Value of a "dead end" Red One?

[Michael Hastings]

There is the point. You could sell that R1 for $3,000 and still
make money because Jim will have subsidized the sale. There is no need to panic, and no reason to complain about the falling value... As long as you upgrade.

That's a lower number than even I thought.

and that's been my point - as far as prices it doesn't matter that someone paid $1300 for a Canon HV30 single chip camcorder 3 years ago, it only matters that it did 1440x1080 HD (on tape because SD cards were too slow and/or cost $100 per gig) and now you can buy a 1920x1080P Canon HF200 - at a better compression ratio that records on SD for $430 (just did it) and 3 plus hours of recording on a $110 32gig SD card. So I would sell an HV30 for less than $300 and feel good about it.

The Moore's law effect of Scarlet and vDSLRs will dictate a very low used price (I believe in the $4K to $5500 range) within 15 months which is great for indie producers, people that want 4K for underwater (where the weight of an R1 doesn't matter much) with reduced financial risk, etc. and if RED can hold the $28K price for an Epic for awhile (which I believe they can) the original R1 owners really won't feel bad about sub-$5K R1s.

I believe Jim's stage 2 non-tradein upgrade program has created an excellent win-win situation for our entire industry, because it puts cinema grade cameras in the hands of several thousand additional users that otherwise couldn't afford it and is that much bigger of an installed base for 4K .r3d based post solutions which will help drive continued development.