This spring, at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention, telecine firm Cintel plans to showcase what it claims to be a pair of cost-effective HD options for post houses that want to get their feet wet in DTV, without getting soaked financially. For its existing user base of URSA Gold and Diamond telecines, Cintel has devised an upgrade package called URSA Callisto. Developed around proven electronics in Cintel’s high-end C-Reality, the Callisto is designed to add HD capabilities to the URSA Gold and Diamond lines.
Additionally, Cintel will demo the RASCAL at NAB. Based on the Callisto upgrade, the RASCAL is a stand-alone, entry-level SD/HD machine. Don Edmonson, president/CEO of Cintel’s North American operation (a subsidiary of the U.K.-based Cintel International Ltd.), estimated that the Callisto upgrade would sell for about $400,000, and that the price point for the RASCAL would be in the $600,000 to $625,000 range.
Those figures are a far cry from the seven-figure investment embodied in the top-of-the-line, HD-capable telecines such as Philips Spirit Datacine and the aforementioned C-Reality. "In some markets, RASCAL can serve as the facility telecine and can be used in commercials and longform work," related Edmonson. "In major markets like L.A., New York and Chicago, though, RASCAL would serve more of a longform purpose for features and episodic television—the type of work that doesn’t require the higher end tools like commercials."
Edmonson explained that the Callisto and RASCAL were born out of Cintel’s desire to offer "a family of products across a broad budget range for different clients. … URSA Gold and Diamond users can move into HD transfer work at an economical price. This helps lengthen the legs of the Gold and Diamond as the platform in a facility."
The Callisto and RASCAL put Cintel in direct competition with Innovative TK (ITK), which, during last year’s NAB, announced a relatively affordable upgrade set for Cintel’s URSA telecines. Cintel and ITK had a close relationship at one time; when that dissolved, ITK got into the HD upgrade market for URSAs. ITK’s previous URSA upgrade offerings included TwiGI and SCAN’dAL (SHOOT, 2/26/99, p. 25).
Cintel’s leap into this mid-priced market addresses earlier-voiced concerns that the company neglected URSA users by introducing C-Reality at such a high level. But RASCAL and Callisto, contended Edmonson, are tangible products that prove that by focusing on the top-end, Cintel has been able to develop technologies that now can benefit URSA houses. Adrian Rees, managing director of Cintel, noted that the company is "determined not to neglect the needs of facilities that demand high quality, but more appropriate levels of functionality."
The sales of C-Reality have "fallen short a few units of what our expectations were in ’99," acknowledged Edmonson, who reported that 21 have been installed in the U.S.—two or three less than Cintel’s original projections. "We have plenty of negotiations in progress, and there are people in post that are starting to spend money. But the HD market didn’t move forward as fast as everyone thought it would in ’99."
In a roundabout way, continued Edmonson, the slower than expected high-end HD market offers further justification for the introduction of Callisto and RASCAL. "It’s a step that some people can take while waiting to see how the market develops," he observed.
Edmonson added that the development curve on Cintel’s two new products has progressed quickly. "Three weeks ago, we were committed to having prototypes of both Callisto and RASCAL at NAB," he related. "Now it’s looking very much like we could have a couple of Callisto packages in the field prior to NAB, as well as a more advanced production version of RASCAL than we had anticipated." (A prototype RASCAL was shown at last year’s IBC in analog form.)
