#The Olde Curiosity Shop
6 messages in this thread
Seasons greetings to you all. I run my own company called Gold-Key Limited,
based in Oxfordshire, England.
Having spent many years supporting international computer systems for Ampex, I
am a computer guy who has witnessed the rapid and somewhat traumatic upheaval
taking place in the broadcast world over the last few years.
It was pure curiosity that lead me to this forum as my background gives me a
natural interest in the subject.
At the moment I am experimenting with various aspects of the technology before
making any serious business commitments in this area.
Regards,
John,
My name is Simon Conway-Smith, based in Cambridge, UK. I too have a computing
background, most recently with a multi-national electronics group ('Simply
Years Ahead' might give you a clue!).
Since they dispensed with my services at the end of a large image processing
project, I have formed my own company 'PLANET TELECOM' developing interests in
a number of areas, namely (i) multimedia as a front end to information/database
systems, e.g. catalogs, equipment manuals etc., (ii) the digital phone system
ISDN as a data communication tool, e.g. video & desktop conferencing, LAN
connectivity etc., and (iii) PC based Voice Processing systems, i.e. voice
mail, auto attendant, call centre etc.
The multimedia side of my interests includes desktop video, partly for
prefessional use outside the media market. Perhaps there may be some areas of
common interest?
Regards
Simon
Hi John,
Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I remember something like ADO ==
Ampex Digital Output or something… or … did Ampex have anything to do
with making the first DVE?
-John
Ampex was founded by a Russian WWI fighter pilot called Alexander
Maximillian Poniatoff, that's where the AMP came from along with
EXcellence to form the name AMPEX. He got hold of a captured German
audio tape recorder after WWII and perfected the design.
The company started to take off when Bing Crosby invested in some of
the company's first tape recorders to record his shows. Until then,
all his shows went out live which meant doing the show 3 times a
night to hit the peak listening times across the States.
Ampex went on to produce the first commercial VTR and showed it at NAB
in 1956. For many years Ampex led the way in video technology. It
perfected frame by frame video editors in 1963 and produced a slow
motion disk recorder in 1967.
Rumour has it that Ampex seriously considered buying up Hewlett
Packard in the late 60s but decided that HP's product range didn't
really fit in with Ampex's product strategy.
Whilst all the computer companies are muscling in on the video world,
Ampex is currently taking its video technology to the computer world
with high speed mass tape storage devices. It's DST tape library
system, looks a bit like a large cold drinks machine, holds something
like 6.7 terrabytes of data with data transfer speeds of 60mbps Any
item of data retreivable within 20 secs. What they call nearline
storage. I believe it is being incorporated into the new VOD systems.
Whilst Ampex has made mistakes and missed opportunities in its
checkered history (what company hasn't?), it is one of America's most
innovative companies.
Ampex Digital Output or something…
That's Ampex Digital Optics and at one time, for many, many years n the 1980's
was the One and Only DVE to have in an edit suite. Later Abekas gave it a run
for the money with its A53, and then GVG came along and drove the store away
with Kaleidescope. But ADO was a landmark device and became a generic term like
"xerox".
"We'll AOD it…"
Thanks Stephen,
I've only been in the DTV business since the early 90s and have heard the
expression ADO used as a synonym for DVE.
-John