Digital BW, The Print

On Nov 7, 2010, at 3:28 PM, john wrote:

> As a business strategy there is nothing immoral about the majors doing that, it just seem like there may be another strategy that could create alliances of other kinds of products. 

Right, but only if the numbers add up...
> 
> But I wouldn't limit the concept to black and white only. It seems to me with the way that Epson has totally locked out third party color inks, (Canon and HP will have to confront that as well now that there are cloned inks to haunt them as well) that there are other reasons to look at such a concept.

Most of the reasons for using third party color inks is to save money. If this concept produced a printer which cost twice as much as a new Big Three color ink printer, the people that want to save money with third party ink are unlikely to purchase one... besides, these printers may have far fewer color channels than the latest greatest big three printers; which would be fine for grayscale printing, but it won't impress color printers much.
> 
> I'm still using two restored Epson 7000s (made by Mutoh?) and I can't tell you how fantastic it is to have no chips at all. The only thing these old relics lack is a a slightly finer dot and a little speed, but with K6 and QTR they even function well today. And they are built a hell of a lot better than most of the machines that came after them. I've never even thought much about their waste tanks either and this is like 10 year old technology.

So, to make it clear; such a printer would probably not be the latest generation, or quite the latest speed, but far better than a 7000. It would have enough channels for multiple gray inks, but fewer than the newest machines. It would not be chipped, hobbled, or limited in terms of what ink it could take. But it would cost more than the typical new printers (as its not an ink subsidy model printer), and it would require a RIP and special calibration/profiling to print. The question is: would the people who have been buying older printers (that can use third party ink) for low prices really move to a model of buying extra expensive printers with only moderate specs, in order to get a device that was freely, legally, capable of running third party ink? Thats the million dollar question; because unless the company involved is guaranteed sales worth millions of dollars, there is no way its worth it for them to pursue such a project.

C. David Tobie
Global Product Technology Manager
Digital Imaging & Home Theater
CDTobie@...


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