RE: [AV Media Matters] MII Revisited

[Charles Repka <Charles.P.Repka@abc.com>]

Sorry to dredge up ancient history but as a new member of the forum,
I was browsing through the archives and came across the posts on the
MII format. I was  a member of the engineering team from NBC that
went to Japan to do a detailed engineering evaluation of the MII
engineering pre production machines at the Panasonic factory.  We
tested video, audio, machine interface, service ability, you name
it.  We read and commented on the service manuals.  A very thorough
job.  But when we came back to write our evaluation reports, it
became quickly evident that no comments that could be interpreted as
negative ( even constructive comments on how to further improve the
design) would be tolerated.  As it developed, the entire trip was a
sham.  The decision to purchase had already been made.  Panasonic
was so eager to have a major network use their equipment that they
made an attractive offer on the price of the machines and the tape
that NBC  simply could not refuse.  Since the decision to buy the
machine was a political/managerial one, no negative comments about
the format were tolerated and woe be to him to said public bad
things about MII.  As an honest engineer who never learned to keep
his mouth shut, I eventually fell victim to this policy and am no
longer with NBC.  To Panasonic's credit, they did listen to (some
of) our engineering comments and made constant improvements to the
format.  But in retrospect. the MII format was the last gasp of the
analog format for video and was doomed to be superceded by the low
cost digital formats.

Charles Repka