QTR-Quadtone RIP

Tyler, the way the Epson engineer (according to his badge at  
MacWorld:) described it was in the US X-Rite and the Pulse had about  
60% market share, with Eye-One and others filling in the 40%.  
Overseas, Europe primarily, GretagMacbeth had 60 - 70% of market  
share. Again, this is all third hand info from an Epson printer  
employee, that IMHO was very knowledgeable about the 9800 we were  
standing in front of, discussing a profiling tool :)

That said, he mentioned that the Eye-One could "morph" into a number  
of different handheld and machine held (robotic) devices and that may  
have been the reason Eye-One won out? The Pulse is hand held, uses  
the very accurate E-Rite DTP94 "puck" as the "reader". Both systems  
can be used to calibrate monitors as well as print output.

Obviously I don't know/have the answer to your question about who  
holds the other 10%, and I can agree that competition is the "mother  
of invention" but the choice was made to future support Eye-One. As  
you found out, you can still by the Pulse, but is it a dead end  
product??? Seems like it.

How many of us bought the much touted Mac IIx(?) computer platform,  
as being the culmination of years of Apple research, only to have  
Apple drop the line shortly after release? I did:( Or the dual IBM or  
Quad G5 tower, only to have Apple jump to Intel chips..... again, I  
did:)

Alan

On Jan 10, 2007, at 8:14 PM, Tyler Boley wrote:

> what's the other 10% at this point? They now also own the company  
> that owns Colorvision.
> Talk about a monopoly.
> Color management is one area that a lot more competition might  
> benifit. When was the
> last time you easily accessed useful consumer comparisons between  
> the various profiling
> products, and the quality of their profiles?
> Tyler
>
> --- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, Alan Kearney <alan_kearney@...>  
> wrote:
> >
> > I'm in the market for a printer profiler too and just home from
> > MacWorld in San Francisco where I talked with Epson for an hour.  
> They
> > liked the Pulse, and thought it was a very solid, well designed and
> > useful tool. That said, X-Rite buying GretagMacbeth gives X-Rite
> > about 90% of the market share in the profiling department (according
> > to this Epson tech) and they decided to scrap the Pulse and go with
> > the Eye-One system, which can cost more money depending on
> > configuration. Funny thing was neither product was there at  
> MacWorld :(
> >
> > Alan
> >
> > On Jan 10, 2007, at 1:50 PM, George Butch wrote:
> >
> > > The notion of creating my own curves for QTR is new for me. But I
> > > want to give it a shot. At the same time, I feel I have reached  
> the
> > > limit of the capabilities of scanner based Monaco EZ Color for  
> general
> > > color print profile generation.
> > >
> > > It appears that the newly merged X-Rite with GretagMacbeth has  
> taken
> > > the Pulse package off the market. All of the current offerings are
> > > much more expensive.
> > >
> > > I have found a couple dealers who still stock the Pulse at a
> > > reasonable price. I am looking for some guidance here. Should I  
> buy
> > > this apparently discontinued product, and is it really the best
> > > moderately priced tool for my two stated purposes?
> > >
> > > Thank You.
> > >
> > > George Butch
> > > Plantation, FL
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>