Quoted from rubberducks:They've already tried, if you recall. They have no reasonable claim whatsoever about any of the stuff they've rattled sabres over, but that won't stop them trying to scare people off.
Given their behaviour and the fact that they have well over $250 gross margin on their ColorDMD product (which is faintly obscene), and they won't allow any openess or community involvement (besides getting people to do their colouring work for them), I can't really justify buying it. Given the advances we've seen for controllers for LED DMDs in just a few months, from multiple parties, it can only be a matter of time before someone does the same with LCDs, and makes it more open and reasonably priced. OLEDs aren't THAT far off either, and the LCDs will be completely obsolete (especially at $400) when they are available. SmartDMD failed to catch on, but if something with the featureset that pinballsp is working on is made widely available, I can't see it not catching on.
Love to know where you get the $250 gross margin. Running a business isn't free and the contractor fees for people like me that colorize as well as his own distribution costs... Really seems like you are frustrated it isn't cheaper so just grab numbers out of thin air. You put in 80-160 hours coloring a game and tell me $400 is obscene.
Lots of hate in the last few posts for someone simply protecting their patent. As for this being a solution he hadn't looked at before, or 'just caught up with' I imagine posters here also have clairvoyance to see what Randy thinks. It's been said before, why should he open up his architecture just because people want it to be open? The Open Source movement is great for some things but it isn't everything for everyone. SmartDMD ran into other issues, like licensing and support - not to mention the colored roms for games were too big to fit.
People being "afraid' because of 'rattled sabers' isn't really an argument either. If you are afraid of competition, better not to enter the market. Otherwise, the only fear would mostly be from infringing on actual patents that might snub your business model. Otherwise, the entrepreneur makes a go of it. Randy isn't awash with cash to go filing lawsuits at everyone that thinks about producing a competitive product but he'd be a fool to just hand over all the work he's done.
. A hobbiest will simply quit working on something similar to ColorDMD due to the potential legal headaches!!! Is anybody aware of him threatening someone from making an LCD that simply adds a single color to the DMD source data? That wouldn't be patent-able nor is his HQnX scaling algorithm he uses for that 'sigma' feature.
