Will2 wrote: Wed Oct 24, 2018 7:26 pm
MovieStuff wrote: Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:43 pm
Actually, that is something we are working on. It would be a combination film cleaner and rewind unit.
Seems like it would be useful for archives and shops that transfer film regularly. I was tempted to pick up a cleaning machine when a local lab went out of business but it was the size of a vending machine and just as heavy. Even higher-end post houses might benefit from such a device.
High end houses typically have ultrasonic, full bath cleaners. Like I say, the issue is the cleaning fluid which, for international customers, can be particularly troublesome to get. As a business, any time you make a product or add a feature to a product, you have to ask your self whether doing so is going to result in added sales or just make the phone ring more with customer support questions and issues. So while the idea is a good one, I have to pay attention to the realities of my customer base and what they demand or, rather, what they don't demand.
For instance, we've been selling the 2K Universal now with the new 2K camera for about a year. Prior to that, we sold it with the previous HD camera that dated back to 2011. Now, a lot of customers are buying the new 2K camera upgrade kits for their old HD based Universals so you'd think that 2K was in high demand. Not really. In fact, even with the older HD camera, the majority of our equipment customers I've polled were still outputting mostly standard def DVDs. These same customers are now buying the new 2K camera upgrade kit or the Universal 2K scanner, not because their customers demand 2K but, rather, simply because the new camera has better color, contrast, less noise and a sharper image than the older HD camera, even if using the 2K camera only in HD. But, even then, they
still aren't outputting HD for the majority of their customers because the majority of their customers are still only asking for DVDs.
So, relative to the idea of making improvements or offering something that seems to be "better", like an automated cleaner, I am sometimes asked when I'm going to add a 4K camera to the Universal. There are a variety of technical issues related to adding 4K and we could but, in reality, doing so would mean the customer would need a totally different PC with greater horsepower just to accommodate the potential of capturing and working in 4K when the reality is most aren't even using the full 2K potential of the current camera. But by adding a 4K camera, we increase the likelihood of increased customer support issues to accommodate an added feature that no one seems to be demanding because, inevitably, a special PC build brings with it all kinds of debugging problems. What I can't afford to do is get elbow deep helping someone debug a product I didn't build (their PC). So, let's say we build a cleaner and specify a particular fluid and the customer can't get that fluid and starts using something else and doesn't get the results expected. Again, we're talking about increasing our overhead by having to deal with customer support issues related to someone else's product (the cleaning fluid). So we're looking at the possibility of a cleaning station but there are a number of things to consider in doing so beyond just the technical aspects of designing and producing one.
Roger
