CompuServe Messages

I'm inviting you all to attend a major product announcement from Play, Inc. on the eve of NAB. The product is Trinity, and it's a revolutionary desktop video solution for Windows PCs. If you know who Play is, then you know how this product came to exist. If you don't know… In February 1994, Vice President of NewTek Paul Montgomery (now President of Play) left with six others because of a significant difference of opinion about the future of desktop video. Those who left include Kiki Stockhammer (Toaster spokesperson), Mark Randall (former head of marketing, and responsible for all of NewTek's videotapes), Robert Blackwell (NewTek's first employee and manager of product documentation), Alcatraz members Ken Turcotte (co-author of the switcher / effects systems), Daniel Kaye (user interface designer for all of the Toaster's software, Toaster effects designer, and Hollywood Lightwave evangelist), and myself (author of ToasterCG, much of the Flyer software, and former head of software at NewTek). After we left NewTek, we decided to band together and form a new company. We moved to California, where most of us were originally from. (For those who don't know, NewTek is based in Topeka, Kansas.) Soon after moving, we merged with two other companies, Digital Creations and Progressive Image Technologies. We decided to call the new company Play Incorporated. Digital Creations, led by Play CEO John Botteri, was a major player in the Amiga market for ten years. They created many successful products, including DCTV, SuperGen, and the Brilliance paint system. Progressive Image Technologies was a hardware engineering and manufacturing company led by Play Chairman and CTO Mike Moore. Progressive included ex-Grass Valley Group talent, and developed pioneering video hardware for 15 years, including major products for Apple and IBM, as well as hardware for Digital Creation's Amiga products. Since the merger, we've been joined by Stephan Bouchard (NewTek's former head of sales), Christina Knighton (former marketer and Toaster evangelist), and Laura Longfellow (NewTek's first sales manager, a.k.a. "Maxine Headroom" from NewTek's first demo reels). Just recently, Steve Kell (NewTek's first programmer and head of software development for the last year) left NewTek to join Play. With the addition of Steve, we've now re-assembled the original Video Toaster Alcatraz software team. Play's R&D department now has 21 people, including 11 Windows programmers and six hardware engineers. We began shipping our first PC product, the Snappy Video Snapshot, two weeks ago. Snappy is a high-resolution video frame grabber which plugs into a parallel port and grabs stills at resolutions up to 1500×1125 in 24-bit color for $199. Snappy's been getting rave reviews, and looks like it's going to be a very successful product. However, the primary focus of R&D has been on a product which I'm excited to acknowledge here publicly for the first time, Trinity. Trinity is a next generation, fully D1 component digital, open architecture Windows-based desktop video system. The base system lists for $5995. and includes: – 10 Input Video Switcher – Timeline Editor with Machine Control – Two Channels of Real-Time Digital Video Effects – 10 ns Character Generator – Paint, Compositing, and Animation – Dual Channel Still Store – Chroma Keyer with Transparent Shadows – Automated Audio Mixer – Color Effects Processor – Two Time Base Correctors with Color Correctors Play will also be announcing two optional add-ons to Trinity; a D1 dual-channel online non-linear editing system, and an advanced 3D digital warping engine (similar to Sony's System G and Quantel's Mirage). We will be inviting independent hardware and software companies to develop products for Trinity. As part of our developer program, we'll be publishing Trinity's high – speed bus specifications and video software APIs. There are exciting opportunities for users of Lightwave and other 3D packages to create many things with Trinity, including effects and something we'll be showing at our event called synthetic sets. This is one of the coolest abilities of the Trinity hardware, and I think people are going to love it. Play President Paul Montgomery was quoted last year in Wired magazine as saying "Being from the Amiga market is like being from the future." With Windows 95, pre-emptive multitasking, photo-realistic graphics, stereo sound, and cool games, PCs have caught up to the Amiga. Now with Trinity, all of our experience creating desktop video products on the Amiga comes to the PC. We've been working with desktop video users for ten years, and Trinity is everything people have asked us for and more. I'm excited to invite all of you to come to our world premiere event unveiling Trinity in Las Vegas on the eve of NAB, Sunday, April 9th at 7:00 pm at Caesars Palace Coliseum VI and VII. We'll be disclosing more details about Trinity and giving an in-depth product demonstration. I look forward to seeing you there! The revolution continues… Steve Hartford Trinity Software Team Leader Play, Inc.