Pelco's Wrong! Cries HDcctv Alliance

JH
John Honovich
•Published Jul 05, 2012 00:00 AM
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Just days after being sued for stealing Object Video's invention of fire metadata, Pelco is again being attacked - this time for allegedly blowing it on moving to HDcctv. The head of the HDcctv Alliance, a group promoting non-IP megapixel cameras, leveled these public charges in a LinkedIn discussion.

Here's the claim [link no longer available]:

"A delegation from EverFocus visited Pelco in Aug '08 to pitch HDcctv. It was just a concept. We argued the fundamentals for hours. At the end, the Pelco guys said, 'OK, you may well be right. But it doesn't matter, because every camera will be an IP camera before any HDcctv cameras are in mass production.'

That was when IP cams held 10% market share. What has happened since? IP cams now hold as much as 20% market share, or as little as 15%, depending who's guessing. Meanwhile, an outright majority of the world's CCTV factories have emitted at least one HDcctv something."

Who knows what Pelco said but let's assume, to start, that this is a perfect representation of what happened at that meeting.

Factual Inaccuracies

Immediately, a number of factual inaccuracies exist:

  • IP camera sales are easily up 150% or more in the last 4 years (assuming a modest CAGR of 25%) while analog sales are likely flat, hurt both by the recession and the recent surge of megapixel IP camera sales). IP has gone up by far more than the Alliance is acknowledging.
  • Very few have actually released any certified HDcctv products. Most are trying out limited runs of HD-SDI. The Alliance criticizes HD-SDI regularly unless it comes time to count who's releasing products and then they happily count HD SDI, a non standardized technology available for many years, as their own.

HDcctv Progress?

Even if Pelco said exactly what they are accused of, I doubt they are really impressed with HDcctv's progress. Do you know what Pelco says when they hear Calsys and Webgate launched major HDcctv releases? They say, "Who's Calsys and Webgate?" And as for Speco, the biggest HDcctv US brand, Pelco probably looks at them the way Donald Trump thinks about taking the city bus to the airport.

HDcctv remains irrelevant to big players like Pelco, Bosch, Pansonic, Sony, etc. Pelco is moving ahead with more than half of their sales this year going to IP, a stark contrast to where they were a few years ago.

Pissing Off Pelco

The most confusing part of the HDcctv Alliance's attack on Pelco is why they would do this at all. What manufacturer trade association attacks potential members, especially powerful ones like Pelco? Is Pelco going to read this and say, "They leaked the details of a private meeting and bashed us publicly. We need to partner with these guys right away."