Canopus REX, wrecks?

[Dr Mordrid]

Whatthehell is going on at Canopus?

Earlier this week they dropped their resellers (ex: VideoGuys) and implemented a direct sales system.

Gary B of VideoGuys has been flaming them all over the place and the rest of the former dealers are either silent or have smoke coming out of their ears.

In my investing experience companies that suddenly do this kind of thing are in trouble financially and are trying to squeeze every penny out of every sale.

Perhaps the downturn in the industry + the further downturn in Japan + the deveopment costs on their new products put a strain on things?

Anyone have any insights? Rumors?

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

No rumors or insights, but its hard to see the "value added" by proprietary 1394 interfaces now that DirectX 8 and the DV update has fixed most of the problems. If you're still not happy with the MS DV codec, Main Concept has one for $50 making $350-$500+ proprietary cards a tough sell.

Add that to the cost of following the moving target of windows development, I can see how its hard to stay in business.

I'd love to see one of these companies get desperate enough to try and make DV editing work well on Linux instead of struggling to stay alive on crumbs from Microsoft.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

Me too

I agree about the propriatory cards, especially if Ulead follows through on making MSPro a fully realtime package on SSE2 systems. THAT would either put a hurt on the hardware realtime cards or knock Premiere out of a lot of their software bundles.

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

Hi Doc,

I found a reply on the official forum that may help explain what's going on to a point at least..
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OK I got some input from Canopus, and here are some quotes from sales:

"The REX is a dead end. The RexRT is a different story. This product will have continued development and support for much time to come. The reason is because the RT board makes this set up very similar to the RexRT Pro which is going to (hopefully) have lots o' development going on. There will be no reason to discontinue support for the RexRt. In fact, the next big development in our editting software is going to be specifically for the RexRT and RTPro. I can't say when that will happen exactly but it will. All of our other card will also be developed further after that. However, when Premeire 7 comes out things might be a different story. I have no idea how it is decided which card is more improtant than the next to have certification first. So the call is yours. The DVStorm and DVrexRt will both be around a good long while. Development for both is in place. What will be placed on priority for other updates remains to be seen."

So my take is that as long as you get the DVrexRT package with the RT option you are secure as the folks who bought the DVrexRT Professional. I didn't realize those 2 products were so closely related. This really helps me out, as I was not seperating DVrexm1 from the DVrexm1/RT, I was calling them both the same thing.

Now I have no idea what I am going to do :-)
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Cheers,
Elie

[Dr Mordrid]

That may explain certain product decisions, but not what is making the former dealers go ballistic. That may be a bit more interesting....

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

Yes Doc, I just visited www.videoguys.com and did not see any Canopus product advertized!

However, www.guygraphics.com is still selling them but as turnkey systems only, hmmm very interesting.

Elie