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Ron W
Joined: 07 Aug 2009 Posts: 807 Location: Mississauga
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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kal wrote: | How does the saying go? “May you live in interesting times?”
People are going to notice that SpectraCal is absent from our site today. Here's the scoop:
I warned SpectraCal of ChromaPure coming on board here at CurtPalme.com about 2 weeks ago. I figured it was the fair thing to do.
They did not like the idea as they think it’ll “confuse users”. I believe that giving customers more options is good so I held to my beliefs.
Long story short, SpectraCal last night asked that all of their products be removed from our site. This has now mostly been done. I still have a lot of work to do so I appologize in advance. It wasn't my intent to cause confusion.
We wish you luck Tom with ChromaPure! Your product is excellent, your prices are fair, and from what I've seen and hear your support is second to none. I also appreciate Tom's no-nonsense approach to calibration.
For complete details see: www.curtpalme.com/ChromaPure.shtm
Kal |
That is quite disappointing and I believe kind of childish on the part of Spectracal in thinking they had a right to a monopoly of product purchase on a third party site. I didn't see X-Vue act in such a manner when you started to offer the Crescendo product or the folks at Fury when Moome was introduced. Competition should be good for all especially when it comes to features and pricing.
Kal: Incidentally, although not interactive as is the case with V4, is there any problem using the Chromapure software with the Video EQ(Pro) or is it only compatible with Calman?
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Nashou66
Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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That is a good question Ron, id like to know as well even though i do not own e VideoEQ.
But here is my take, the Video EQ is made by X-vue. I am not sure if they have a contract with Spectracal at all to have them as the only software to control the box. And if they do not I don't see why in the near future Chromapure working with X-Vue on that project.
I know Lumagen will be doing that soon, so here is a question will Spectracal stop doing business with Lumagen if they start a
relationship with Chromapure?
I agree it is childish and they will be alienating themselves from many future business relationships.
If Chromapure does work with Lumagen int he time period my pro license runs out and renewal is more than the cost
of Chromapure pro software to use interactive control of my lumagens i'll be one of Toms new customers.
Athanasios
_________________ Don't blame your underwear for your crooked ass~ unknown Greek philosopher
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15." --- President Reagan
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CxTurbo
Joined: 13 Oct 2008 Posts: 425 Location: Ontario, Canada
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:11 pm Post subject: |
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That move made up my mind.
Competition is healthy and only helps make all products better in the end............ Just means that I am going to have to trade in my VP50 direct to Lumagen and wait for CMS support with Chromapure if X-Vue is not going to come on board with the Video EQ.........
Sad day indeed 8(
James
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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Ron W wrote: | Kal: Incidentally, although not interactive as is the case with V4, is there any problem using the Chromapure software with the Video EQ(Pro) or is it only compatible with Calman? |
I doubt ChromaPure will ever be allowed to automatically talk to the VideoEQ if the existing X-Vue/AVFoundry/SpectraCal contract remains in place. That could always change. There's no reason why the VideoEQ can't be used standalone of course. Just to be sure your best bet is to start a new thread about it in our new ChromaPure support forum and ask Tom directly!
Our ChromaPure support forum is here: http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=50
Tom is one of the moderators.
X-Vue could also be asked. Their forum is here: http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=40
Juha runs the show and is one of the moderators.
I do know a lot more about the inner workings of these agreements but it's not my place to tell unfortunately.
Kal
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Last edited by kal on Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Nashou66
Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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I agree its a sad day, I just got two lumagens from spectracal and they gave me a great deal, exceptionally great deal. they have bent over backwards and put up with me overt he past 5 months with my calibration problems. Looked at my probe, made sure it was accurate. All free of charge. Great support so far. The forum they have is very very helpful , I just do not se Chromapure being sold on Curt Site as a threat. Am i missing something here. I Love the new v4, it really is awesome , But recently it seams they made some bad decisions , the new Pricing structure and confusion with maintenance fee's they say they should have charged over the years but never did , now they are "catching up". That pushed lots of people away . Now this latest drama will also push people on the fence to the CrromaPure side or they will go the free Route with HCFR, which I hear they are working on some new features and overall changes.
Lets hope Kal can smooth things over, he is very good at that.
Athanasios
_________________ Don't blame your underwear for your crooked ass~ unknown Greek philosopher
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15." --- President Reagan
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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Nashou66 wrote: | I agree its a sad day, I just got two lumagens from spectracal and they gave me a great deal, exceptionally great deal. |
You're welcome. I worked hard to get you a good deal.
Nashou66 wrote: | Lets hope Kal can smooth things over, he is very good at that. |
Thanks for the compliment but I've been trying to smooth things over for a few weeks now with the CEO and the head of the sales group in anticipation of ChromaPure coming on board. What we have today is final. I would not have mentioned anything unless it was final.
Kal
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Ron W
Joined: 07 Aug 2009 Posts: 807 Location: Mississauga
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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Nashou66 wrote: | I agree its a sad day, I just got two lumagens from spectracal and they gave me a great deal, exceptionally great deal. they have bent over backwards and put up with me overt he past 5 months with my calibration problems. Looked at my probe, made sure it was accurate. All free of charge. Great support so far. The forum they have is very very helpful , I just do not se Chromapure being sold on Curt Site as a threat. Am i missing something here. I Love the new v4, it really is awesome , But recently it seams they made some bad decisions , the new Pricing structure and confusion with maintenance fee's they say they should have charged over the years but never did , now they are "catching up". That pushed lots of people away . Now this latest drama will also push people on the fence to the CrromaPure side or they will go the free Route with HCFR, which I hear they are working on some new features and overall changes.
Lets hope Kal can smooth things over, he is very good at that.
Athanasios |
Bad decisions? Another questionable decision of note was the free software upgrade to add the CMS function to the considerably less expensive VideoEQ. Aside from a couple of minor features, I am sure the vast majority of purchasers of the Video EQ Pro(like myself)wouldn't have spent the extra $400-500 for the Pro with the CMS function if we knew that after less than three months on the market they would have ended up adding that feature to the EQ at "no extra charge"! People have questioned that on the forum but have never received an answer.
On the surface, it would seem that some over-inflated egos are getting in the way of "common sense" business decisions and medium to long-term damage to customer loyalty.
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Nashou66
Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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Ron W wrote: | Nashou66 wrote: | I agree its a sad day, I just got two lumagens from spectracal and they gave me a great deal, exceptionally great deal. they have bent over backwards and put up with me overt he past 5 months with my calibration problems. Looked at my probe, made sure it was accurate. All free of charge. Great support so far. The forum they have is very very helpful , I just do not se Chromapure being sold on Curt Site as a threat. Am i missing something here. I Love the new v4, it really is awesome , But recently it seams they made some bad decisions , the new Pricing structure and confusion with maintenance fee's they say they should have charged over the years but never did , now they are "catching up". That pushed lots of people away . Now this latest drama will also push people on the fence to the CrromaPure side or they will go the free Route with HCFR, which I hear they are working on some new features and overall changes.
Lets hope Kal can smooth things over, he is very good at that.
Athanasios |
Bad decisions? Another questionable decision of note was the free software upgrade to add the CMS function to the considerably less expensive VideoEQ. Aside from a couple of minor features, I am sure the vast majority of purchasers of the Video EQ Pro(like myself)wouldn't have spent the extra $400-500 for the Pro with the CMS function if we knew that after less than three months on the market they would have ended up adding that feature to the EQ at "no extra charge"! People have questioned that on the forum but have never received an answer.
On the surface, it would seem that some over-inflated egos are getting in the way of "common sense" business decisions and medium to long-term damage to customer loyalty. |
Yeah I heard that on the Video EQ forum. thats pretty stupid. With the pro you get 4 memories, but most will suffice with the one free one they now put in the basic model.
That was why i decided to go with the Lumagens, they don't play games.
I think they are trying to grow big too fast. the hiring of a new sales staff could be part of it. While making the deal on the phone the sales man told the secretary to not get her panties all in a bunch and laughed about it. Now I expect that in a greasy spoon diner like I own but not from a corporation like that.
Athansios
_________________ Don't blame your underwear for your crooked ass~ unknown Greek philosopher
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15." --- President Reagan
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jeffrylp
Joined: 19 Mar 2009 Posts: 1 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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This is indeed short-sighted. I first heard of CalMAN on the Curt Palme site and have bought all my SpectraCal software and hardware here.
Jeff
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Spanky Ham
Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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When I first saw the postings, I thought there was more good discussions on the relative merits of each program. I guess not.
kal wrote: | How does the saying go? “May you live in interesting times?”
People are going to notice that SpectraCal is absent from our site today. Here's the scoop:
I warned SpectraCal of ChromaPure coming on board here at CurtPalme.com about 2 weeks ago. I figured it was the fair thing to do.
They did not like the idea as they think it’ll “confuse users”. I believe that giving customers more options is good so I held to my beliefs.
Long story short, SpectraCal last night asked that all of their products be removed from our site. This has now mostly been done. I still have a lot of work to do so I appologize in advance. It wasn't my intent to cause confusion.
We wish you luck Tom with ChromaPure! Your product is excellent, your prices are fair, and from what I've seen and hear your support is second to none. I also appreciate Tom's no-nonsense approach to calibration.
For complete details see: www.curtpalme.com/ChromaPure.shtm
Kal |
My first reaction was to go play a game of chess, which is what I do when I have to compose my thoughts on something like this. FYI, I was so distracted the computer kicked my a$$.
After some thought, I must say I have wondered what the Spectracal guys thought when seeing all of the Chromapure promotion going on. I guess this is there response. While I disagree with said response, I do wonder what sort of volume of sales was produced here. That is the only reason I can see for them leaving. If they were getting $10 million in sales, then they would probably still be here.
If the only reason they left is to avoid confusion and gave you an ultimatum (Tom or us), then that is pretty poor and I think you made the right call. It is not like there are twenty different products. There are three. The only confusion comes with the selection of meters being the same across the two platforms. Spectracal helped foster the confusion with so many different meter/packages. I met Derek at Cedia and he seems like a nice guy. I remember him talking about how excited he was to be getting the uber expensive Minolta in to use as a reference device. Maybe the pressure of running the business has dampened some of that enthusiasm. Tom seems like someone passionate about calibrating and decided to make his products available to the public. It looks like Tom has kept that passion as well as still working in the trenches so to speak. I spent some time reading the thread over at AVS and it looks like maybe Spectracal is focusing more on the pro crowd while Tom is focused more on the home enthusiast/small pro crowd. One result of this is there is no more confusion from what I am reading from the responses here.
I had some more thoughts, but I will probably just end with "Should Amazon chose just one product per category?" I wonder what Bezos would say if someone asked him that question.
Ron W wrote: |
That is quite disappointing and I believe kind of childish on the part of Spectracal in thinking they had a right to a monopoly of product purchase on a third party site. I didn't see X-Vue act in such a manner when you started to offer the Crescendo product or the folks at Fury when Moome was introduced. Competition should be good for all especially when it comes to features and pricing.
Kal: Incidentally, although not interactive as is the case with V4, is there any problem using the Chromapure software with the Video EQ(Pro) or is it only compatible with Calman? |
As a matter of record, you need to flip those around. Crescendo and Moome were first. Also, they may have complained behind the scenes, but in the end this gives theme more exposure plus a convenient forum to handle support.
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Ron W
Joined: 07 Aug 2009 Posts: 807 Location: Mississauga
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the update of who was first. However, I think you get my drift in that when the competition came on board the existing company(Moome and Crescendo) didn't take their toys and run home. Actually, for me personally, the first time I became aware of Chromapure was quite recently with the "Secrets" review discussing the merits of the Calman and Chromapure software. I saw little if any discussion on the CP site that it was going to bring this company in to the fold.
As far as Spectracal is concerned, nobody really knows why they abruptly wished to sever ties with CP but sometimes we can over analyze when it can be nothing more than hurt feelings and egos.
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Spanky Ham
Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central
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Link Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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Ron W wrote: | Thanks for the update of who was first. However, I think you get my drift in that when the competition came on board the existing company(Moome and Crescendo) didn't take their toys and run home. Actually, for me personally, the first time I became aware of Chromapure was quite recently with the "Secrets" review discussing the merits of the Calman and Chromapure software. I saw little if any discussion on the CP site that it was going to bring this company in to the fold.
As far as Spectracal is concerned, nobody really knows why they abruptly wished to sever ties with CP but sometimes we can over analyze when it can be nothing more than hurt feelings and egos. |
The Ham likes to stir the pot, but in this case I hope I didn't create a problem by starting this thread. My guess is Kal has been working on this for a while now. When I first heard about Chromapure, I thought it was interesting. The Secrets article helped give me a good perspective and update on it and in comparison to the other two. It looks like they are going to update the article with the V4 software.
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Rolls-Royce
Joined: 30 Sep 2007 Posts: 288 Location: Victorville, CA
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Link Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2010 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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Ron W wrote: | Thanks for the update of who was first. However, I think you get my drift in that when the competition came on board the existing company(Moome and Crescendo) didn't take their toys and run home. Actually, for me personally, the first time I became aware of Chromapure was quite recently with the "Secrets" review discussing the merits of the Calman and Chromapure software. I saw little if any discussion on the CP site that it was going to bring this company in to the fold.
As far as Spectracal is concerned, nobody really knows why they abruptly wished to sever ties with CP but sometimes we can over analyze when it can be nothing more than hurt feelings and egos. |
One thing that makes this kind of a poor comparison to the CalMAN/ChromaPure situation is that the competing Moome/Crescendo/X-Vue/HDFury products are, within their categories, fairly close in pricing. And some are complementary. The same is not true of CalMAN/ChromaPure. There is a significant price differential and they are direct competitors. This is an expensive hobby, and we--especially newbies--tend to shop on price, so I think that Spectracal's sales might've suffered. I'm sure that this wasn't a decision taken lightly, since what are (were) Spectracal's main sales outlets? Sencore, their own website, and CurtPalme.com. If there are others, I'm not aware of them.
Speaking of Sencore, I'm also wondering how much if any their contract with Spectracal may have impacted this. Spectracal has taken CalMAN more and more "upmarket" and aimed at professionals since they started to write for Sencore, and this may have been a part of that, albeit unforeseen, IMHO.
_________________ ....Royce....
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Spanky Ham
Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central
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Link Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 1:23 am Post subject: |
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Royce,
The Home edition of Calman is $200 and the bundles are pretty close on the low end, so I think the comparison is apt. It is when you start moving up that there becomes a significant price differential. If you want to start doing this as a business, then it is back up the Brinks truck. From what I can tell, it becomes cost prohibitive to try to do this as a side business using Calman. With CP, one could do this on the side for as little as $675 to $870.
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Spanky Ham
Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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Link Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 4:12 am Post subject: |
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It's a good review. I quote them on our new ChromaPure order page:
Quote: | "I asked Tom what his key goals were when he set off to develop ChromaPure. He said that he wanted to offer a calibration program that incorporated the features that he wanted to use, along with a well thought out workflow. I’m pleased to report that ChromaPure has delivered on those goals and more. ChromaPure is an excellent calibration program that is well worth the very reasonable $200 purchase price. The software is easy to use, well thought out and is very stable. The CMS support is a standout feature that is not available in competing products and by itself is worth the price of the software. When combined with all of the other features like multiple colorspace support and multiple color difference model support, the program is a compelling bargain. I found that the program yielded excellent results while significantly speeding up my calibration times. After using the program, I’ve decided to use ChromaPure for all of my display calibration needs. Future display reviews on this blog will be done using ChromaPure, so expect the graphs from ChromaPure to show up often." - Mark Petersen of VideoVantage.com (read complete review) |
It was after reading reviews like this one that I realized I have to let people know about this product, hence the reason I decided to bring ChromaPure on board here at CurtPalme.com.
I have a bunch of other similar reviews at the bottom of this page. I'm adding more continously as I come across them.
Kal
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Rolls-Royce
Joined: 30 Sep 2007 Posts: 288 Location: Victorville, CA
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Link Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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Spanky Ham wrote: | Royce,
The Home edition of Calman is $200 and the bundles are pretty close on the low end, so I think the comparison is apt. It is when you start moving up that there becomes a significant price differential. If you want to start doing this as a business, then it is back up the Brinks truck. From what I can tell, it becomes cost prohibitive to try to do this as a side business using Calman. With CP, one could do this on the side for as little as $675 to $870. |
Point taken, Spanky. I guess I was thinking more of the intermediate/high end packages.
BTW, does anyone know if Mark Peterson is the guy who originally created ColorFacts? That name sounds awfully familiar.
_________________ ....Royce....
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