialized, and Ampex has reduced its marketing expenditures targeted to this industry. However, while DCT products now represent a declining share of Ampex revenues, they continue to provide us with a very high-quality, self-sufficient business in a major market. Many innovative companies in the entertainment business are already exploring the advantages of combining DCT drives with our DST(r) mass data storage systems for applications involving the storage, staging, and delivery of program content to consumers. DCT systems are
currently being used by demanding customers such as Warner Bros. and Fox Television, and are an integral part of sophisticated post-production facilities worldwide."
I would appreciate your insights on how you think they can grow
this part of their business. I am particularly intrigued by AXC's
relationship with Sony. In the sixties Ampex combined its helical
scan technology with Sony's IC expertise in the long process that
ultimately resulted in the consumer VCR in the early 70s. In 1988
Sony and Ampex again collaborated on the development of the D2 19mm
tape format which Ampex (with additional collaboration from E-Mass
and Odetics) leveraged into its DCT-based product line.
The success of the non-linear editing players like Avid and
Lightworks seem to expose a hole in Sony's digital TV strategy. A
Barron's article on Avid, for example, contained statements from Avid's key people to the effect that Sony was the competition that
everybody in the non-linear field feared the most, given its brand cachet and the punishing premiums it consistently got on its products, including broadcast equipment where it competes with Matsushista.
Sony, however, never got into that field, virtually ceding the
entire field to Avid to dominate. Perhaps, it was Sony's penchant for taking the road less taken with its tape-based technologies and/or its very successful optical recording operations, but the point seems very valid, i.e., in order for Sony to continue to dominate the
broadcast equipment business in this analog-to-digital paradigm
shift, Sony needs to add disk-array front-ends (editors,
digital effects, etc) to its line of broadcast video products and storage products.
What is then true for gigantic Sony, is even more true for tiny
Ampex, don't you think?
Let me know.
Gus
NOTE:
Lightworks is now owned by Tektronix, which according to a recent Forbes article, is already making some headway in the analog-to-digital shift having sold about 1500 units of its Profile line of disk recorders, editors, etc. The article mentioned Tektronix is already working on a 1.1 terabyte disk video server priced at around $85,000. Storage Tech has its MEDIA VAULT built around its silos. Hewlett Packard has its MEDIA SERVERS. The competition for pieces of this $50 billion market can only heat up even more.
Impactdata, a recently formed division of Datatape, which KODAK
sold to a private group in 1994, is doing some interesting things w/
the 19mm tape drive, claiming sustained data transfer rates of
up to 50 MB/second. I only use this to illustrate what seems to be
possible with the 19mm drive format within the context of how
important that kind of transfer rates, among other things,
is in broadcast video . |
