HD For Indies

Last night I got an email from Jim Jannard, founder of Red, entitled "Spike is here!" - Red's goal was to get prototype/s built in 2006, and they are just squeaking in under the wire - Spike (prototype) is all put together and they are starting to put it through it's paces. Congrats to them!

There's a thread at the new Reduser.net showing off these same pics, plus a lot of discussion there as well.

Hats off to the whole team, and thanks to Jarred for taking these pics.

This is that same prototype as discussed in this post from the other day, just powder coated a matte black - looks good.

With powder coat and a lens on it, looks like a "real" camera now. Oh, and ports galore - to paraphrase Luke, "Look at the side of that thing!"

Looking forward to the first pics from Spike they feel like sharing with the public. But apparently this one doesn't do everything yet - as for the level of functionality in Spike, Jim said on Reduser.net:

"We aren't going to publish anything (for now) other than shots of Spike. We have a combination of test beds. Frankie, Frankie 2, Spike, and boards on a bench. I don't really want to get into the details of what each is doing everyday or what images came from where. I will say that Spike is not full function enabled at this time, nor was it intended to be at this point. We are bringing up different features on different test beds for now. Remember, the goal is to ship early 2007. All is good (today).

Jim"


They are squeezing in under the wire on 2006 protos, practically testing for real will be mostly in earliest 2007, with field testing probably starting in later January or February is my uninformed guess. But the revised goal of shipping in "early" 2007 still seems entirely viable, with early being defined as late as May 31st by Jim. They do hope to be shipping by NAB 2007, but as always, no promised ship date - they keep saying these are targets not promises.

But it's lookin' good! I'm looking forward to a lot of dropped jaws at NAB 2007 with working units in the booth in Vegas.

As usual, click for larger view, command-click to open in a new tab in Safari (you HAVE set your prefs for tabbed viewing, haven't you?)

-mike

PS - working on that long delayed blogwad...