Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dev!vrdxhq!grebyn!ckp
From: ckp@grebyn.com (Checkpoint Technologies)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Video Toaster: WHERE IS IT?
Message-ID: <21941@grebyn.com>
Date: 12 Sep 90 03:52:33 GMT
References: <30071@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Reply-To: ckp@grebyn.UUCP (Checkpoint Technologies)
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing, Vienna, VA, USA
Lines: 50

In article <30071@nigel.ee.udel.edu> S36666WB%ETSUACAD.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu (Brian Wright) writes:
>I question whether the consumer version [of the Video Toaster] will ever
>become available.  There has
>to be some flack coming from the manufacturers of hi-end $90,000+ motion
>graphics systems.  Here comes the Toaster that can produce the quality and
>effects, that one of these $90,000 systems can, for +/-$5000.  If everybody
>can remember the battles that were fought about releasing the DAT, it is now
>here with quite less than a BANG.  The music industry wouldn't stand for
>consumers to have professional quality equipment in their homes.

Uh - why?  There are still plenty of reasons "consumers" won't get
studio quality sound for their own recordings, including the
acoustic qualities of the garage, the quality of consumer microphones,
etc.  Otherwise, you hit the point:

>  The music
>industry's case was one of piracy

Exactly.  With digital-to-digital recording, every duplicate is exactly
as good as the original, with no degradation, to the nth generation
where n is arbitrarily large.  Pirates can make copies as good as the
originals forever.  Which happens to be exactly the same as the current
status quo of computer software, and the music industry doesn't need
that any more than we do.

> but there were, I suspect, underlying
>motives as well for keeping it out of the consumer's hands.

Forgive me, I mean nothing personal, but this sounds paranoid. 
It implies shady dealing by equipment manufacturers to limit the
quality of low cost gear simply to keep their profits unjustifiably
high.  Unless I'm mistaken, anti-trust laws make this illegal.

I know that this kind of thing is done sometimes within the product line
of a single company, for reasons of market positioning.  A Manguson
technician once told me that the speed upgrade from the M80-32 to the
M80-42 [both IBM mainframe clones] was really, actually, a matter of
taking the NOPs out of the microcode.  But NewTek has no higher end
products to protect like this; the Toaster is it.

I'm reminded of a rumor I heard once about a guy who had invented an
amazing new carberator (sp?) that would make a car go 100 miles to a
gallon of gas; and that the evil oil companies paid him millions to
destroy it, so to keep their profits high.  (Of course, I heard another
version of the rumor where they actually murdered the guy.)
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