Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems the future of video processing within M components

the list of questions for mr. kotches continues to grow, but a number of them triggered for me the following logic-stream that i didn't want to clutter that thread with.

with the onset of the Faroudja deal, isn't it likely that M is going to jettison all video processing from their players and instead sell those customers another full-bore box?

the obvious alternative is to jettison the F boxes and just integrate the capabilities into all the players.

the hybrid solution seems a tad wonky from a business perspective: top-quality video processing in each player, plus standalone top-quality video processing boxes. so wonky in fact, that the only company that ever really did this (Faroudja processors and DCDi et. al. embedded systems) sold off its box business (to Meridian). who has made this business model work? Genesis apparently couldn't.

how do folks think this will pan out?

M's efforts vis-a-vis F are either focused at filling a hole in their product line or in pushing out into an entirely new market. the video processor market is not the same as the ultra-high-end audio market (and F hadn't recently been playing in the ultra-high-end video processing market ("mid-fi" or a bit better, i guess)).

F owned their market in the 90s and early 00s because it was a very small niche market which required very specialized R&D capabilities. but now that there are compelling generalized fast chip sets for this stuff, and the market is poised to grow tremendously, LOTS of people are hopping on the bandwagon. and F stopped keeping up, to some extent, after a point.

does M intend to recapture that glory? is that going to be feasible from an R&D and product development standpoint? is that going to be feasible from a technical competitive standpoint in 2005, 2006, and beyond? or does M intend to just kill the F products and make integrated players with similar technology?

i still don't understand the M-F deal - i don't see the big win. so i have no clue what the answers are.

the cynic in me would suggest that the deal was to bolster revenues and expand the product line in front of a float. but i do tend to get cynical this time of the night

anybody have theories they'd care to share?

doody.

Seems to be a strange take on the prospect. What I have been hearing from some AV companies is that this is a very clever move.
Meridian can improve its whole range of products and add even higher end video. Video is an important component in home theater systems, the technology is moving fast and integrating it makes sense to me.
M's press release suggests that they will be working with technology ahead of the fast chip curve.

I guess integration (whoever does it) will prevail in the end over separate boxes, as chipsets become mainstream amd more affordable.
Small, exclusive niches will probably continue to exist, but it will be difficult to make things click on that alone. I can't help thinking about what happened in just a few years to the graphics accelerator market as it was in the early 90's ...

My take is that M will always seek to be at the forefront of technolgy developments. They will try to "set" the technology reference where they can (win or lose, per MLP and DVD-A), to provide a market platform for themselves. They'll offer stunning packaged solutions that do them credit both in marketing and intellectual terms and, I think, look for ways to achieve product penetration in high end aspects of the audio and video markets.

M offer a stunning set of "one house" audio and video solutions with high quality and high credibility for those that buy them. But, surely, there'll always be people that want different or better than M offer where separate components are felt to be the way to go? (the recent threads on transports, master clocks and external DACs show that, for me).

I think commoditisation of products only works where technology stability or size and longevity of market warrant. Audio and Video technology seems to be too be fast moving and, at the higher end, too small or volatile in market terms to resist separate solutions.

Regards,
Steve

Many moons ago M planned a 5 series video switcher - I seem to remember.

A stand-alone Meridian video scaler to replace any faroudja hardware and provide "state of the art" video capablities must look a good option and appear to get more people to buy Meridian. Once they have one piece of kit they'll get drawn in to buy more and more. Whatever they put in this stuff we all know it's highly infectious and only cured by spending more money.

So the scaling goes out of G91/98 (or at least their replacements) into a new box. The 800 can fit the scaling inside (appropriate for a flagship product) if they can make the boards the right size.

That's the way I'd expect to pan out. The more they build into 1 box (g91 anyone) the more difficult it is to keep it modular and provide sensible updates and upgrades. The more they split it out the easier this becomes (unless the boxes are really large and designed for card swapping as in the 8xx series).

Just my 2 cents.

Chris

I suspect that simple/restricted scaling will stay in the current players and their successors.

Depending on box capacity, you might expect some scaling duties to be built into 861/G68, along with more HDMI inputs to switch.

However, given the reluctance of a sceptical Joe Public to launch into a new player format, I'd expect to see a standalone M scaler/picture processor. It's capabilities would be far greater than the G9x type scaling. The varied inputs and outputs would be much like the current branded scalers. I'd even expect a few variants depending on whether you wanted SDI inputs, DVI, HDMI, etc etc.

Likelihood that I'd buy another player or surround processor in the near future is very remote. Chances I'd buy a G-Scaler (at some point sooner) is more likely....if I don't buy a Crystallio, Lumagen or similar first (just hope Mrs L doesn't even suspect that another purchase is even in my consciousness ).