#AmiLink
Have you looked into one of those VLAN boxes yet? I really think someone
is going to come out with the same thing infinitely cheaper. I cant
IMAGINE what would cause those boxes to be so expensive except that
VideoMedia is the sole source.
At the price they charge for the box (same as RGB – no mailorder or
"street" price available) the software protion of an A/B roll with VT
add-on is about $2899. This is only $100 – $200 less than a good hardware
A/B roll controller. So, what it boils down to is the additional $3345
covers a RS 322 to 422 converter I believe this is a "one wire" difference
between balanced and unbalance ground for the data lines, or some such –
but software could not tell one from the other) and a little bus processor
at each deck that listens to all the transmissions but only responds to
those with a header containing its address. A simple master/slave bus
where the slave is a listen and don't speak until spoken to box.
Now the problem I have with this is that Videomania is making, I'd guess,
on each $1115 VLan module (serial) about a $1000 profit after parts,
assembly and testing. Was their R & D that expensive? I hope not – the
technology aint that esoteric.
Another view is that the $2,000 – $6,000 difference between an AmiLink
setup and a hardware controller is essentially for EDL management
functions. Is that feature worth that much money? I only ask the question
becuase I don't know. I like the concept of AmiLink is many respects, but
on a tight budget it is tough to justify something that costs almost as
much or more (in the case of parallel) than two A/B Roll controllers but
provides only minimally more functionality than one. It seems to be worth
it only at the point of "full tricked out" operations with 32 units that
include scanner, switchers, computers, decks, SEGs, etc. But for the basic
3 deck A/B roll…??? wmc