CES Report
First everyone should know that digital way makes and is the technology behind our Odyssey products. If you see look a-likes they are not EDIG technology.
Dioneer makes our Silhouette EDIG branded player and has no EDIG technology. Just the EDIG brand on the player.
Collier brought in these lines to make money in retail. EOM
EDIG technology is in MXP-100, Treo15, and Odyssey 1000.
The O-1000 was on display at the Ti booth
The MXP-100 and O-1000 were on display at the EDIG booth.
SunPoop and I talked to RP and FF both together and independently and they could give no information that was insider information ( of course )
They are keenly aware that our last year was the pits and are prepared to learn form certain lessons.
One is not to deal with vendors that give low profit margins and do not pay on time.
The Odyssey was not late, it was shipped as soon as DigitalWay got its money from EDIG. Units are being shipped in low volumes to get through customs faster and each unit is being thoroughly checked by customer support. I repeat, each unit is thoroughly inspected by tech support. They want no surprises.
Players will be available Feb 6.
Deals that have fallen through in the past have been because of last minute decisions based on the economy.
Meetings were held through out the show with interested representatives and more meetings will be held after the show has concluded. Remember that for every 100 interviews, 20 will be interested and 5 will sign ( rough estimate).
EDIG has video content confirmed from major studios and are working with several airlines to produce a secure in flight entertainment device. My guess is that we may see announcements or rollout by summer.
Portal player will introduce qualified vendors to EDIG to develop products. Another revenue source.
B&O is bringing in revenue for us.
Hey guys this is all stuff we know, no bombshell information.
Equator makes a BSP-15 video chip that many vendors will be using. It is a very fast versatile DSP chip that can process high definition TV signals. Because of the heat generated by the chip it may not be used in handheld video devices. It could possibly be used in handheld devices if the clock rate is slowed so excessive heat is not generated.
I asked TI if FPGA chips would be used with DSP’s and the person I talked to said that FPGA’s would be used in more complex equipment and probably only for commercial use. I asked FF if we used FPGA’s and he said no. I asked Atul Anandpura (Vice President, Research & Development) and he pointed to the O-1000 and said we use FPGA”s in that. Go figure.
Both FF and RP said we would have unrelated product announced later this year.
The Jukebox players will be big. I talked to the ThunderDorm people and they said that once students see, touch and hear more MP-3 devices they will adapt quickly. The 20 gig hard drive ability is very useful not only to store music but to transfer data between computers. The only complaint that they heard about showing the MXP-100 was that it was not Apple compatable.
Archos has a 20 gig jukebox with video. The video screen is abut 1 inch square and is too small imho. It has the rubber bumpers and is bulky and I heard from a reliable source that they had a high return rate.
RCA lyra just announced a jukebox.
Jukeboxes will replace flash based 64, 128, 256 devices because of their cost vs memory basis. There are lots of flash based mp-3 devices being developed.
Evolution is completely out of data play. They said that marketing would have cost them millions and music labels were not supporting the DataPlay format.
Music companies are backing off from secure music because of backlash from customers. Also many small musicians want their music out there and don’t care about security. There is a great deal of content out there because of pirating and a jukebox is what people need so they don’t have to lug around disks.
Evolution, Creative, and Archos all said that the jukeboxes would be big.
Eclipse had a model of our Write behind unit. It has a docking cradle that will be mounted in the glove compartment or trunk. The unit will be removed and loaded at a desktop computer using a USB cable. Available by summer.
Archos said they were selling all they could make, ( of course a percentage of those were to replace the players that were failing). www.archos.com
USB 2.0 is a must for all new players. The faster Firewire B is not a threat because it delivers data faster than current hard drives can handle rotating at 7500 RPM.
EDIG needs IFE, MP-3 players, telematics and whatever else is coming out to keep above water in the coming year. Its all up to the economy and OEM’s.
RP, FF and the EDIG engineering team are working very hard to bring about a successful line of product.
Ill let Sunpoop fill in what I have forgot to include.
Ill post pictures ”soon”.
AI
