Pricedrop on Odyssey 7Q on Facebook rumors

Dang... I paid for my unit in mid-March, got it end of April and two weeks later I had to send it back as it was faulty. Took 4 weeks to get a replacement unit... On top of this I seem to have a touchscreen calibration issue on my replacement unit as well (I've reported it to CD) and they want me to send it in again! But I can't afford another 4 week downtime because of this.

I really love the end results with the O7Q but seems like there's so many small bugs. I just had a 5 day shoot with the new FW and the touchscreen stopped working 20-30 times a day (pressing F1 fixed it every time). This only happened 1-5 times a day with the previous firmware. Also the playback is still amazingly buggy. Choppy on fast pans or movement, black screen when not connected to the FS700 or if the camera is turned off... I had to offer explanations multiple times to the crew when my O7Q would act up...

Still waiting for those LUT's, onion skinning, timelapse...

I'd really hope CD would offer extended warranty to us early adopters for free.
 
Martin.G said:
So i have paid a premium for a non-functional product which i have not been able to make money on due to lacking features and now that they arrive, everyone who waited gets an added bonus of a price cut to boot.
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If it wasn't functional for you use at the time of purchase then why did you buy it and not wait till it had the features you needed to make money?
 
"Own the industry’s premiere monitor/recorder for just $1795

(Colorado Springs, CO - October 1, 2014) Less than one year ago, Convergent Design began shipping the Odyssey7Q monitor/recorder. The response has been overwhelming, with thousands more units shipped than anticipated. To celebrate this huge success, for a limited time the Odyssey7Q is available for just $1795, more than 20% less than the standard price.

The Odyssey7Q combines Convergent Design's knowledge and experience of both broadcast and cinematography recorders, while adding the capabilities of a high-end professional monitor.

Odyssey7Q is a brilliant 7.7" OLED monitor with 3400:1 contrast, true blacks, 1280x800 resolution and comprehensive monitoring tools. It's also the best and most versatile portable recorder available on the market, enabling you to record HD Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), 4K Apple ProRes, Uncompressed, Sony FS7/FS700 RAW, Canon C500 4K RAW, ARRIRAW and POV RAW. For a limited time, Odyssey7Q is available for $1795, a $500 savings. The best just keeps on getting better!"

So its only for LIMITED TIME? How longs that tho
 
Seems to be it's just for a limited time.

"Own the industry’s premiere monitor/recorder for just $1795

(Colorado Springs, CO - October 1, 2014) Less than one year ago, Convergent Design began shipping the Odyssey7Q monitor/recorder. The response has been overwhelming, with thousands more units shipped than anticipated. To celebrate this huge success, for a limited time the Odyssey7Q is available for just $1795, more than 20% less than the standard price.

The Odyssey7Q combines Convergent Design's knowledge and experience of both broadcast and cinematography recorders, while adding the capabilities of a high-end professional monitor.

Odyssey7Q is a brilliant 7.7" OLED monitor with 3400:1 contrast, true blacks, 1280x800 resolution and comprehensive monitoring tools. It's also the best and most versatile portable recorder available on the market, enabling you to record HD Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), 4K Apple ProRes, Uncompressed, Sony FS7/FS700 RAW, Canon C500 4K RAW, ARRIRAW and POV RAW. For a limited time, Odyssey7Q is available for $1795, a $500 savings. The best just keeps on getting better!"
 
OK, well this is what it is. Obviously they looked at their own books and the market and made a decision. Question is: why now and why a limited time? Atomos is some heavy competition. Cheaper but not as versatile but Atomos already has a lot of the capability the 7Q is trying to get taken care of with Prores. Maybe CD has sold enough units at the original price to cover their costs of development so far. Now they can push getting units into peoples hands at a cheaper price.

I'm hoping with this comes a new firmware release. A price drop and 4k Prores would be very synergistic for business. Upcoming 7Q sales for the FS7 also will include the FS700 licenses as well. Though admittedly we don't know if CD bought the FS700 Raw license form Sony as a lump sum, or per unit basis (IE Sony would get half of the money from an FS700 license sale).

-BTW I love discussing business strategies!-
 
Ugh, so instead of delivering the product they promised and we paid for, they drop the price and lower it's value because the product we paid for is not woth as much without the features they promised... normally I totally understand price drops and would say ok we knew what we were getting and we knowingly paid for an incomplete product so we could have it early and use it on jobs with whatever functionality it had, but that's not the case here. If CD was more truthful about their product I would not have bought it and would have waited or would have sold it, but they basically told me every single month that the features I wanted were only a month away for a full year and basically tricked me into keeping their product until it's value dropped and they haven't ever even delivered the biggest features! I've owned a lot equipment and this is a first. And I've owned a RED. Never been so disappointed in a company I had thought so highly of. Look at my old posts about how great CD was and how I thought for sure the 7q would soon be the industry standard. They've really worn me down. I think Mitch does a great job with customer support and maybe this is out of his hands but this is ridiculous.

Of course this comes right I was thinking maybe I should sell my 7Q and buy a shogun when it comes out and get back some of my money with the price difference. I imagine this is why CD is doing this, to compete or make sure their product gets out their before the strong competition shows up. Just remember CD, Atomos is likely to ship with most of the promised features already implemented, so your best defense is to actually finally deliver all the 7q's advertised features. If atomos has 4k or prores flavors or 3d luts or non-crappy filestructures before CD does it will be very sad no matter how low they drop their prices. The shogun is already supposed to have a better screen and 4k hdmi and 12g sdi for a lower price. CD can't you offer free hdmi upgrades or something as a consolation? Or free raw software upgrades and make all the raw upgrades free and refund us what we paid for raw? If atomos makes raw free on their shogun, I just know the next thing CD will do will be making the paid raw features free like sony did with slog on the f3 and then that'd be another $800 I paid them that was thrown away for nothing.
 
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I think it goes without saying, if we want to be on the cutting edge, we have to go along with things like this. So, would it really have hurt my own market share to have waited a year or 18 months b4 I bought an O7Q? And the real answer is no. Personally, I'm getting rather worn down with being a beta tester for other companies. So, maybe, I'll focus on what I like doing, shooting with a good platform, and forego these annual technology gimmicks.
 
Life is not fair. simply someone like me is sitting down and going FS700/o7q or FS7 (bare) and unless the former is significantly cheaper as a package then FS7 it is :)

S
 
konastab01 said:
But the 7Q is a add on like the sony 4k recording system so why should convergent take the hit???
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Because anyone who doesn't need raw will forgo the hassle of an external recorder with FS700 and buy an FS7 for similar money. The O7Q was almost a necessity with the FS700 but isn't for the FS7. That is how I read Morgan Moore's post.
 
I can imagine that a major part of the O7Q sales are to FS700 users. And like someone said before me, if the cost of a FS700 + O7Q is the same as the FS7, why would anyone go with that solution?
I also believe that for most or many FS700 users the 4KtoHD and upcoming 4K ProRes is the real draw. And for a large part of those, XAVC would do just fine.
Also of course the announcement of the Atomos Shogun supporting FS700 raw in the future gives them competition from a cheaper device that although more limited offer much cheaper recording media as well.

They probably had to lower the price to stay competive.

If if I had known this before buying my A7s, I might have bought the O7Q instead. But now I have to wait and hope that the lower price stays permanent to buy it sometime down the line..
 
cuervo said:
I think it goes without saying, if we want to be on the cutting edge, we have to go along with things like this. So, would it really have hurt my own market share to have waited a year or 18 months b4 I bought an O7Q? And the real answer is no. Personally, I'm getting rather worn down with being a beta tester for other companies. So, maybe, I'll focus on what I like doing, shooting with a good platform, and forego these annual technology gimmicks.
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+1

Reading all those news sites with gear just makes you sad and want to follow the latest gear forgetting about that the story is a key. Good idea would be to just NOT READ THEM unless after a year or two you will decide that you want to upgrade.
 
Martin.G said:
Dont worry, i will never purchase anything from Convergent Design labeled "Future Firmware" ever again =)
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I've made an effort to always remind myself that I'm only buying a product for what it does now not what might come. It is really hard because it seems the new trend to rush products to market with half the features and promises of the future. I really don't like that but I guess RED set that bar and people are willing to jump.
 
dmitrizigany said:
And like someone said before me, if the cost of a FS700 + O7Q is the same as the FS7, why would anyone go with that solution?
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4K 120fps, 2K 240fps, prores > xavc (for a lot of clients), 7q is also a multi-input monitor and records raw on alexa/c500/etc, small FS700 size for stabilized-gimbals/drones/remote-heads, much larger and cheaper recording media (up to 1TB vs 64GB), bigger monitor, more configurable and already has 2 LCDs...
 
At the end of the day, certainly in the broadcast world that I've been in for the last 15 years or so, the O7Q is a ridiculously cheap bit of kit that has a spec that is right up there with the biggest guns in the industry, is well made and operates well. It definitely should be a lesson learned (or better followed right from the start) that you should only buy something for what it can do, not what it might be able to do one day, but it also seems to me that this is a bit of kit aimed at a really high level of acquisition and delivery and for £1,650 or whatever it is, it's really a tiny amount of money - that's about 3 days pay for the camera operator! I think it's different if a £60,000 camera is superceded 6 months later by a superior product at half the price or something like that.
I don't know, I just feel that CD have been a really useful part of the industry, if only for giving the bigger guns a bit of a kick up the backside, and they have always seemed open and communicative and responsive to user feedback - and also producing really good product. Just seems a bit harsh.
Steve
 
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