CompuServe Thread

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