Windowing Processors
MLaletas
Posts: 226
in AMX Hardware
I saw that Craptron has a new windowing processor, it looks pretty neat. Of course I had to double check AMX's line to see if they all of sudden offered anything comparable the only that exists is just the SVSI stuff. Thats something their definitely missing out on, and posting this to make this forum not so much a ghost town.
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It's tantalizingly close right now. Having said this, they still seem pretty 'all-in' when it comes to video switching.
Agreed completely, smaller product solutions like what your talking about either do not exist or are more expensive. Now it might be better, better quality, more features etc... but sometime the biggest factor is simply that price. Frustrating sometimes, I keep trying to find a product combo that I can get away with to be more competitive.
Well it's time to make AMX great again
I have mixed feelings about this. I'm not sure why traffic on the forum had fallen off. It is slow and cumbersome, but some of the other forums I'm on are almost as slow and that doesn't seem to hurt things that much. AMX does make some really good products. The DGX boxes are finally good. The NX platform is good. What bothers me the most as an independent programmer is that they just don't seem to care much for us. First they tried to replace us with Visual Architect which was a mess, and now with RPM. Many years ago I had a rep stop in a couple of times a year to answer questions and tell me about new products but that hasn't happened for over 5 years now. I can't ask questions of tech support without paying the fee. I can't afford the VIP program either. The only place to share info and get questions answered is here and the forum is now just a puddle compared to the ocean that it once was. The equipment is so expensive that the customers are trying to save money any way they can. I've seen an increase in systems that use the Massio keypads and everyone now wants remote support instead of on-site installs to try to save a few bucks. This makes life harder as far as I am concerned because of the variations in the abilities of the on-site techs that are supposed to be helping me get things installed and tested. Another thing that causes me heartburn is the increased use of hot-fix firmware files. I don't really trust them to not fix one thing and break another, I don't want to be forced to call tech support to get them, and it just makes life difficult later on because the customer is running something that is not a production-quality product.
There is no way for us little guys to keep up with the flood of new products that get sold to the end user. So the customer wants it, the integrator installs it, and we get to figure out how to make it all work together. The engineers appear to believe that it will all work on faith and plug it into the drawings. So I have these remote-control jobs that want to use these Massio 108 keypads with the knob. The knob pretty-much sucks because you turn it forever to go from 0-255. There's got to be a way to shortcut this, but I don't have one to play with, I can't ask tech support, and I no longer have anyone to talk to that supports independent programmers that aren't in the VIP program. So now I'm looking to buy one on Ebay so I can figure out how to make my code work better.
So to make a long story short: no one left on the slow forum, AMX trying to get into everything, no support for independent programmers, and no real improvements in the development tools that we need.
While I cannot speak for the organization, I know that I personally fight the good fight on behalf of Independent Programmers on a daily basis within these walls. I am regularly in conversation with dealers and sales professionals touting the benefits of using members of the VIP program given the membership's deep level of AMX programming specialization. Why tout only members of my program? They are the only group I have personal knowledge of and they meet specific certification criteria that we can stand behind. The annual membership fee for AMX VIP is quite minimal for the value that is returned on that investment. We can talk offline about it further if you are interested, but from where I sit, that money is more than returned to the active membership who participate in just the summer developer conference, let alone the other elements of the program.
As for your personal access to tech support - your HCCP-Programmer certification is current and the achievement gains you access to technical support free of charge. I have contacted customer service and have asked them to code your account properly. If you experience something different, either work with AMXService@harman.com or reach out to me directly by phone 469-624-7305.
Danny
It's not just AMX, that statement describes just about every other company in our industry right now.
Forums have given way to social media, C4 is also buying up a bunch of companies (Triad!), dealers hate programmers and always have, and there's no money in dev tools.
http://www.amx.com/en/news/harman-professional-solutions-announces-amx-incite-professional-digital-av-presentation-solutions?sf88376160=1