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DMN: So why is the market so bad right now?
Lypaczewski: One of the big things for us has been the kick in the teeth the advertising industry has taken. Certainly, that has had a great effect on the economics of the post-production industry, because that's a big part of their economic picture. And when you look at the broadcast industry, the impact on broadcast in the absence of declining advertising revenues certainly made for an environment where businesses were much more reluctant to make capital expenditures. Now, we've taken as a ray of hope that the up-front season that took place last June actually resulted in all of the advertising slots for this fall season being sold and generated $1.8 billion more than the previous year. So, significantly more money has gone into the system, but people are still being very, very careful with their capital in today's environment. We have reason to expect that the worst is behind us. But it is still a matter of conjecture when the uptick will happen. We sense it's out there. We hope it's out there soon. But we're positioning ourselves to expect the worst and enjoy it when something better happens.
Q; Do you see your high-end compositing products taking a beating from the lower-end of the market -- applications like After Effects?
Lypaczewski: Oh, no. We're there, too, with Combustion, for example. Yes, it's entirely true that as the desktop garners more capability, that many of the things that were once the purview of the high end are going to happen on the desktop. But there's great value to be added on the desktop. And that's exactly why we're committed to this business in the long run, Charlie. Really, what we're looking at is our customers require tuned integrated performance on top of infrastructure. They need productive facilities, not just productive seats. And when you look at particularly the importance of the customer facing workflow, it requires a level of interactivity and performance that's not going to be subsumed by the desktop any time soon. Knowing this, and living in both worlds, you want to make sure to add value to the desktop where it makes sense, and add value in the high end, as well. We enjoy the benefits of being in both areas. There's definitely a synergistic effect for both of our businesses in that regard, which I think puts us in a fairly unique position. The systems business is here for the long run.
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DMN: I don't know about you, Paul, but it looks to me like there's a resurgence of interest in HDTV right now. It looks like there's more programming available. I think this would bode well for Discreet, don't you?
Lypaczewski: Very much so, because there are a number of solutions out there that claim to do HD, and theoretically they do. I think I might have described it to you before: This is HD for the incredibly patient [they both laugh]. And the one commodity our customers do not have enough of it time. So we think this bodes extremely well for us, because this definitely plays to our strong suit. That's one of the reasons why Smoke has taken off like gangbusters, because Smoke HD is one of the most capable HD solutions on the street.
DMN: Have you thought about bringing Smoke over to the Windows platform? Is that just completely out of the question?
Lypaczewski: The legacy of Discreet is, use the right platform for the right tool. And we have solutions on a broad range of platforms. We're one of the only companies out there that has SGI solutions, we have Intel solutions, we've announced our intention to provide Linux solutions with Burn (our distributed rendering solution), and we have Mac OS X solutions. Case in point: Cleaner version 6 for the Mac won Best of Show at Macworld this summer. So we know all the platforms and how best to use them. It's not the result of an attachment to a particular platform, but there are platforms that are integrated in a fashion which provide the performance which is necessary. So when you look at Smoke on an Octane 2, it's more than just graphics that the Octane 2 provides -- but it's the memory architectures, the processing architectures, the real time I/O, the tuned operating systems which make that an engaging environment. Clearly, there will be opportunities on other platforms, as the Wintel platforms and the Intel/Linux platforms evolve in such a fashion as to provide the acceptable level of performance, at that juncture in time, we'll certainly look at the opportunities, but it's pick the right tool, at the right juncture in time. The thing that matters most is delivering the performance that our customers need. When you're looking for a particular solution, it's not like you know the solution you're going for, you want to ramp through a range of values. If you're working on an architecture which gives you a smooth and uninterrupted ramp, you can find it, but if you're getting a series of slices that computer is giving you, then the right answer could have been in between one of those slices. So it's that interactive performance which is fundamental to the success of our customers.
Charlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past eight years, White is also an Emmy-winning producer, video editor and shot-calling television director with 28 years broadcast experience. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.Prev 1 2 3 4
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