Sony Sells firmware update

[Nathan Beaman]

WTF - this is why RED rocks

Just got a creative cow email burst - advertising a 24p firmware update for some of Sony's XDCAMs.

Ad says Buy now and get a $1500 mail in rebate towards the XDCAM 24p Firmware Update.

Selling a firmware update -- that should be illegal. Especially for $1500

Thank you once again RED for providing an unparalleled customer service commitment.

 

[Albert Armes]

Ouch. That's gotta hurt! I know economic times are hard for Sony, but that makes it all the more important to keep the customers you have. It's cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a new one.

 

[NateWeaver]

Selling a firmware update -- that should be illegal. Especially for $1500

Why? Sony has firmware now that does one thing, and then has to continue to pay them to come up with something else.

They could all roll it into one price that would be higher, but there's a ton of ENG users out there that couldn't care less about 24p.

People/companies need to get paid for their work. If they don't, sometimes they cease to be companies. I'm really glad that Red sees it as something they want to do, to continue to pay engineers to keep working on firmware and then eat the cost...but it's not something that I *expect*.

 

[Nathan Beaman]

I guess the upgrade is actually $4500! holy shit

 

[NateWeaver]

The difference between a HDW-730 and an HDW-F900 was more like $25,000.

I don't know if everybody would see the comparison quite like that, but that is certainly one way it could be looked at.

 

[Martin Weiss]

This business model used to work just fine.

And then came RED.

Thank God!

 

[hunterrichards]

I dont mind paying a nominal fee for a firmware update- but $4500 is a lot of money!

 

[Daniel Browning]

If it costs $4500 just to enable 24p, I wonder how much Sony would charge for each of the features RED has added for free.

At least they're honest about it this time. Canon is still trying to pawn off their firmware upgrades as new camera models.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

$4500 turns your Red from a Mysterium to a Mysterium X.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

$4500 turns your Red from a Mysterium to a Mysterium X.

My thoughts exactly

Just a reminder as to how spoilt we are here.