EPIC rolling will stop MX upgrade?

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I can see many of red customers will be ready to pounce on you if they think you have offended RED. It must be a really great feeling for RED. Not only RED, its same feeling for any company if they have very very protective customers.

Well they've worked hard to earn that level of attention.

 

[Michael Hastings]

The reason people jumped on you is because they interpreted your question to read:

"Is RED with-holding Epic in order to sell more MX upgrades?"

Which is something of an accusation of dubiously ethical behavior on RED's part. When you accuse a 'friend' of cheating their customers by forcing them to buy two products instead of 1 in order to profit people will defend their 'friend'. People know RED and they know that's not in RED's character. They don't know you. So they jump to the conclusion that you're in the wrong.

I can see that interpretation of your question but I like to err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

But that's the harshest interpretation of his post.

So let me be the devil's advocate since it seems that about 2/3 of the responders in this thread want to paint Mr. Mohan as the devil:

Even if that is the gist, a softer interpretation might be more in line with the way he actually worded it. And it is a legitimate question and also serious one for anyone evaluating whether to upgrade their R1. The first question I think was rhetorical:

Once EPIC released what will be position of MX upgrades?

That is, once Epic is shipping (and particularly scarlet s35) it will make little sense to spend $5500 to upgrade even if you are a stage 2 keeping your R1 - when an S35 scarlet is only $1500 more (plus a couple grand in base accessories) and you get all the benefits of the MX plus 5K plus the modern, much nicer technological package, swappable modules with your Epic, Electronic SLR mounts, DSMC, better ergonomics, etc.

Is EPIC delayed because of MX upgrade still going on?

Again, a legitimate question. The great majority of motion picture professionals (and RED owners) that I know have a journalistic/documentary background and as such know that you get the best information by asking the tough questions not the softball ones. And Mohan asked it in a pretty non-antagonistic way. He didn't suggest a conspiracy (like Zak came up with about Apple - and is routinely thrown out in other threads by REDUSERs about Sony, Pan, Canon, etc.) where Jim is sitting on a warehouse full of Epics just waiting for MX upgrades to die off.

But it is obvious that their is less pressure when the upgrades get RED more than half of what they will get for an entire Epic-X package on the trade in program. The upgrades provide substantial cash flow for the company as well as further amortize M-X sensor production and development costs and one of the early RED defenders in this thread even mentioned that it took some pressure off so they could refine epic:

snip...The R1 lives on and the presure on epic is taken down slightly. It can released when it is good enough.

In other words, it isn't outrageous for RED or any other company to use the existing product line, market factors, competition, etc. to figure out the point at which you halt development and go into production.

As an example with RED, IIRC Jim even said at the start of the economic crisis that because of it they were going to scale back on overtime development. So all all he is really asking is: "Is there a little less urgency to get Epic out than their would be if there were no upgrade program and its associated cashflow/profit." And maybe he is using the question to prod RED a little bit and emphasize that people are getting antsy. He obviously is, and I don't think he is the lone ranger on that.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

I can see many of red customers will be ready to pounce on you if they think you have offended RED. It must be a really great feeling for RED. Not only RED, its same feeling for any company if they have very very protective customers.

Red has earned their protective customers via behavior.

I owned Panny and Sony cams before my Red. I wouldn't really bother defending Panny or Sony products much, The Ex1/Ex3 is a great low priced low-weight ENG cam that complements the Red nicely when it's 105F outside and you need to move around a lot, but I'm sure better will come out soon in the same price range, and that's the end of it.

And Sony as a company is OK but nothing to foam at the mouth over, same for Panny.

I would never wear a Sony or Panasonic T-shirt, I would wear a Red T-shirt.