Ben Fisher

I am disappointed Mr. Kawana has choosen to take this approach; this forum (again) is being used to 'bash manufacturers'. Small (& large) companies developing new products for a niche market often hit snags in design & manufacturing - ask any company who uses this forum on a regular basis; dates slip (by years in some cases), snags hit (often when the equipment has been delivered) & prices/specs change. As for Mr. Kawana and his BENZ DIGITAL, we have said we are happy to supply him with his order (upgraded to a 3ch. handset, receiver and motors) when it is released and loan him a BENZ 5000 system in the meantime. We don't think it is appropriate to comment further about this matter on steadicamforum.com

AFAIK the FBX hasn't been directly compared with the Marell device - although we do have customers who have tried the Marell and then bought the FBX. Anyone wishing to compare devices is most welcome, email me. The FBX uses an in-house developed FPGA to generate the graphics and as a result provides smooth, high resolution movement of graphics with sub-pixel posistioning (>1700 lines horizontal resolution). The immediate competion appear to use a VCR text chip (5730?) and cobble the image together from blocks (one customer refered to the images as "a bit 70's bat & ball"). In response to other customers who wanted something a little more cost-effective than the FBX (& without framelines) we built the EBX (bubble, crosshair & battery level). The EBX is available in 'PRO' (Lemo's) and 'FLYER' (MiniDin's) forms. See website www.unitcine.com for details/quotes. The EBX is currently $680 for the 'PRO' version (not incl. cable), the 'FLYER' version is $539... All in production and shipping on <7 days (next batch of EBX's available next week). I am currently sorting out teething problems with the new BENZ DIGITAL lens control system (including in-house developed digital lens motor), full details will be released later this month. As a company we have strengthed our production capability (a previous weak spot) and now have a dedicated cable technician and production engineer. kind regards,

Happy New Year everyone, not awol just a wonderful combination of clients, flu, short-staffed, production & shipping, sub-contractors, sorting exhibitions, new firewall & of course family. regards, Ben Fisherben@unitcine.com UNITCINE +44 1206 398001

Hi All, We have completed the revisions to the FBX code to allow the bubble to be set at either the top or bottom of the screen - as requested by several customers and other interested operators. The first of these revised FBX's leave our factory this Wednesday. Exisiting FBX customers wishing to have this modifcation please contact me ben@unitcine.com and we will re-FLASH their FBX free of charge; a revised manual will be up on our website before the end of this week. Kind regards, Ben Fisher UNITCINE

Hi Will, Interestingly several potential clients have requested the ability to put the bubble above crosshair (i.e. at the top of the screen) - so we will be adding this extra functionality very shortly. One down, one to go. Border shading - when we designed the FBX and wrote the orginal code we had variable shading, however it was more complex for the user to control and most of the guinea pigs ended up using it at either 90-100% or 40-60%, so we settled on 50% & 100% and a simple and fast interface. I may have misread your last point about the strip; but the FBX bubble is very easy to see as it is a combination of black and white lines. We are shipping some FBX's next week to Abel in New York & LA so if you want to play with one I'm sure Jeff at Abel will oblige. Kind Regards, Ben Fisher UNITCINE NB: Dutch/Belgian operators: I'm in Amsterdam/Hilversum later today (17/Nov/04) all are welcome, call Job Scholtze (cell: +31 653530754) for directions/details.

Hi All, The FBX not only does bubble & crosshair (including 4 different cross hair sizes & variable bubble sensitivity, damping, direction AND axis) it is ALSO a frameline generator with a variable mask/border. The FBX is also physically smaller than the competition, uses connectors/cables instead of captive cables and is around half the price of the competition. Feel free to visit our website: www.unitcine.com, read up on the FBX, download the manual (DOWNLOAD) and request a quote (QUOTE). FBX's are presently instock and orders being turned around in <1 week. Kind regards, Ben Fisher ben@unitcine.com

Hi Gustavo, Please check your email or with Mariana. Sorry for the extended delay. For future reference we are appointing a distributor to deal with South & Latin America shortly. We also have more production staff starting here very shortly which will reduce leadtimes. Kind regards,

Having said all that; I suspect there is a small time window (say 2 yrs) where an electronics manufacturer could make a compact solid state HD recorder, the cost would however be a little hard to swallow. It is also interesting that the hard disk size of these small recorders (such as the Lyra & Archos) is now at the 'irrelevant' stage and these devices will start to be sold on (IMHO in order of importance): 1. name/style 2. physical size 3. screen size vs. box size 4. screen quality 5. recording resolution 6. battery life And you can guarantee that with every generation the ability to 'simply' start/stop these units will get more difficult. Probably just going to end up leaving the device recording. There is some light at the end of the tunnel though - the shear cost of developing the ASIC's that drive these units is getting very very high so manufacturers will make large incremental leaps inside the box - the new iPOD probably can do realtime video, just that marketing are slowing down the release of the technology to maximise revenue; if they find people are not buying the iPOD because 'it is only pix' then you bet they will release the video version...

I have to agree with Alec; it would be folly for a manufacturer to fully-intergrate a non-linear recorder into a sled - the cost for such 'low run' electronics would be astronomical. The speed of improvement/change in the Hard Disk/Flash type recorders is astonishing, when the GPI/PRO monitor was launched harddrives were around 1$/MB and now they are around 1,000 times cheaper (or larger). Just remember the pictures of the 'Directors Friend' back-pack on the assistant following the Steadicam on 'Russian Ark'...

At the rate at which these HardDisk & Flash recorders are coming onto the market and the speed at which they become obsolete I (imho) would steer clear of the expensive 'professional' units. Devices like the ARCHOS are relatively low-cost and fairly robust. www.ARCHOS.com On a side-note we have been asked to design a remote stop/start interface & PSU for the ARCHOS AV420 for a customer. Ben Fisher www.unitcine.com

We will also be showing a pre-production BENZ DIGITAL system (works with ANY digital or analog motors). :) Ben Fisher www.unitcine.com

Looking at this item I thought (for a few seconds) that this T-shirt had a third arm sleeve lower down - some sort of very witty Steadi-Tshirt; and well within Mr. Paperts sense of humour.

You missed off the price on your wish list Dave :blink: Ben UNITCINE

In answer to some off-forum questions we have received recently - Both the Hummingbird and Blackbird monitors are compatible with our FBX frameline/bubble/mask/xhair generator. The Hummingbird is a grey cased unit with SDI and without framelines - inputs via BNC & XLR. The Blackbird is a black cased unit without SDI and with framelines - inputs also via Hirose and PRO style Lemo 1B/8. Both monitors use the same LCD/AR/electronics and will perform the same job. FBX cables are available for both monitors. The FBX manual is now available on our website: www.unitcine.com regards, Ben Fisher UNITCINE

There was something on TV (UK) the other evening where a journalist talked of a roadtrip he & his wife took with Stirling Moss (retired UK F1 racing car driver) - he described how he turned off a highway at xxxMPH in a four wheel drift while reaching into a glovebox and changing tape..... It would be fascinating to see some real Steadicam masters try out several of the better homebuilt's - perhaps somesort of PRO/AM day. Schumacher in a VW..... Ben Fisher UNITCINE