I was not going to write about it, but now I just can’t help myself… the little devil on my shoulder has won!
When I was making the rounds at SatCon/HDCon 2008, I was making a concerted effort to keep an open mind, to be thoughtful and understanding when new sales rep’s felt the need to explain to me how streaming media works…
I felt profoundly antagonized by these young guns – is it because I am a female?
I have been building encoders from scrap heaps since the 90’s… and managing media servers for over 7 years now….
Anyway, I asked for an in-house demo of a Kontiki encoder, which hails to be the encoder for FLV – but when I spoke to the fellow on the conference floor, he kept insisting that their encoder was the leader in “HD Streaming”. Just to break it down for those casual blog readers, HD is a broadcast standard, once you take a video, stream it in packets and play it on a desktop player it is limited by the playback of your computer – which can not play back true HD. We call that pseudo HD.
I understand that they are the chosen one’s by Adobe, and apparently they are making so many sales they don’t need anyone to field test their product, but I really feel that we as consumers (B2B) we deserve the right to demo a product in our facility or yours!
On a final note, when I was at JPMC and had NO intention of ever buying a product, I would be given 6 month demos at the drop of a hat and then would get it renewed just as easily! However, in those circumstances, I was not permitted to disclose my opinions or experiences candidly.
Now that I am able to disclose information candidly, the most they are willing to give me is a week. Which isn’t really enough time to do a full risk analysis on a new piece of hardware.
FRUSTRATION :: MOUNTED!!