Avid buys Pinnacle

[JPS]

I'm not sure what impact this will have on Avid's business. 6 months ago this would have been a very interesting purchase, since Pinnacle owned Steinberg. But Pinnacle sold Steinberg to Yamaha in December and there was quite a lot of speculation why. It seems to me now, in retrospect, that it may have been just to get them "all prettied up" for Avid to purchase them.

[lwilliam]

I think the press release pretty much sums it up when it compares Avid buying M-Audio for access to the "consumer" level audio interfaces market and Pinnacle for the "consumer" level video market.

It just allows continued expansion into new markets.

It will, in a sense, eliminate one of it's competitors for the low-end market who use Avid Express DV and Avid Free DV.

[JPS]

I pretty much agree with you. It looks like Avid is taking some steps to purchase control of consumer products that find their way into Avid's sphere of influence, and sales.

[K.B.]

I don't like these takeovers - it's less competition, and less choice for the consumer. And some product lines are always dropped or neglected.

That said, why don't they go buy Matrox? - then they might care to make PT run on their triple monitor cards properly. At the moment their is a klunky workaround with Quicktime 6.3 (which might not work with PT7), or else you have to go buy a Mojo made by...

[K.B.]

In fact, I guess this means that Digi will never strive towards any compatabilty with Matrox cards...