You aren't paying for the tech as much as the work goes into colorizing the dots.

The price is unlikely to drop. If you are waiting for that, you'll be waiting for a long time.

anything can be mass produced, but it would need $$ upfront for 1000's of units

Probably not. Making 100,000 of them, or a million of them, for a thousand games or two ?

And it's isn't just the LCD. Lots of programming involved.

LTG : )

You are not paying 400 for the LED/LCD panel, a large cost of the product is the software and continual upgrades of the technology. Just the coloring of the dmd frames takes hundreds of hours for a colorist. Then you have weeks of beta testing to ensure the colors didn't miss frames or sequences that rarely occur. I thought similarly to you until I got my first colordmd and inquired about the technology behind it. I was so impressed I joined the colorists and colored several titles in 2016.

the good news is that the price has not risen since they started

Wondering what colorists get paid for all those hours. Feels right to ask since my understanding was that it was "not much" and certainly far below what most people would get paid for "hundreds of hours" of work.. so I have to kind of automatically suspect that's an onerous part of the price. Proprietary software development, support, warranties, and licencing? That I'd believe, but I'm pretty sure most of the colorization work is being done for pennies on the dollar because colorists are doing games they want to do.

*Edit* Very late edit... I meant to say NOT an onerous part of the price..

The OP answered his own question:

How many houses have a large screen LCD TV - VS - How many houses have a pinball machine?

Manufacturing is plain and simple the volume of production. My guess is that these LCD panels being used for pinball DMD replacements are already costing around $20~30 maximum.

As others have said it is NOT the electronics making the high sell price but the time and effort required to make the product work for only a handful of buyers (when compared with the millions of TVs built).

And to me, still worth every cent. Even with the crappy exchange rate!

Yes, you don't look at the display all that often when playing, but I enjoy watching others play, and that's when you notice all the little animations that you missed when all in one shade of orange.

It's actually amazing to me how much information the original programmers could convey using one color. The ColorDMD highlights their skills, and if you think about it, shows how they would have presented their displays should the technology have been available at the time.

Mike.

I think you will be waiting a long time for anyone to say that.

On the plus side you can sell your old dmd for $75-$125 pending how new it is.

You seem not to know things on this subject that are readily known and knowable. Or I have no idea what you're talking about with the Pro vs. Premium thing.

Here ya go:

The distinction between Pro and Premium is irrelevant here.

Now you know.

When you buy a colordmd it arrives not progammed for any game
you intall it , download the appropriate ROM, put it on a usb stick and then upload to what ever game you want
if you want to use it on a different game, then move the display over and install the new ROM

Interesting topic to me as I have always thought if they could find away to lower the price point just abit it would increase sales. With that in mind I have been suprised they have not tried a "sale" to test the theory during the holidays. At the end of the day they have the market so I guess a holiday sale is not needed.

They cost $400. I seriously doubt the price will be reduced because it is essentially a monopoly. ColorDMD also has patents on the product so that is a hurdle to someone trying to have a competing product.

This... same price on LCD since 2012, even while LCD screens have become more costly and increasingly harder to find. Also during a period where new and used game prices have risen about 50%.

New LED displays were designed and released last year at an even lower price point.

Somebody in another thread made the observation that if colorDMD had a holiday sale, everybody would hold off buying them until their yearly sale

If you ran a sale, I would buy more.

I have them in a handful of my games and would buy more/ quantity if I got sale price. With the increase in in new and used games, I spend my money on those in place of mods. (side note: what the heck games are you buying that have gone up 50% in 5 years?)

tomh52722. I look at it this way. We pay almost $700AUD here depending on our dollar at the time of purchase. I don't move them on when I sell a game. So it's not like you have to lose that money everytime you turnover a game. Same with PDI glass. I love the stuff but man it's expensive. So if the time comes to sell a game out goes the colour DMD and the PDI glass and in goes the original gear. If the buyer sees the game with all the bells and whistles and wants it then adjust the price accordingly to cover replacement. Easy Well easy for me.

WORST. THREAD. EVER.

You know how you can tell? I can't even think of a wise-assed remark to make.

It's a niche market and colordmd has done an awesome job custom packing their kits and making everything super easy to install. The hardware is also not interchangeable between most of the game systems. So you have a wpc kit, a wpc95 kit, a white star kit, a Sam kit, a data east kit, etc. Other people have tried and failed as it's simply not that easy. This is a small niche market, it's not going to be cheap so what you are wanting is completely unrealistic.

So out of curiosity, enough people have done colorization on games. Some have done multiple games, but it's a pretty good sample size. How much does ColorDMD pay them for each game? If that is the cost we pay for it, how much is it?

And yes, I love ColorDMD. There are some games that look incomplete to me without it. It is one of the best additions you can put in a game. But if we are quoting labor as the largest balance of the cost, how much does the person doing the work get?

The price is the price, there is no negotiating. (LOL NAME THE MOVIE)

Not interesting at all, just illegal. I'm sure you will find lots of companies willing to build lcd panels and interface hardware that all sales are based on illegal downloads. Where's Napster now?

You can get a PIN2DMD color LED display kit for about $180 and program it yourself. That's what I would suggest if you're concerned about price.

Spends thousands on pinball machine, doesn't add most awesome mod because it's $400

Because there is no comparison.

Sorry, those 4 color mode palettes look like garbage. Maybe it makes some screens a little more interesting than orange but many screens it just looks stupid because the 4 color pallet just does not fit what colors should be there.

To save a few dollars and have to go through the hassle of pretty much building it yourself rather than a nice plug and play system. ColorDMD also offers nice blending modes on the LCD version, a massive library of full colored supported games and support that can't be beat.

It is cute to tell someone how wonderful it is to program it yourself. But from the questions I see from people about trying to get them to work I think many of these things have been abandoned and tossed in a drawer out of frustration.

You have to draw a line somewhere with any purchase you make, car, house, home remodel, appliances.

Ya, draw the line after the ColorDMD!

Since ColorDMD has come out it is pretty much the only MOD where you get back what you put into it. Most mods are game specific and the seller of a game does not want to remove it and eat he cost. With ColorDMD you will see the game listed with or without the device and a $400 difference in price.

The biggest draw back is having a game without one next to a game with one.

There is a patent that makes it not a smart idea to make a competing product that uses the same hardware and runs the same code.
Regarding taking ColorDMD's coloring code for the games they have colored and using it in a competing product, I doubt it would be that easy. ColorDMD likely has protected code in its processor to run the coloring software that is not readily available to a person wanting to make the competing product.

Good points, but I was only suggesting based strictly on price, not implying one replaces the other based on ease of setup/features.

Link to patent on http://uspto.gov please

Edit: found it

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=20120190440.PGNR.

... Altan

I believe US 9,449,402 is the patent with broader claims that is likely more important for infringement purposes.

How about people like me that have the standard MMR? You have to pay $399 but don't actually get a new display. I wasn't 'plugged into' all of the drama around the colorization of MMR; although I recognize there were some marketing issues/product expectations that resulted in the tiered pricing between the std and LE version. However, having to pay the same $ as the 'sets' that include a new display doesn't sit well and feels like I would be getting less value for the same $ as other titles.

And you can't take it out and put it in another machine.

However the coloring for MMR is pretty awesome and I'm sure those guys worked long hours to get it looking so good.

I think it's a lot of first time buyers that complain about the price. Once you've seen one in person you kind of make room in your budget.

For all of the bellyaching, they do seem to sell out pretty often.

Taken!!!

yes its a lot of money.

but you get ABSOLUTELY fantastic value for money...

I have three and will order one for TWD when the LED is back in stock, its simply the best pinball mod.

And they would have to sell some serious numbers of them to ever reach market saturation where they would have to drop the price to sell them.

Buy 3 and save $60 ($20 each) in shipping in the USA if you bought them at separate times. May not be a "sale" but at least you save some money. shipping (resized).png