Re: harris by Chris Blair on Jun 2, 2008 at 3:17:55 am
They don't reply to direct emails or phone calls. Why would they reply to posts on a forum? I'm only half kidding. We recently upgraded our Velocity software from 8.2 to 9.1, and we had to buy it through Harris. It was a comically frustrating experience. From our regional rep screwing up the order at literally every turn, to a month after the purchase getting an invoice for sales tax they said I owed (after I had already received the shipment).
You couldn't download the update, they'd only send a CD, and after they got our payment ($1000), it took almost a month to receive our two copies of the version 9.1 software.
All through the process, they didn't return phone calls or emails. At one point I sent a very long, detailed email complaining about my experience to 5 different people. After getting NO response, one full week later I called and asked for the highest ranking of the 5. I actually got through to him, but he claimed he hadn't gotten the email and suggested I copy it and then send it through their "support" section of their website. He said they had "very tough" spam filters and often didn't get emails sent directly to them. I then proceeded to call each of the 4 other people to see if they'd gotten the email. It took a week to reach them all...but the answer was (drum roll please...) NOPE.
During all this I had resent the email through their web site contact page. That was months ago...and I never got a response.
Worse still...even after I had detailed my experience to these folks on the phone, instead of apologies, I got excuses. Most claiming their regional representatives don't do a good job representing their products and company.
I'll admit. He sucked. But they have to have the worst distribution and sales process I've ever seen. I don't know how anyone ever makes a purchase from them. I've also tried for months to find out if their software only Velocity software will read/write .dps files (I've heard it will), and if it's available for purchase if you don't already own their VelocityNX craft editing system.
You guessed it...no replies...no answers via email. I finally called...was directed to the same incompetent rep. He had no clue. He didn't even know they had a software only version of Velocity! But he said he'd get back to me with answers. That was months ago and I've still never heard back.
Such a shame. DPS was a great company when it came to customer support. You could call their VP for broadcast and NLE products on his direct line. You'd get a call back from tech support within hours, and emails were answered just as quickly. They'd ship you a replacement board overnight, no questions asked, and include prepaid overnight shipping and a padded, electrostatic bag to return the defective board.
We spent almost $100,000 with DPS/Leitch/Harris over the years. You'd think that would be worth something to the Harris, the current owner.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: harris by Chris Blair on Jun 12, 2008 at 3:09:33 am
Gary,
After you forwarded my post, I got a call from a Harris
VP for global sales and support.
He was very apologetic about the bad service I've received, and also
shared quite a bit of information about the following:
1. The decision to end the hardware based version of the Velocity
product line.
This is pretty obvious. They couldn't make money or compete with Avid and Final Cut in the post-production market. He said their costs for manufacturing the hardware went up every year, and the prices for the product basically stayed the same or came down. He also said the internal R&D costs for software development were obviously expensive. He said they "could've" made money with it but needed a lot bigger market-share to do so.
2. The decision to continue the Velocity software coupled with their
Nexio SAN shared storage based products.
He said Leitch initially wasn't going to continue Velocity at all,
but after Harris bought them, they saw the value in the software and
thought they could use it to bolster sales of their Nexio SAN if
they could sell a bundled system that was ready to edit on right out of the box. So they kept the software folks from the Velocity team and had them re-engineer it to be software based, with support for Final Cut, P2, HDcam etc.
3. The decisions on how to handle the announcement of the EOL on
Velocity, VelocityQ and VelocityHD, and the decisions on target
markets for the new Velocity software/SAN products.
He admitted they did a bad job of communicating what they were doing
with Velocity. But as noted above, the intial decision was to end
the Velocity line completely...so those intitial announcements to
users like us was accurate. Then...just a short time later, Harris
bought them and felt like they could make money with Velocity if it
were software only (remember, they were getting killed on
manufacturing and production costs on the boards). This is where he
admits they "should have" let legacy Velocity users know that they
were going to continue development of the product in software, and
design it to work with Harris' SAN hardware.
Ultimately...it probably doesn't matter...because the cost of
Harris' software/SAN based turn-key solutions are out of reach of almost every member of this user group. The Velolcity News Force and
VelocityNX craft editing system they sell (multiple PC's with
Velocity software along with something like 12TB of SAN
storage)...start at....are you ready for this...over $100,000. And I
said "start at..."
As some of you may know, we just purchased a shared storage server
(Apace vStor), and he asked me what we paid for it....when I told
him with installation it was around $15,000, he was more than a
little surprised. But Apace's products are similar in price to
EditShare and several other LAN based shared storage systems...so
lots of companies are making money selling shared storage systems
for that price point...including Apple's Xserve SAN storage systems,
which is similarly priced.
In the end...I doubt many of us on this list could've afforded any
of their new solutions that use Velocity. They do have a software
based version of Velocity called VelocityXNG that is supposed to
ship in August. Their website (which he said is woefully outdated by
the way) describes it as if it's a shipping product, but it is not.
He got a product manager to call me back and confirm it will
read .dps, .dva, and VelocityHD native files, but will not be able
to render/export them. So I'm not sure how useful it would be to us.
They will sell it as a standalone, but they don't have a price yet.
The main use for this version is for clients that have the Velocity
NewsForce or VelocityNX systems. As I understand it, you can put this version on a laptop and edit in the field, send back proxies of the edit via IP...and once the footage is in-house, the edit can be automatically reassambled from the hi-rez footage.
So the intent isn't to develop a software based editing system for
sale to the masses..or even legacy Velocity users...although he said
I'm not the first person to call and ask about it.
Anyway...there wasn't much he told me that I hadn't already assumed.
I've long said that their decision to end the product had to be based on dollars. There just weren't enough of them to justify the cost of production.
He said they all KNOW it's a great product and that it "could"
compete with Avid and Final Cut, but for any number of reasons, it
never happened. Unfortunately, the best products don't always end up
being the most popular or successful.
Sorry for the long post, but thought some members might be
interested.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
