DS And SYMPHONY Rant

(From The Yahoo Avid User's Group)

I don't know how many DS NITRIS are selling but that's one group of pissed of owners.

They feel they've been undercut by AVID with the introduction of SYMPHONY NITRIS.

They liked being the only Avid HD system in town.

As an appeasement, Avid offered a dual boot of Symphony and Nitris but didn't mention the cost.

"The most exciting element is the planned purchasable option to install both Symphony Nitris and DS Nitris on the same box. With this option you can, for example, launch Symphony for an HD conform project or DS for a DI project. The best of both worlds."

Of course, the DS people considered it a joke and insult.
Why would they want to work on Symphony?
[First they need a new HD card for Nitris that can handle dual link 4:4:4. That's gonna cost!]

What this all shows is Avid really has done a poor job of differentiating the two systems.

Now they're repositioning the DS as a DI system, but the
DS "artists," as they call themselves, complain they don't have the tools to compete on that level.

It will be interesting to see how Avid responds to all this and FCP at NAB.

The DS owners are very pissed and they should be.

The DS is the closest to a hi-end product Avid has in its arsenal. By marginalizing it or niching it into the DI world, Avid is effectively saying "we don't want to play in the hi-end.
Leave us to the news crowd and chop shops."

That may be the best business for Avid to be in -- and leave the smaller shops, education, and specialty shops to the competition.

While DISCREET and QUANTEL are working to bring their
hi-end boxes closer to FCP feeder systems via XML, Avid is basically killing DS and sending out a $90k Symphony -- and effectively breathing new life into Discreet and Q.

It's like they smell bood -- AVID BLOOD.

A dual boot system? Please. It' s a joke.

If you have a DS, you certainly do not need a Symphony and vice versa for other shops.

I would bet that Symphony sales are way ahead of DS just because Avid is clearly signaling that DS will not be a featured product for very long. But, that could change as Avid has made "course corrections" in the past.

DS was NEVER the right product for Avid conform.
It was always Symphony.

DS is a compositing box, without the full chops of Discrete compositing products.

I'm sure that's undoubtedly true for your application, but it's not an absolute. We simply could not do the conforms that we do with the DS with our existing Symphonys. Granted, we could handle some of them with Symphony Nitris, but that product did not exist when we bought the DS.

[Maybe Avid should just add a "DS" tab in the project window of Symphony Nitris and be done with it.]