NXD-500i - Disappointing replacement for CV5
Sharpdog
Posts: 7
I can see how the NXD-500i might be a useful addition to the AMX lineup, but as a replacement for the CV5 it is REALLY bad news, most importantly because it lacks video inputs. This means that all of my control pages for DVD, VCR, BluRay, TV, etc. will have to be redesigned to eliminate the video window feature and reorganized to fill the hole left by the video window.
I work in higher education and trying to explain to administrators why the new equipment cannot function as well as the older equipment when their (seemingly reasonable) expectation is that technologies are supposed to be getting better, not worse, is a tough sell.
-Preston
P.S. I also miss the six front panel buttons, and while I think PoE is a great idea, I'd like to also be able to power it directly.
P.P.S. I do like the new swing out mounting clips.
I work in higher education and trying to explain to administrators why the new equipment cannot function as well as the older equipment when their (seemingly reasonable) expectation is that technologies are supposed to be getting better, not worse, is a tough sell.
-Preston
P.S. I also miss the six front panel buttons, and while I think PoE is a great idea, I'd like to also be able to power it directly.
P.P.S. I do like the new swing out mounting clips.
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Comments
I disagree on the 6 front buttons, as this can get confusing for the user. (it does, people can press too much stuff). You can direct them when it's touchscreen only.
The one thing it does lack is video input though. (isn't there a way to get the video over ethernet?)
--John
I haven't seen the 500i, but the video quality, resolution, color and brightness on the CV5 are absolutely outstanding (actually I run the CV5 at less than full brightness because it doesn't need to be that bright.) I have over 50 of these screens and I have been a broadcast television engineer since 1978 and I'm quite picky about video quality. There's no way the 500i could be an improvement over the CV5, especially since the 500i doesn't support video.
Transcoding video, while it may be technically possible is impractical in the extreme since these are for classroom teaching stations at a state university, and the expense and size of the equipment that would take our existing composite NTSC video signal from the coax and turn it into a data stream are simply prohibitive.
I don't mind quite so much that AMX is raising their prices, but to raise prices and then produce an obviously inferior product while discontinuing the superior product is truly disappointing and makes me worry about AMX's management.
PoE is great in a handful of instances. The rest of the time (which makes up the bulk of cases) it's a pain. Why would a company choose to release a product and omit a local power input which costs 20c to engineer and manufacture into the device?
But back to the main topic, I don't find the POE thing to be much of an issue. You can always slap a POE adapter inline wherever you need to.
It seems as though someone at AMX is succumbing to Magical Marketing Thinking which is to say that if you simply tell people that it "Looks So Much Better!!!" then all of the clueless non-technical customers will be mesmerized and want to buy it. AMX's reputation will suffer when the technical people tasked with making these crippled boxes function inform their non-technical purchasers that they have been had.
I wouldn't care about the 500i and the deceptive marketing if they weren't simultaneously discontinuing the CV5. They can sugarcoat something nasty all they like and I won't mind. I'll stay politely quiet, but when you shove it in my mouth then I have to say something even if it is impolite and not genteel. <Sorry>
-Preston |8-)
For what it's worth, in the few hundred installations I've seen, exactly one used live video with a CV5. And at least 1 in 10 customers are asking about adding the intercom functionality that is new in the 500i.
Out of interest John, do you do much in education? Video on panel is a top 5 feature in my experience and the CV5 was a realistic price point for educational facilities. I don't see intercom being that high on the feature list.
No, just from my own exposure which has been mostly residential and I understand commercial is different. I just weighed in for another perspective. I know our installers like the POE so there's not a local power supply or more wires to pull, they like the faster IP video the new unit has, they really like the fact that it's half as deep into the wall as the CV5, and yes they like the intercom. Just saying that when a product spec changes it isn't necessarily purely out of an evil desire on AMX's part to push an inferior product.
Who said it was evil??? The OP said
I agree with the OP (and your points on features, size & POE (I like a 1 wire solution myself)) on the 500i having its place, but it is not a direct replacement and that causes issues. If you'd spec'd a job 12months+ ago and Video preview was a key feature, you've just had the rug pulled as suddenly to meet your own spec you need to step up to a 700Vi panel - who stumps up that cost??? Unlikely to be the end-user!
Residential, Commercial, Education, & Marine are all very different sectors, needing different solutions and sometimes different products. Other manufacturers can and do deal with this with subtly different models to cater for different needs without sticking in every feature and breaking the budget.
In the same way, AMX lost ground to the big C for not having an Xpanel equivalent for teaching facilities - projects were lost due to the cost of the interfaces alone.
John,
At our university system 59 out of 60 installations use live video and less than a third of our classrooms have been upgraded to touch screen control systems. Our high end classroom users expect this feature and IP video is completely impractical for our purposes and out of the question. I certainly don't think that the folks at AMX are evil or are intentionally making an inferior product to replace a superior (and less expensive) product. I fear that they simply are not making decisions based on an understanding of real world technical decision making processes. Now my choices appear to be go with a 700vi for a ridiculous price (when considering that this is for individual classrooms at a cash strapped state university) or purchase a few 700vi's and consider other alternatives. (The "C" word) My choice is being further pushed by AMX's decision that they want $1,200 per year to provide occasional telephone support (average of one two minute call every other month.)
It seems that AMX is moving towards being a high end home theater and corporate board room product and abandoning the education market. Either that, or the marketing folks are spending too much time at education conferences talking to CIO's who no longer teach in the classrooms but aren't about to admit that they have no practical knowledge of the technical requirements of the various venues and operating environments in which equipment is used.
We see this kind of Higher Education CIO driven marketing myopia quite a bit, especially when going to websites for LCD projectors. They have a special link for "Education" or "Higher Education" and these links are invariably useless as they only contain purchasing suggestions of mediocre to poor projectors for very low end classrooms. They don't contain anything for larger venues with increased brightness and higher resolutions. I have yet to click a "Higher Education" tab and find anything useful, so I usually don't bother.
Marketing people should really talk to the people who specify, order and install the equipment, and while the CIO's will claim to have that authority (and of course they do) in the real world they do not exercise any of that authority but simply rubber-stamp the purchasing decisions made by their technical people. They have more important (usually budgetary) things to worry about.
I can see how the 500i would be a good box for installing in the wall of someone's home theater, and they probably wouldn't be overly concerned about live video, especially since they never had it before, but we have high end faculty that have grown used to this feature and now "cannot live without it." Our professors laugh at themselves for having become completely dependent on the technologies that we have provided for them, projectors, document cameras, DVD/VCR's, web browsers and computers, but they stop laughing and start panicking when the systems go down and they have only white-boards and dry-erase markers to work with. On our campus that constitutes an emergency for which we must drop whatever we are doing and revive the systems. The only time our CIO hears about such issues and problems is when we fail to respond or respond very slowly. Then the CIO might get an angry call from a professor and chide us.
-Preston |8-)
P.S. The 60th touch screen, the one without active video in it, is in a television production studio that I installed to control video and audio distribution to forty of our classrooms, and our local cable channels, and that room already has five large wall mounted video monitors in it.
Maybe I mistook this... ... to mean evil. But anyway...
May I suggest that you may consider using IP video. There's a very inexpensive composite-to-IP stream box that's been available for several years that we and our dealers have used quite a bit and I haven't heard of a failure yet. This solution has another upside - the video does not require the separate Video Breakout box that added hundreds of dollars to the CV5 (making it essentially the same cost as the new 500i) and posing additional wiring and co-location issues at each site.
IP Video 9100A Plus Network Video Server (Black) $84.99, sometimes as low as $66 in some deals, also on ebay and many vendors, here's the AMAZON link, with a picture of the unit attached below.
http://www.amazon.com/Video-9100A-Network-Server-Black/dp/B000HBVTCA
We've found these are very low lag, so although they aren't lip-synch-with-live-audio-fast, the image is less than 1 second behind live, making it useful for panning control via visual feedback without serious overshoot. The image rate isn't as smooth as live video but is quite satisfactory. Using dynamo image (available in the 500i), it should be smoother yet. Our experience shows that the picture on the panel can stall on the feed after a long period of time (the panel's doing, not the box), but it resumes with a page refresh. This too may be better with dynamo video, I haven't enough experience with that to know for sure.
Though not included in the documentation of the box, the url to get the video is very simple:
http://[box ip address]/GetData.cgi
In the AMX dynamic image, put the ip address of the box as the HOST item, nothing in the PATH, and GetData.cgi as the filename. The unit has 4 switchable inputs, but the control of the switching is not available without web client-side action that may not be worth the effort. We use one per feed and ignore the extra ports. It does carry audio too, which the panels can't play but their web viewer is adequate and fast. Much faster than a slingbox or similar and smooth enough for satisfying remote viewing and listening to remote sources.
I'm not making excuses for AMX or saying anyone here is wrong in what they want and need. As a product manager, I know that every change has up and down sides, and it's a product manager's job to make the right ones. I'm sorry AMX changed a product in a way that you didn't like. While there may be no road back on this item (hardware being more difficult to adjust after production begins), talking to AMX product managers about what you want will have more effect than talking to sales guys or griping amongst ourselves. From what I've seen, I'm not convinced that much of what appears here in the forums reaches product management people inside AMX. I know that our company's input, given in direct conversations with product managers in person at shows and on the phone and email HAS had results in several AMX products through the years.
The maker of this box is AVIOSYS and they have a variety of other flavors of this and other IP controlled devices.
They have a metal box/bnc version too.
http://www.aviosys.com/ip%20video%209100b.htm
Also look at their AC POWER controls that can monitor a device via IP and power cycle them if they go down, or notify you, and let you power cycle them remotely. There's lots of these from many manufacturers, but these folk seem inexpensive and reliable.
4 Thoughts:
1) Most AMX Dealers generally do not have access to AMX Product Managers.
2) AMX Product Managers would be swamped if every dealer had access to them for product feedback
3) These forums, while not a sole avenue for future product direction, should be classed by AMX as a high value intelligence source on their products and real world uses. The fact that more AMX staff are present here, suggests this is actually the case!
4) CineTouch is in a very fortunate position.
My thoughts on this are: That is why there are reps. Any dealer concerned about the direction of AMX and their product development should keep in touch with their rep and make sure that your voice is heard. I would compare reps to politicians, but I don't want to insult the reps
I did just have one other thought... If you buy 3 touch panels and 1 processor every 12-18 months, have a yearly gross expenditure of less than $50k for all control system purchases and you expect AMX to change things for you, you might want to seek professional help (mention delusions of grandeur
Jeff
I can say that my experience with AMX reps has been less than stellar.
For the most part we just don't communicate. I have not had any good experiences that in any way trump speaking to someone at AMX or even gnawing away on the bone in this forum. We've been under 3 rep/rep firms here at our shop and each has been some degree of not-so-good. My usual interaction with them is something along the lines of 'I'll have to get back to you on that..." and then never hearing back on the issue.
I don't think it's anything to do with them being bad at their job. It's just that we're pretty much operating on the same level expertise-wise. Generally, If I'm having an issue wiht something so are they.
Perhaps it's just the humidity down here too.
Damn, the secrets out! ;-)
Absolutely, there are avenues for communication - reps or direct sales, whether that goes up the product food chain or not is a matter for the company internally. I know of many co's, large and small, who's various departments don't communicate effectively with each other, you might think it was a given, but it's not.
I have had to deal with 4 or 5 reps since starting with AMX. I am in the same boat regarding technical discussions, but the reps I have dealt with have all been great... except 1, but that was remedied rather quickly
As for the communication issue, all, except the 1, have been great. In fact, I still talk with past reps occasionally regarding happenings in the industry. I personally am in contact with our rep at least once a month, more when the situation warrants it. I have heard 'I'll have to get back to you on that...', but I always hear back within a day even if it is just to let me know that they are awaiting a reply from the higher ups.
Jeff
If it would help anyone requiring live video on a 5" and unable to get new units, we have several and access to more old style CV5 units in A-1 condition that we'd be more than pleased to trade for 500i's in similar condition. Private message me if this would help you.