Thanks, Perry. I've enjoyed reading your perspective. I looked at Avid, Discreet Logic, Scitex and the rest of the pack last year with the view towards starting to assemble my early digital video picks. I came to the conclusion, though, that, at roughly $2 billion or so a year, the professional equipment market is just too small to sustain any kind of significant revenue and earnings growth. It seems that one of the gating factors will always be the small pool of talented editors relative to the unit volumes required to sustain significant growth.
That is why I think it is particularly interesting that you said....
"... In a very real sense, it's an investment in the future."
Here's an interesting snapshot of the 'convergence' scene....
dmg.co.uk
I'd be interested in your take on the following excerpt:
"...Many homes have adopted the multimedia computer as a necessity in the arsenal of home education and entertainment kit. For broadcasters and postproduction people, it is time to start experimenting with authoring and combining archive and current material on the plethora of compressed formats. In the struggle for less, every bit counts. This brings technical challenges to the engineers and, perhaps ironically, emphasises the need to originate very clean and very stable images if they are to compete, via limited bandwidth signal paths, with the enormous range of channels the audience of the future will be able to access. New techniques and new tools are needed...."
Any ideas on what the early killer apps will be?
Thanks.
Gus
P.S. Ever heard of a small British outfit called Questech? Their Charisma DVE, which uses DRAM memory banks to store images, is supposedly the cream of the crop. Spielberg, Lucas and Cameron each have one. Because it is a solid state memory device, it is very pricey. Anyone with actual hands-on experience?? Thanks. |
