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New lower pricing for DeckLink HD cards – 4:4:4 for only $1495 !
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[mkramden] “Why put a lame excuse like, we replaced a $1000 chip on the board and passed the savings on to you!”
I can’t believe my eyes! Is this a BASH BM fest for no reason other than personal frustration?
Have you ever heard of restructing costs producing a product? Perhaps they were able to leverage a big cost saving with the PC board shop or perhaps that chip came down by 50% in price. What ever, you actually had an employee tell us in a non confrontive way that this WAS the reason that they could save us more money. What About That do you not GET?
Asking why someone from BM doesn’t come back here is like asking someone to keep being beating on and coming back for more. Lame – LAME!
If you don’t lke being treated like a child, then act like an adult and it will not happen.
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Sorry John.
“…is like asking someone to keep being beating on and coming back for more.”
As far as I can see, NO one from BM has responded to me in this thread. I asked them to support a statement made by a company representative. If you see this as bashing, then you need to reread the thread. You made guesses at what could be going on here. I asked the source to tell us. So far all quiet. Not sure why you have such a problem with this. I guess asking a question as a customer and never getting any response from the company is acceptable to some people… or considered bashing.
Mark
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Hi Mark,
The DeckLink HD card was introduced two years ago at IBC 2003 at $1995 and it is a shame that we have only heard from you in the past few days as I can’t find any of your posts prior to IBC 2005 on this or any other Cow forum.
[mkramden] “So you are saying you changed a part on the DL HD 4:4:4 card and saved $1000?”
No, that’s not what I’m saying as the card only dropped from $1995 to $1495. If you check back, you will find that the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card dropped from $2495 to $1995 last IBC 2004 at the same time that we introduced the Videohub and Multibridge and our competitors did not release any new cards at the show.
It is now a year later and we’ve invested in a new manufacturing plant which has cost millions of dollars. So we now have increased manufacturing efficiecy, thanks to the new plant, and also a change of chip on 3 HD cards which all helps to bring the price down. What this means to any Blackmagic customer today is that the products they purchased yesterday are helping to bring down the price of tomorrows products.
[mkramden] “Please give me an example of when BM has lowered the price of one of their products NOT in response to competative pressure.”
This is a silly question because all pricing is strategic in a competitive market. Think of the first card Blackmagic Design ever made. It was the original DeckLink card at $995. I wasn’t here at Blackmagic at that time but my understanding is that the nearest competitor was over $10,000 at that time. I was also told that lots of people were unhappy about the DeckLink card being a tenth of the price of other cards and overnight, other cards dropped by several thousands dollars but never matched the DeckLink card. Looking back, it is difficult to understand why some people were very vocal about the drop in prices being a bad thing. Doubtless some of these people were competitors and others were those who had sunk huge sums of money in to hardware only to have it obsoleted overnight. That was a $9000 price drop and it’s intriguing that several years later we see the same reactions over a $500 price decrease, even though we’ve done this before.
We subsequently introduced a series of SD cards and dropped the price of the earlier cards as we went. Meanwhile the rest of the industry was scurrying to catch up with us. Does that have an impact on what we do? Of course it does. We have to remain competitive on all aspects including features, quality and price.
However the example I just gave to you is fairly recent, ie there were no competing cards (that I recall) released at IBC 2004 and yet we not only introduced new products but lowered our prices as well. The Kona 2 card was not released until December 2004/January 2005 as I recall.
In March 2004, we dropped the DeckLink card to $295 after updating the manufacturing plant and finding we could make them more quickly. I don’t recall any other new cards coming out around then. They usually come out at NAB or IBC. There was no compelling pressure to drop the price on the card but, from out point of view, there was no point leaving it at the higher price when we knew we now had the ability to make it at a lower price. Amazingly some people even complained about that price drop too from either $595 or $695 (I can’t remember which) to $295.
[mkramden] “So even if prices dropped some in that frame time, and you are still able to make money at $599, then you were gouging at $1999. You can’t have it both ways.”
And nor can you. As I have already pointed out, the price drop was $500 and it has taken another year to drop that far. Your facts are wrong and your tone is harsh.
In summary, our pricing has been strategic since we first introduced the original DeckLink card at a tenth of the price of our closest competitor at the time. When we introduced the first PCI-X card for HD capture, it was only $1995 whereas the nearest competitor was again over $10,000. We always want to be competitive and it is never more than 6 months to the next NAB or IBC show and we often like to hold announcements of new products, software updates and price reductions until these shows. To do otherwise would not make any sense.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Mark,
I am amazed by the approach you have taken in your posts and I haven’t seen a thread like this since the last time Ron Lindeboom identified competitors posting under false names on this forum and told them to stop it or be permanently banned from using Creative Cow ever again. It seems odd that a search on your name on multiple Cow forums only found you in this forum and only after our announcements on Friday morning of IBC 2005.
Please see my reply to your original post in this thread. Amongst other points, it addresses the erroneous claim, which you have repeated several times, that the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card has just dropped $1000. I’m sure there are many who wish it had but it has only dropped $500 in the last year since IBC 2004.
There is nothing astounding about the card price falling as a result of lower component costs, investment in manufacturing efficiencies and competitive pricing. Multiple factors make this possible and not one factor alone. It’s hard work but our engineers work long hours to make this happen and it is very rewarding when we see new products released and also prices fall to levels that were never imagined a few years ago in an industry used to high prices.
Unfortunately your posts are quite unpleasant and have distracted me from providing real support to our customers so I’m going to have to leave this thread now and answer some questions from people who have asked nicely for help.
Thanks to everyone else in this thread who contributed on both sides of the debate. It really makes me want to answer more questions when I see the help and consideration provided by contributors to this forum.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Mike,
You’re welcome and it is always surprising how a thread can unfold!
[Mike Jackson] “. I think I was mostly put off by the gleeful tone in the initial post / press release”
I’m sorry if that sounded gleeful as it was just meant to point out that moving to HD is increasingly affordable. Maybe my posting that news at 4:46am my time wasn’t the best time for choosing my words carefully!
[Mike Jackson] “f you can help me get better performance out of the software downconvert, that’d be great. I’ve just downloaded the new drivers, but I haven’t had a chance to test them yet… I’ll send off an e-mail to tech-support when I get the chance.”
We’d love to help you get this going. Feel free to post here although I recommend you start a new thread as this one is becoming buried. Hopefully the new drivers might help.
[Mike Jackson] “The support note you mentioned (Software and hardware down conversion with DeckLink cards) was posted AFTER I bought my card.”
You’re right. I ran search on this forum and the only references I can find are dated 1st of August and newer. Sorry, I thought it had been there longer than that as it seemed longer. We certainly promoted the hardware down conversion feature of the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card but not the DeckLink HD Pro 4:2:2 card. I added the down conversion technical note after a number of similar queries indicated that people did not understand the significance of the hardware and software down conversion capabilities.
[Mike Jackson] “You really get a massive performance difference between software and hardware downconvert”
That’s not necessarily the case which is why we use software down conversion on all cards including the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 although there is also the option to use HD1080 hardware down conversion on that card. The hardware down conversion enables the user to perform multiple intensive tasks simultaneously, eg 3-way color correction and down conversion at the same time. Other cards can perform both of these tasks but not at the same time. DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 can also perform split hardware down conversion with HD on one output and SD on the other outputs. None of this provides a “massive performance difference between software and hardware downconvert” and you should have no problems using software down conversion, especially as you have a fast machine.
Please post a new thread with details of your problem and the settings you are using and we’ll try to resolve it ASAP.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
When my Targa 2000 SDX died on my discreet edit system about three years ago I had to had to buy a replacement card for US$10,500. When that card died less than a year later, I bought a brand new replacement card from Lyn Norstad for US$1,300! It is market forces and the way all commercial technology gains in power whilst reducing in cost. His argument is really baloney and just comes down to sour grapes from an unsubstantiated perspective.
Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
Australia
http://www.php.com.au -
On the note of downconversion on the 4:4:4 board (I talked about this@ IBC as well)
There is a problem with hardware downconversion on this card (at least there was @ version 5.0 and technician hasn’t heard the same complaint before)
if you choose hardware downconersion then channel 1 outputs HD-SDI 4:2:2 and channel 2 outputs SD-SDI with HD-SDI standard audio!, and it is also impossible to sync to SD source because the card is expecting HD sync – in software mode evrything runs fine though (so not a major problem)
About the system choking – I wouldn’t know about that because just last week I downconverted on the fly HDV 1080 50i to SD while using unlimited RT to have timecode burn-in on the image (running on 2.0GHz DP g5 3GB ram) 1 hour went without a hich – so hopefullty after some tweaking you get it to work and there really is no need for the more expensive card as you are not using 4:4:4
-Kaspar
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