RED clone

[Eugene]

http://ppx.popsci.com/images/security/ICLONE.jpg

Is the RED team worried that some guy in China will clone their product, similar to the way that the iPhone is going to have knockoffs/ripoffs/clones/cheap imitations?

[Mark Thorpe]

As the old saying goes, "There's no accounting for taste". IF there is an emergence of RED knockoff's in the future I guess those of us with the 'real deal' will be left feeling even more elite than we do now!!

[Unwounded]

No.....were there ever chinese clones of HVX200s? If they couldn't do that why do you think they could copy Reds.

[John V]

That might be all well and good...but try selling it legally in the States or Europe.

[Jason Murphy]

I doubt there'd really be a market for clones. High end imaging is, relatively speaking, not that big a market globally (much smaller than, say, the mobile phone market), and quality and reliability are pretty important to that imaging market. Hard to imagine that you'd get either top notch quality or reliability from a knockoff.

Now, if a group of people in China were to, backed by a Chinese billionaire, put out a product that competed with the RED One in terms of quality, price and workflow, then it might be an issue. But, let's be serious here, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

[Chris Stout]

And don't forget about the codec. Half the brilliance of Red is in Redcode. We don't see copies of the HVX, because no one else can use Panasonic's dvcpro codecs. Apple really built their whole system around that codec and now it looks like they're doing the same with Red. I doubt they're just going to switch ships midstream to some cheap imitation. (And seriously...how much cheaper can you make it?!)

Chris

[Clint Johnson]

I would guess that the profit margin on a Sony F23 is larger than the price of a Red One... if anyone were going to clone anything it would be something like the Sony long before the Red.

The bigger the profit margin, the greater the incentive to clone or pirate... and I can't see how Red even has a profit margin! Okay, Jim is a businessman and unless he is writing this all off as a charity for us starving artists, I'm sure that there is a profitable business model here, just not the usurious profit that attracts illegal activity.