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From: gerry@dialogic.com (Gerry Lachac)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
Subject: AmigaExpo - DCTV, HAM-E, and Colorburst Impressions
Message-ID: <1991Mar18.154731.4785@dialogic.com>
Date: 18 Mar 91 15:47:31 GMT
References: <13948@life.ai.mit.edu> <1991Mar14.231042.26446@ncsu.edu> <14058@life.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: Dialogic Corporation
Lines: 64

In article <14058@life.ai.mit.edu> rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
>  
>  Also, for those of you who went to AmigaWorld EXPO, why not type up
>a summary of what was shown and your impressions and post them to 
>c.s.a.reviews? It would be a big benefit to those of us unfortunate
>enough not to be there. :-)

Well, I didn't talk to anyone long enough to give any "real" reviews,


but I can give you some impressions I had after visiting each booth.

WARNING - these are my impressions of the companies and their devotion
	  to their products by their appearance at the show.  This is
	  what caught my eye, which I feel is the most important,
	  since we are talking about graphicsproducts that will be
	  used for multi-media presentations.
	  Eye-catching is very key to this.  This show had a very
	  professional "feel" to it - more like a UNIXExpo than a
	  consumer-oriented show.  


DCTV	Very impressive!  By far the most impressive of the three
	because of the marketing.  Seriously.  The booth was huge,
	they were very well organized, and it looks like they spent a
	lot of time and money.  They give the impression that they are
	extremely serious about their product. The had a nice
	dual-company demo with ISV (? - I don't remember the acronym).
	It was a 4 minute full-motion/full-stereo sound video of the
	last part of Back to the Future III, using a 16-bit audio card
	by ISV and DCTV.  All straight from hard disk.  I was left
	speechless.

HAM-E	Not as impressive a booth.  The literature gave a nice
	side-by-side comparison of HAM-E vs. DCTV.  They seemed
	serious, but either didn't have the money to invest in a
	flashy booth, or the marketing expertise or both.  They
	however seemed to have a well-staffed booth with people who
	knew what they were talking about.  This impressed me.

Colorburst
	I was not impressed.   Ugly white box that looked like a
	prototype with a bunch of people trying to get the thing to
	work.  If I went to the show to make a decision about which to
	buy, I would have definitely steered clear of MAST because it
	gave the impression of a garage operation.


I apologize if I offended anyone by getting company names wrong or by
judging a product completely on hype, but as Microsoft proved with
Window 3, marketing is almost everything.  Technical superiority won't
necessarily make it in today's marketplace.   







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