Switching to AOL's Free Plan

(8/15/2005 Update: Apparently a user can switch to AOL Free Plan in this web page without the AOL application. See the bottom of this posting for details.)

Now that America Online offers free accounts to users who already have Internet access, what does this mean to existing users? Particularly:

• I have had Web pages hosted at my AOL ftp space for a decade. Those pages have had tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of hits, and have achieved high rankings in search engines over time. Are these retained if I switch to "Free AOL" from a paid account?
• We have not used the AOL application for over a decade. Apple's "Claris Emailer" application was the only application ever to communicate with AOL mail servers until the 21st Century, and we lovingly used this until it was quite long in the tooth. We then used AOL's own "AOL Communicator" application for Mac OS X for a little over a year. Early in 2004 AOL began offering industry-standard IMAP mail support, and we've used Apple's excellent Mail application to access our AOL (and other email providers) ever since. If we switch to AOL's free service, would we still be able to use an IMAP mail client?

We have been paying $6.95 for many years, which only included 3 hours of monthly access time. However, this has been more than adequate to send/receive our AOL mail via a broadband connection. We make no use of AOL's proprietary features, but having a 15 year old email address has its appeal. Likewise, I have wanted to maintain my Web pages. So we've continued to pay.

How does an AOL user switch from a paid plan to their free plan? What services are lost? What Services are retained? Let's find out together...

In 1992, after reviewing a number of email and text messaging solutions for our relatives and friends, I selected America Online. Their single application-based solution for establishing a dialup connection, doing email tasks and text messaging was the far and away the most elegant of the offerings I tested.

Now 15 years, a megabit/second and a World Wide Web later, AOL has dramatically changed their entire business model. Once the most popular method for consumers to connect to communicate "online" (not necessarily using the Internet), the company has determined that their future is no longer in connecting users to the Internet, but in being a content-based Internet company, like Yahoo! Maintaining phone lines and modems for dialup is apparently no longer profitable for AOL, so the company is moving away from being an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

In August 2006, America Online announced that it would now offer its services and software free to users connecting via broadband connections. They continue to offer paid dialup subscriptions.

I have not made an America Online dialup connection in several years. At one time, I'd use their ubiquitous dialup servers to stay connected while traveling. But for a number of years, I've been making Internet connections from our PowerBook through my cell phone. More recently, we find an increasing number of hotels offering free WiFi - especially in competitive markets.

Some months ago, I heard an unsubstantiated story on a technology podcast that an AOL subscriber could cancel their account, but continue to use their email. What wasn't clear was whether they could only continue to use the email account via Web interface - not a situation I was willing to risk. It appears now that AOL was discreetly allowing this to happen, knowing that they would soon announce their free service model.

Stories of difficulties in canceling America Online service have circulated for years. Within the last year, a very popular sound clip made the rounds online of an AOL subscriber (who made the recording) attempting to cancel his subscription with a customer service rep who clearly has no intention of letting him do so. Online postings suggest that until late in 2006, the only way to cancel AOL was via a live phone call - perhaps the company hoped to dissuade cancellations.

I used AOL's online live support chat to ask my two questions about switching to their free plan. However, when I started the session in two different browsers, nothing appeared in the chat session window. As you can see from the time stamps, it took almost four minutes before anything appeared (I'd left the window open and was working on something else). Here's the conversation:

6:13:38 PM PST

System
AOLTechNPG has joined this session!
6:13:38 PM PST

System
Connected with AOLTechNPG
6:13:48 PM PST

System
Hello, Ellsworth. Welcome to Live Technical Support. My name is Noli.
6:13:55 PM PST

System
Ellsworth stated the question or problem as: If I switch to AOL Free, what will become of Web pages I have hosted at members.aol.com?.
6:13:55 PM PST

System
Are you signed on with the same computer that you need assistance with?
6:14:03 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
To get us started, may I ask what your name is, or how may I call you?
6:16:44 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
Not to rush you, but are you still with me?
6:17:28 PM PST

Ellsworth
Hello - my browser window only started displaying the chat 15 seconds ago...
6:17:41 PM PST

Ellsworth
My name is Ellsworth.
6:18:02 PM PST

Ellsworth
...which I filled out in the "what would you like to be called" field to request this chat.
6:18:37 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
Pleased to meet you, Ellsworth! :)
6:19:04 PM PST

Ellsworth
While you're thinking about the answer to my first question, I'll also ask "If I switch to AOL Free, can I still send/receive AOL email using an IMAP client?"
6:19:07 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
To answer your question, that feature of AOL is not affected when you sign up for the free AOl service.
6:20:36 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
Still yes for your other question.
6:21:25 PM PST

Ellsworth
So if I change to AOL Free, nothing changes about the services I get from my AOL account except the loss of dialup services?
6:22:20 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
Yes, for detailed information for the services that will be affected, please see keyword CHANGE PRICE PLAN.
6:22:39 PM PST

Ellsworth
Thank you very much. Have a good evening/day/afternoon/life.
6:23:10 PM PST

AOLTechNPG
You're welcome.
6:23:15 PM PST

No really helpful responses, truly. In any case, if I find at the end of this current billing period that my AOL Web pages no longer exist, I doubt that "AOLTechNPG" is going to fix it.

So at this point, my perception is that when a user changes from a paid AOL plan to the new free plan, only two things change:

1. The user no longer has any dialup privileges with America Online.
2. The user is no longer eligible for online technical support.
   

Today, it may still be necessary to call AOL to cancel, but a user can switch to a free plan via the AOL application. (8/15/2005 Update: Apparently a user can switch in this web page without the AOL application. See below in this posting for details.) Here's how:

• Run AOL application
• Select Menu "Go/Keyword"
• Enter keyword "change plan"
• Respond to security warning (this may occur again during procedure)
  
• View "The New AOL - We've Changed!" page
• Click "Change to Free" tab
• Click "Change to Free" button
• Answer the security question to identify yourself as legitimate user
  
• Asked reminder: "This plan does not include an internet connection or live customer support. To proceed with changing your account to free, click Continue. To view price plans that include connectivity and live customer support click Price Plans."
• Click "Continue"
• Presented with "Confirmation" page asking "Please confirm the changes to you account below." - but the mostly-empty page only displays "NEW PLAN:" and on another line "AOL" and a full-page of nothing. At the bottom are "BACK" and "SAVE" buttons (I tried this twice, and both times, a mostly blank page). This is quite confusing, but America Online apparently calls the new free plan "AOL" - and that is all. My current plan appears as "$6.95 AOL w/3 Online Hours."
  
• Click "SAVE"
• The resulting mostly blank page reads "Thank you! Your changes have been saved." A "Close" button appears at the bottom of the blank page.

Experimentally, I now went to Keyword "Billing." Then clicked on "Change My Price Plan." I was again asked my security question. The resulting "Change Price Plan" showed my old price plan, and the "pending price plan" as "AOL" and an "Effective Date" which begins after our current billing period.

When I clicked "Display Plan Details" next to the "Pending Price Plan," a window popped up:

"This plan gives you unlimited usage of AOL over a high-speed broadband connection (purchased separately from your local cable or telephone company) or a dial-up connection (purchased separately from another company)


This plan includes:
*AOL® Security Suite, including anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, parental controls, spam fighting, and anti-phishing. Downloads available at KW: Safety. Anti-phishing requires use of AOL Explorer or AOL software.
* 7 AOL screen names, and 1 AOL® My eAddress with up to 100 mailboxes

* Automated customer support. Note: this plan does not include phone, email, or chat customer support.
* 5GB of online storage, in addition to unlimited photo and email storage. AOL® My eAddress email addresses receive 2GB email storage.

* Video-on-demand and 20 XM radio stations

* FREE AIM Phoneline, including unlimited inbound calls

Notes:
• High-speed connection is not included
• Dial-up connection is not included
• Any changes to your pricing plan will take effect on your next billing date
• Premium services are subject to charges"

We'll have to see exactly what happens next: whether we stop getting billed; whether we can continue to read/write our email using Apple Mail as our IMAP client; whether my Web pages continue to be hosted; and whether I can add more pages to that Web space. I'll let you know. Check back here for an update in February 2007.

Update: January 19, 2007

Today I received the following email from America Online:

Dear Member,

Thank you for contacting Member Services about your AOL® service. This email serves as confirmation that we canceled your Paid Member Account and converted it to a Free Member Account on January 15, 2007. Because you're getting your connection elsewhere, as of February 7, 2007 the expiration of the service period covered by your last bill -- we will no longer provide your Internet access or live customer support.

PLEASE SAVE THIS CONFIRMATION EMAIL AS YOUR RECORD OF THE CANCELLATION AND CONVERSION OF YOUR PAID MEMBER ACCOUNT AND FOR FUTURE REFERENCE ON USING YOUR FREE MEMBER ACCOUNT.

How to Continue Using Your Free AOL Account:
Once your Paid Member Account is converted, you will still be able to use the AOL service for free -- which means that once you connect to the Internet through another provider, you will still have the same access to:

• Your current AOL screen name, for email and instant messaging
• Your familiar AOL software, for quick and safer Web browsing
• Your AOL® Safety and Security Center, for comprehensive protection from viruses, spyware, and more
• Your photos, emails, address book and everything else you've saved to your AOL account
• Great broadband content like AOL® Radio with XM, videos, news, sports and more

For more information on our free features and content, go to AOL Keyword [CTRL+K]: Discover AOL or daol.aol.com. Please note: Use of AOL's free services remains subject to the AOL Terms of Service.

Account Billing Details
Cancellation confirmation number: (a 9-digit number)
Last bill date: January 7, 2007

Because your cancellation request was made after this date, your last charge will appear on your next billing statement. After that, you will no longer be charged any monthly membership fee, though you will be responsible for any other charges you might have incurred since your last billing date, as well as any outstanding balance on your account. To check the status of, or to make changes to, your Premium Services -- including Xdrive, MusicNow and Privacy Wall -- go to AOL Keyword [CTRL+K]: Help or help.aol.com.

Please Note: If you have a separate secondary account(s) created under your master account payment method, you will continue to be billed for these. If this applies to you, you will receive an additional email from AOL LLC to your secondary account with more details.

Please review your billing statements carefully and contact AOL if you have questions about billing or cancellation at 1-800-827-6364.

Thank you again for being a valued member. We hope you continue to take advantage of your free AOL service for a safer, more secure and hassle-free online experience -- no matter who provides your Internet connection.

Sincerely,

Todd Waletzki,
Senior Vice President, AOL Member Services

P.S. If you feel you have cancelled your Internet access with AOL in error, or want to explore other low-cost service plans, go to AOL Keyword [CTRL+K]: My Account, bill.aol.com, or call an AOL Member Services representative anytime at 1-800-381-4006.

Update 2/7/07: I checked my account status today, and though it's subtle, my account appears to have changed to AOL's free plan. When in the AOL application (Mac OS X) I go to keyword "billing," instead of going to a local window in the AOL application, I'm now directed to a Web page titled "My Account." Toward the bottom of that page appears this section:

Membership Details

Member Since: 08/07/1992
AOL Membership Fee: $0.01 /month
Price Plan: AOL
Billing Date: 07 March

Curious about that one cent - I'm wondering if that is a way of establishing that the user still has a business arrangement with America Online.

On an interesting note, I received email from AOL titled "Directions to get you connected to AOL" explaining how "To setup your AOL service to connect to the Internet using a non-AOL broadband or network connection." This email was sent by AOL at 3:12am, less than 7 hours before my free service plan was to begin. Had I been a dialup user, I'd have had only this tiny window in which to receive this information and re-configure AOL before - what? - being unable to connect via dialup to pick up this mail. Not very good timing on AOL's part, unless they charge users ad hoc by-the-minute who have the Free Plan for dialup access.

August 15, 2007 Update - No AOL Application Necessary to Switch to Free?

A friend writes:

I needed to get a Windows box working here to use my
flatbed scanner since there doesn't appear to be any
Linux support for it. So I finally had a chance to re-install
some aol host software and switch to free service...

I followed the instructions on your blog, but my host
software that I install wasn't able to open the page
that actually submitted the request. I got a message
to the effect of no SSL version compatible with both
browser and server available. This was with AOL 7.0,
the most recent disc I have, circa 2001. Apparently
it didn't support 128-bit SSL.

But I got enough info as the page attempted to load
to try this: I logged with my screenname and pass at
aol.com using Firefox, then pasted this url into the
location bar:

https://bill.aol.com/changePlan/changePlan.adp

That page seemed to fit your description, and submitting
it appeared to produce the desired effect. It'll be a while
before I know whether the charges actually stopped.

Using USB-to-Ethernet Adapters in OS X

If the Ethernet port of your OS X Macintosh has failed (the motherboard-based port in my mother-in-law's iMac was damaged by lightning), or you wish to run multiple wired Ethernet ports (i.e., to use an old Mac as a router), you may have wished to use one of the many USB adapters for wired Ethernet available. Alas, there have been few manufacturers of these adapters who provided drivers for Macintosh - I know of no current products which have OS X support.

Peter Sichel of Sustainable Softworks (developer of networking software products for Macintosh) and Daniel Sumorok have developed open-source drivers for Mac OS 10.3 and 10.4 which allow the use of many, if not most, commonly available "Windows-only" USB-to-Ethernet adapters. Read Peter's article and download the free drivers here.

Happy Holidays!

Hope you have a happy and safe holiday season (as appropriate to your culture and/or hemisphere)! Thanks for visiting Useful Bulk!

Spray-on Chrome Finish

Just saw a segment of "Rides" on DiscoveryHD that featured this company's spray-on chrome finishing technology. In the show, the company chromes some composite replicas of 1966 Pontiac GTO headlight bezels for motion picture cars. Their on-camera demonstration was amazing to see, first spraying distilled water, then the company's proprietary finish from a traditional paint gun. The company claims the finish can be applied to almost any material. Impressively, the finish was demonstrated on thin flexible plastic, and was completely flexible itself.

The company sells a consumer product called Killer Chrome. You can see a video demonstration at this link. I don't know how durable this stuff is, but perhaps it will address a project or problem you have.

Bomb-sniffing Bees

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently made a press announcement that they had trained honey bees to detect explosives.

By simply associating a sugar-water food source with samples of explosives, researchers have learned that they can program a "proboscis extension reflex" (their feeding mouthpart) for the bees within as little as 15 minutes. In one application, trained bees are placed inside a "sniffer box" in a tiny harness which holds their head in front of a video camera. Software detects proboscis activity and alerts operators as necessary.

This promises to provide a far more cost-effective solution for explosives detection than non-biologically based systems.

Bees sense of smell is said to rival that of dogs. Previous research efforts to use bees to detect explosives attempted to use free-flying bees as indicators, which required some method of observing their activities remotely.

Red One Camera Screening Account

On November 14, 2006, I attended a screening of footage shot with the in-development Red One camera. The Red Digital Cinema company was founded by the founder of Oakley, Inc., a company best known for manufacturing outdoor eyewear and apparel. I was at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles to represent a friend who placed a deposit on the first 1,100 of these "digital cinema" cameras, expected some time in 2007. He lives and works in Asia as a cinematographer, and was unable to attend the screening.

The following is my account to the friend, which includes my impressions about the way the company presented itself:

12:58pm - We arrive at the Nuart for the 1:30pm screening (the "V.I.P." screening) and there were maybe 50-60 people in line. 40 or so more arrived before they started letting the line into the lobby as they checked off our names around 1:10pm. It eventually filled the Nuart to probably 85 per cent capacity - impressive. And when we left, there was a 30-person line started for the 2:30pm screening.

The crowd was impressively conservative-looking. Not too many "tourists." Not as many 20-somethings as I'd expect - a generally mature crowd, but not exceeding 60 years of age. On the way in, I overheard two guys crossing the street identifying themselves as "a wanna-be director" and "I own a post-production house" - so it's also not just potential buyers, either.

1:15pm - I was thinking about who I'd expect to attend this, since it was clear that a *lot* of people were going to show up. [I mention seeing a motion picture cinematographer with which we've both worked] and saw Allen Daviau (cinematographer of E.T., the Extraterrestrial and Van Helsing) ushered in past the line as a V.I.P.

1:20pm - As we were just about to get checked in by the girl at the custom Red podium set up outside the lobby, a guy wearing a Red shirt came out and looked down the sidewalk at the line. Grinning, he said to all of us something like "are you guys as excited as I am?" and received a modest response.

1:25pm - When we entered the theater, there was a full-screen graphic on-screen of the Red logo - turns out this was supplied from a PowerBook or MacBook on a podium at the front.
"Ted" (the guy from the sidewalk) introduced himself and announced that we'd start on-time, though we were waiting for people to still file in.

1:32pm - "Ted" starts the presentation. He's standing behind a podium, unlit except by the glow of his PowerBook, whose Apple logo also glows from audience side of the lid. With the Red logo still displayed on-screen, he talks a bit about how this entire project was given a green light 10 months ago(!!!), and a few bits of information about how no one has seen any moving footage until the last month or so. He explains that the clips we're going to see were all shot on-site at Red's "garage" facility, and comments that the operation is really that small in scale. The first clips are interior, the last two were shot somewhat more recently and were shot outdoors in their "driveway." He comments that no attempt has been made to correct for dead pixels in the Mysterium chips, nor other color corrections. He also mentions that we're watching on "the Sony 4K projector."

After maybe 5 minutes of somewhat non-informational comments, except to tell us "we were going to have fun," Ted calls for the screening to start.

The interior clips are brief, and all in limbo. There is no nat sound, but music plays throughout. Ted does not speak during the first round of clips. All of the shots we saw appear on the Red site as stills or downloadable movies. The interiors also apparently only feature Red staff as on-camera "talent." The interior clips were all 10-20 seconds in duration:

• Extreme close-up of an Oakley Time Tank watch (naturally), which is slowly revolving on an unseen turntable. Except for red indicators, the watch is entirely grey. The shot is shallow-focus, and between that and the refractions through the relatively thick curved watch crystal, there are a lot of interesting grey tones.
• Tight two-shot of an Asian girl blowing a bubble-gum bubble. A caucasian guy stands out-of-focus and out of the key light maybe four feet away. She's lit from camera-right by a large soft source - pretty close, and we probably lose a couple of stops or more by the time it gets to the guy in the background. As the girl blows a bubble, the guys steps forward and reaches out as though to pop the bubble. Nice shallow focus demonstration, and also lets us see how the Mysterium looks on the guy's face well below key, and it looks pretty good - very linear about responding to less light. [My wife, a cinema/television professor who worked in television production] eventually complains about skin tones for all the clips, but I never think they're that strange. The bubble gum colors for this and another clip are a disturbing shade of orange, but that's probably not the camera's fault.
• Tight single of a swarthy-skinned young guy with dark hair wearing a black shirt who lights a cigar and blows some smoke. Nice lighting - soft key, super-subtle fill (maybe nothing) and very subtle kicker off the non-key side of his face. I think at this point about how high the black levels are in the limbo of the set - but that's probably a quality of the Sony projector. Like all the clips, the overall texture of the images is very smooth - nothing like "grain" or video noise.
  
• Two young women in limbo - one tries to light a cigar for the other.
• Extreme close-up (a down-res version is downloadable from the Red site) of a revolving pair of Oakley sunglasses. As with the watch shot, all greys, and nice-looking greys at that. In one lens of the glasses you can see a reflection of the soft light source and all the gradations within that bounce source.
• A slow dolly shot of a silver or gunmetal grey Porsche 959 in which we see some lighting equipment: a 2K blonde behind a flag and eventually the face of another light. As you can see in the still on the Red site, where the light reflects off the back of the barndoors and when the shot eventually reveals the face of the backlight, the hot white part of the frame blows out perfectly, with no blooming and no clipping - just goes white. Even adjacent greys to the blown-out sections still read nicely.
• A close-up of a blonde young woman blowing a bubble-gum bubble. You can download this as a BitTorrent file from the Red site. Resolution here is fantastic, where every fly-away hair reads perfectly with no aliasing. What little action there is for the few frames when the bubble pops looks pretty natural in terms of frame blur.

After the short interior clips, a 3-minute staged scene featured two women dressed in 1940s "work wear" (overalls and hair in a bandanna) outdoors doing repairs on an old city bus. You can see in the stills on the Red site the setting. The scene had no particularly hot spots - which makes me a bit curious. It looks overcast - and we haven't had many opportunities for overcast shooting in SoCal lately. Perhaps it was after sunset, or their parking lot was shaded from direct sun. The footage demonstrates nice shallow focus (using the Red 300mm prime) in daylight conditions, and very natural "film-like" frame blur while one of the women operates a floor jack.

While all the footage looked pleasant enough, it certainly begs for someone to really give the camera a rigorous battery of test-shooting. All of the footage demonstrated that the Mysterium and their lenses ([my wife] says that Ted said they were shooting some of the exterior with their zoom - I missed that) can produce smooth gradients of color, and delivers resolution rivaling (and maybe exceeding) a 35mm release print. But I'd like to see some more "dangerous" footage - like a daylight interior with full sun striking someone's face, and some night street exteriors with existing lighting. The audience applauded at the end of the brief viewing (less than 10 minutes total), but it's a very guarded amount of footage.

1:50pm - The Red logo reappears on-screen, and Ted goes through a computer presentation with slides of the Red workflow and the latest images (all CGI, I think) of the camera body and Red Rail. Early in the presentation, he puts up a graphic which says "everything is subject to change." As he describes the latest ideas about rail hardware, he indicates that this is constantly evolving. It occurs to me that the camera would look a lot less strange to people (I realize that they're trying to be "cool" to some degree, but it's clearly a love-it or hate-it kind of approach) if they'd just show it with a lens and matte box. I realize they're trying to indicate that they're really making a _camera_ (even though they will be selling lenses), but even a "ghost" image of a lens and mounted AKS would make people see this as a production body. After all, a Panavision body by itself is just a boring lump.

A slide reminds us that the price is still $17.5K US. A subsequent slide shows the $5,000 300mm prime and an "image not available" for their 18-85mm zoom. Interestingly, there's no price on the slide, though he tells the audience the zoom is $10,000, then "actually more like $9,500" - and this price is currently on the website.

Ted talks a bit about the Red RAW codec and shows graphics of the two styles of camera "door" (my term) - one holding onboard flash RAM (did he say 30 to 60 gigabytes of Flash RAM!?!) for shooting Red RAW and another to connect a (did hey say optical?) data cable to an external data recorder for shooting RAW.

Ted mentions that October 31, 2006 was a cutoff date for reservations, and asks for a show of hands if anyone in the theater got in "under the wire." A few hands go up.

Ted says that about 1,100 "reservations" have been made for Red Digital Cinema cameras around the world, and shows a map of the world which he says someone has recently prepared. He then says he's going to show us how "international" the reservations have been, and presses a key. I expect a bunch of little dots, but instead, entire countries are filled in with red to represent reservations. Both [my wife] and I figure you must have been the one guy who filled all of Thailand (actually, I won't be surprised if you tell me you know of more orders there). All of Russia is filled in - not a very good or fair way to represent the information, really. Ted then says something about some countries that *aren't* filled in, then hits another key and China a Japan turn red and he says something about there finally being reservations from there.


2:00pm - Ted asks the audience if they want to see the demo clips again, and the audience applauds. We watch the clips again, but this time, there is no music and Ted continues to talk, telling us to notice things: the nice shallow depth of field on this shot, notice this guy is wearing a black shirt, so there are a lot of different blacks in this scene, etc. We finish all the same clips again.

Then Ted says "I want to show you one of the clips one more time," and we see the exterior bus mechanic girls - one shot, twice, silent. I think there's a slight green cast to the scene, but I'm expecting some narration that never comes. After the screen goes dark and the Red logo comes up again, Ted tells us that we just viewed was shot using Red RAW (the rest of the demo apparently being RAW). While there might be something to be said for NOT telling us beforehand what we were supposed to be looking for, it would have been nice to see the clip again *after* finding out it was Red RAW, and if they were really trying to show off, they'd run both codecs back-to-back. I'm not saying they're hiding anything, but they shouldn't be acting too cagey at this point, either.


Ted finally says that they basically wanted us to know that their product was _real_, and really happening. He thanks us for coming, and there's more applause.

And we leave.


One of my first thoughts was, "how many of these things could they sell?" When you consider 1,100 reservations at $17,500, that's under $20 million - not a lot of money to recover from development and tooling. Seems like they'd have to sell a *lot* to really profit. To which [my wife] said, "maybe they don't want to profit." Based on how this project was described to me the first time, it does sound like a "vanity project" for the Oakley founder. Maybe it *would* be enough to put yourself in textbooks for the next 100 years as someone who was instrumental in the transition from film. On the other hand, at this price point, this camera could be purchased by every knucklehead (nothing personal) who planned on buying a pro video or film camera - but I can't guess how many that might be.

It's exciting, if still a bit of vaporware. I tried to imagine that this could all be scam - just because it sounds too good to be true. But I'm really NOT suspicious. This is how big changes often *have* to take place - a single influential individual exercises their desire for something, and it happens. Like the original "Skunk Works" - a small, politically autonomous group within Lockheed Aircraft tasked with developing secret military aviation without intervention from the corporation - Red might just be able to pull off something that giants like Sony could never push through their organization.

I'm curious about whether Red intends to make the operation and post-production processes push-button easy. No one, from industrial video productions to feature motion pictures, wants to have to train and/or hire a new class of technical specialist just to figure out how to run the camera, or make sure the data gets to the right place in the right form. I'll be very interested to see how that evolves.


[My wife] was disappointed with "Ted" - complaining that he wasn't technical enough. I'm not convinced there's a lot more technical stuff they want to share or can share. The whole presentation was maybe 35 minutes - short and sweet, or too short, and too sweet.


Sorry about the long account - but I thought you might care about how Red presented themselves, as well as how the footage looked. Finally - I sort of indicated this before - the footage may represent something we've all never really seen before - very low-noise, grainless high-resolution imagery (all at 24fps, by the way) with none of the negative characterstics of video. So while it doesn't look like video, it also doesn't look like film. I haven't really critically viewed 35mm contact prints while thinking about how different they are from 3rd-generation release prints - this might be more like a low-generation 35mm print than anything.

Time Travel the Internet

Want to know what a given Web site looked like at some point the past? The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has been archiving Web pages since 1996. Check out your favorite site's headlines over the years.