Anyone heard from ODEMAX lately?

[Casey Green]

Just curious what the status of ODEMAX's beta testing is.

For a while, I was getting email updates, but over the past couple of months, they have gone silent. (At least in my experience)

Does anyone else know what their plans are? Or possibly someone from ODEMAX can chime in? We love our REDRAY, but we are really looking forward to it's full potential...

 

[Clark Dunbar]

NO.

over the last couple of months have sent several emails to the ODEMAX contacts to get updates...for that material any response. And nothing. Not a word.

not looking good.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

My recent emails have gone unanswered. I sent Tom an email a few weeks back and nothing... Yeah, doesn't look good.

 

[Bob Gundu]

This may have always been the case, but I do find it odd that there is not a single mention of Odemax on the RED website.

 

[Phil Holland]

This may have always been the case, but I do find it odd that there is not a single mention of Odemax on the RED website.

ODEMAX and RED, beyond being supported on the REDRAY platform, don't have much to do with each other.

I too haven't heard anything in some time from ODEMAX. They do have a hard drive I'd like to get back from them however.

I'll try reaching out next week and see what there is to learn.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Odemax would have been just soooo right if it launched when it was announced....

 

[Will Keir]

That's a bummer to hear things went silent. 4K TVs are pushing mainstream and content is going to be playing catchup. That gives a lot of us shooting RED for years a nice jump.

 

[Neil Cronin]

Their twitter account devolved into tweeting jibberish, then went silent a couple months ago. From the point of view of a somewhat interested observer, it appears that things imploded in one way or another.

Are they still operational for beta users who have the hardware? Or did it even get to that point over the last year?

-n

 

[Will Keir]

Does that mean REDRAY is useless without this service?

Their twitter account devolved into tweeting jibberish, then went silent a couple months ago. From the point of view of a somewhat interested observer, it appears that things imploded in one way or another.

Are they still operational for beta users who have the hardware? Or did it even get to that point over the last year?

-n

 

[Neil Cronin]

Does that mean REDRAY is useless without this service?

That wasn't what I was saying, but it might be possible. red.com sales copy about the Redray player indicate that it can only play .red files. So I guess you could play your own movies if you buy the transcoder? I'm not sure. It also says it can upscale 1080p files, but it doesn't say which ones. But if it can only play h264 files at this point, that's an expensive Apple TV.

-n

 

[Gunleik Groven]

One of REDs strong points, is their codecs. R3D, and from everyone who have seen it .RED.

Odemax was perfectly timed, if it had released at the time of announcement.

My bet is that it by now probably is a bit too late.

Some kind of infrastructure around the codec is probably needed though, for it not to become a specialized codec with high quality and little impact.
RED has become increasingly good at defining their markets the last few years. Dragon is in many ways a testimony to that.


For RED to have a similar impact on distribution as in capture. infrastructure and efficient workflows are key elements.
the codec does not disappear if Odemax does.

Maybe the linking between RedRay and .RED playback does.

Just hunch'ing here.
But still.

Take out RedRay as a "premise" to playback .RED, and the road to distribution and market - penetration is much wider.

Then RedRay can be the "idiot proof" tool for 4k playback.
While others (like say Vimeo/youtube) could populate the format in everyday use.

No info or knowledge of anything here, just a hunch of how the tables may turn as times go by.

A bit like "GPU decoding is impossible", and then it suddenly is...

 

[Brian F Kobylarz]

Does that mean REDRAY is useless without this service?

REDRAY will have other applications beyond Odemax and the (hopefully) yet to be released laser projector and/or other individual displays.

An exciting aspect of REDRAY is how it could support digital signage in public venues. Each of the four HDMI outputs can be an individual HD signal going to it's own display. That means each REDRAY can support four HD monitors. Since the units are genlockable, two REDRAYs will support eight HD displays, three will support twelve and so on. If I understand it from my conversations with Stuart, planned correctly, one could produce a synchronized show throughout an airport, convention center, corporate trade show and so on…

The trade show application has real potential. Most recent years, I have been supporting a large corporate client with a number of individual business units. Their booth is typically 60-80' long x 30' wide with each unit displaying their own content. In a central area, I had been using Dave Jones Designs synchronizing 4 Pioneer DVD players (frame accurate). More recently, that changed to less screens and Mac mini's. With REDRAY, I foresee synchronizing the entire booth from one stack.
Of course, that means lower cost video walls too.

Best part is, it's easy to edit and make changes to the content in a 4 way split screen - then just transcode via REDcode software, load and show.
Have not had a chance to try it yet, but hopefully (hint, hint RED) we'll be set for that by the end of March…

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I, too, think that RedRay has a lot of other applications than the current crop of 4k-"apple TVs" popping up.

.RED needs some kind of infrastructure to get the traction it probably deserves, though

 

[Jeremy Torrie]

Since I have yet to receive my RedRay -do u need Redray to play back .RED files or are there other players?

I believe Red's codec is one of their greatest untapped resources...

 

[Nils Ruinet]

I was wondering about Odemax and Redray too recently... Bummer if there are no news on that front anymore... Now that we're finally starting to see 4K screens at decent prices, it should start to be useful.

Let's just hope they didn't abandon the project. Potential was great.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

One could argue that any UHD/4K distribution model that required viewers to buy a $1,700 black box had a limited market. The viability of ODEMAX as the distribution entity was always an unknown. I would have been happy to see them prove themselves to the community (perhaps they still will), but, as others have noted, they have yet to do anything to inspire confidence.

Even if .RED, ODEMAX and current RedRay hardware are stillborn, I think RED provided the industry with an example of how one might distribute UHD/4K at quality levels capable of preserving enough picture quality to make it worth going beyond HD. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, the near term rollout of UHD/4K content delivery is likely to be so compression compromised that it threatens the core picture quality value proposition.

Is it RED's responsibility to not only make UHD/4K capable production gear but also manifest a legit UHD/4K distribution platform? Of course not. That said, waiting around for others to build out UHD/4K distribution ecosystems without even a roadmap might not have been appealing. I'm a pixel peeping UHD/4K wonk, and whether it's RED or someone else, we really do need a genuinely quality focused distribution avenue.

What appears all too likely to happen is that many viewer's initial experience with content labeled UHD or 4K will be a VERY compressed stream that looks indistinguishable from HD in common viewing scenarios. I'd hate to see UHD/4K fall into the same "meh" category as S3D has for most people. IMO, what was marketed as "3D" the last few years had virtually no chance to succeed in the marketplace because the display technology is still a couple generations away from looking "natural" enough. The CE companies pushed "3D" anyway in search of short term profits and may repeat that behavior by trying to convince consumers that severely compressed UHD/4K has lots more "awesome sauce" than slightly less compressed HD.

It's hard to find anyone interested in continued development of physical media based content distribution. Cable and satellite will likely ride UHD/4K to some degree, primarily for marketing purposes, and to extract every last nickel they can from sports content, but IP (web) delivery is seen as inevitable. That means the crux of the issue for delivering genuinely stunning imagery is either lots more bandwidth or exponential improvements in compression metrics. Beyond all that, one has to ask why the distributors would do anything that increases their costs when they are already revenue limited by their customer's price sensitivity. In other words, if the mass market is already paying as much as they can afford for the low quality crap they are getting where's the capitalist incentive to improve the product?

Cheers - #19

 

[BigLu]

Go Blair

 

[Will Keir]

Ah man, I wish I knew you wanted one. I sent mine back to RED because I didn't need it yet.

Since I have yet to receive my RedRay -do u need Redray to play back .RED files or are there other players?

I believe Red's codec is one of their greatest untapped resources...

Exactly. Good to see 4k screens affordable but now the pipeline to feed us 4k content has dissipated.

I was wondering about Odemax and Redray too recently... Bummer if there are no news on that front anymore... Now that we're finally starting to see 4K screens at decent prices, it should start to be useful.

Let's just hope they didn't abandon the project. Potential was great.

 

[Casey Green]

Good input here... Hopefully ODEMAX chimes in soon...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Does that mean REDRAY is useless without this service?

Backwards I would argue. ODEMAX is useless without REDRAY and from what I heard last year about REDRAY, ODEMAX would by extension be in an untenable position. I don't see a lot of VCs leaping in to spend millions on a distribution network competing against Netflix, HBO, Amazon and Hulu.