I have also heard that MMT out of colorado is putting them in the new trucks they're building for the Big Ten Network. I've been a freelance TD for a number of years and I work at a station that has a Kayak. I think the Kayak could totally be sufficient for most medium range shows provided a couple of things; The engineers have to be properly trained on them. My worst fear is going into a truck with a Kayak, asking the EIC where the sidepanel is, and getting a bewildered look. Also, TDs may have to rethink how they set up a show. For example, I use macros for many of the things I would use timelines for on a 4K/kalypso. Due to the lack of real estate on the switcher and the fact that I don't care for the E-mem structure, I set it up almost like I'm switching a dual feed on a Kalypso. It doesn't take any longer to do, it's just different. The fact is that the price point of the Kayak is really attractive to the people buying equipment, so it's probably going to get better market penetration than the DD35 did.

If it were up to me... NO!!!!!! I would much rather work on a GVG 3000 than a Kayak any day!! I have been working on a Kayak at a local TV station for their newscasts. We used to be on a GVG 4k, with a Krystal DVE (the best DVE ever made). We dumbed down the show because the Kayak was such a pain to get anything done on it. I recently tried to do a simple effect which would have taken me about 2 to 3 mins flat on the old switcher, after 1 1/2 hours, I gave up. I even got 4 days of training with a GVG trainer. I've never been so frustrated on a switcher. People are sold on features. If I were to hear, "4.5 ME's, 16 channels of internal DVE, Macros, PBus, internal Ram recorder, blah, blah, and blah," I'd say, "Yeah, I'll buy one!" The people purchasing the equipment don't use it, so they don't care. WE use the switcher, and it's a pain in the a** to operate. If I were to walk into a truck with 6 hours to game time, have a 1 hr break, and do pre-pro before the game, and see a Kayak sitting there, I would probably walk out. I have never done that on any switcher before, & I've seen the XTEN DD35, a Snell & Wilcox, a Sony 7k, 8k, GVG 3/4k, Kalypso, GVG 250. So for me to say that, it means DON'T GET IT! Your user base drops dramatically when you buy a switcher that no one can operate. Then that user base starts turning you down too, because they don't want to deal any more, or they ask for more money, thereby countering the money you saved when you bought the switcher. I say, buy a smaller Kalypso, or Sony 8k if you need to save money. Since you can split ME's on both those switchers, you can get a 2 or 3 ME switcher, and make it a 4 to 6 ME switcher. Don't by-pass the "Bigger" switchers because it's too expensive, downsize the "Bigger" one, and make it act like a bigger one. DON'T PUT A KAYAK IN A TRUCK! My 2... 1 cent. --- Dan

I recently had a long talk with an NMT executive and we discussed the Kayak at length. What know one seems to speak of is the complexity of programming the Kayak. It still seems that the consensus is, if you know the DD35 you'll be fine as Ed eluded to here in this thread. Well folks, the DD35 was a failure in this country. It's not that is was a bad switcher, it was and still is a bad user inferface which was not friendly for it's operators. Yes macros were great and they are very powerful, but that still didn't make the switcher survive. These are just some of the questions before NMT and I'm sure concerns to others as well. The Kayak is nothing more than a upgraded DD35, but now even more convoluted with the additional of transform engines and how they interface with the rest of the switcher. No one speaks about the interfacing of peripherals and how they interact with the menus or even the side panel. To build a simple timeline or squeeze back a box takes multiple menus you have go through to attach this or that to a menu you had just been in. It's just too time consuming and not straight forward, but on a Kalypso it's a simple build and only takes seconds to set up and program to accomplish the same. It is this ease of operation and simplicity I am speaking of which should have been incorporated to the redesigned Kayak GVG is now marketing. If things don't change the Kayak will fall to the same fate as the DD35 in this country because you cannot do a single day set/shoot and strike easily. Companies like NMT have to think about not only those issues and providing a truck to a client for a specific show, but also how that truck will perform for the client in today's world. Let's be realistic, with the limited time today of set up and added TD responsibilities of DDRs and clipping off animations there is little time to program or learn a new switcher and it's idiosyncrasy. Because NMT is thinking of a swither to replace their aging 3/4Ks they have to also think about who will operate these switchers and how their trucks will be marketed and to whom. Additionally, there are other products on the market that are more user friendly especially the KalypsoHD. NMT or anyone for a matter of fact should not be fooled by seeing demos at NAB. Demos are just that, demos meant to impress... they are not every day real life situations as we all know. I'm not saying we should learn other technology, but the Kayak is not new technology only a redsign of a failed Philips product. I could see if the redesign was good, but this is not the friendly user interface we have come to know and use over the years from Grass Valley. Thompson/Philips may have bought the Grass Valley name and company, but this is not the Grass Valley switcher users have come to love throughout the world and that is what NMT and others have to think about when they consider new equipment.

Okay, those of you who know me are aware that I do quite a bit of work for Grass Valley. I?ve been Free Lancing with them on and off since ?93. I?ve been doing quite a bit of work for them in the past couple of years and I was very involved in the early days with the design and development of Kalypso. Most of my work as a TD is with CBS and ESPN with NBC and a few others mixed in. Having said that? The Kayak is infinitely more powerful than the 4K ? as most of you already know. I think the glaring difference is that the control panel is only 3 M/Es and the e-mems work more like a DD ? which is not necessarily a bad thing. Back to the control panel: The key to a 4.5 M/E mainframe with a 3 M/E panel is delegation. There are 3 rows of buttons that represent the 3 M/Es of the panel and the operator can delegate any of the M/E rows to control any of the M/Es in the mainframe. This delegation can also be learned in an e-mem. That is nice so you can delegate the panel properly for your effect ? say a replay effect. Because I?m a little on the old school side I?d probably set up a Kayak so that the bottom M/E is Program (where I do most of my Spotbox transition effects) then the next M/E row is M/E 3 then the top M/E row is switched between M/E-1&2. Again, that delegation can be set up in an e-mem ? a macro will not do M/E delegation. The other big difference is the e-mem structure. I think that once the TD knows the basic theory behind the programming of the e-mems then they will be okay. I will be honest and say that there is a learning curve with the Kayak. It helps if you know the DD. I compare it to the learning curve when I went to my first Sony after spending years on nothing but Grass products.

Mike, I have done one rather basic show, cuts/dissolves/add a few CGs, on a Kayak. I did not have the time or need to get deep into it. When NMT put DD-35's into A-19 and A-35 and they were talking about buying a number of them I got trained on it and I loved the DD-35. The issue I had was seeing the switcher every few months. I do not care what switcher it is, if you see only a few times a year you forget things and aren't sharp operating it. What is interesting is that I recently heard that NMT was planning on buying two or three Kalypso's for a few of the DX trucks that currently have 4K's. I wonder if that plan is changing?