Re: [tlug] Linux / MacOS X and dv cameras

["Lyle H Saxon" <llletters@example.com>]

On 7/22/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> The point isn't that Hitachi is no better than anyone else; they might
> be for all I know.  I know some nice guys who work for their Mech E
> lab, too.  The point is just I know that they play the same
> incompatibility game that all Japanese mfrs do if they think they can.

NEC was (still is?) the largest computer manufacturer in Japan, so
they had more to hang on to by attempting to lock their existing
customers into their products.  The thing about locking in customers
who want to have compatibility with existing equipment, is that you
are simultaneously locking out people who own equipment from other
other manufacturers but are thinking of switching to products from
another company.  As much as I hate (really hate) Microsoft, when file
compatibility with companies outside Japan  became an issue, suddenly
having NEC's mutant file system was an impediment to communication and
profits!  That lost market share over that bit of wrongheadedness!

Another example is lens mounts for single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras.
The largest companies are happy to keep their own proprietary mounts,
and are happy to keep customers who buy new camera bodies based on the
existing (rather expensive) lenses they have.  I suppose there's some
(profit) merit to this approach for manufacturers of inferior
equipment who would otherwise more easily lose existing customers to
rival brands, but it also chases away potential customers of good
camera bodies when a new user decides that a rival company has a
better range of lenses for their cameras.

Pentax got some of my money for camera bodies because I inherited some
Pentax lenses, but I've talked with people who won't even consider
them (although, for the cost, they have been marketing some very good
bodies) due to their limited lens range in comparison to some other
companies.  Interestingly, Pentax had a sort of open standard with the
M42 screw mount (also called Pentax, Praktica or Universal screw
mount), so I could have used Pentax lenses on my old Praktica camera
or the other way around.  Also the Pentax K mount not only works on
all non-screw-mount Pentaxes, but also on some Ricoh, Chinon and
Cosina cameras.  The trouble with those standards is that no two
really major manufacturers used them, but still they probably helped
Pentax and the other companies that used them more than a closed
standard would have.

So I would say that open standards are an advantage to smaller
companies, and closed standards are a (strong-arm) advantage to large
companies who might otherwise lose existing customers to nimbler, more
innovative small companies.

In conclusion, I must disagree with this absolutist statement:

> The point is just I know that they play the same
> incompatibility game that all Japanese mfrs do if they think they can.

Nearly all companies want to make money (don't make me explain the
subsidiary companies set up to deliberately fail for tax purposes),
and doing the wrong thing isn't always profitable!

Lyle