New 2GHz touchscreen scope from Tek, June 6th

[nctnico]

In the end there is no substitute for getting an instrument on loan and take it for a thourough test drive.

[BrianH_Tektronix]

It's funny to me how often engineers lament how little marketing folks understand about tech but fail to see that it goes the other way too.  Good marketing is just as difficult to do as good engineering.  You need the people, the resources, the time and a product that warrants the investment. 

Many engineers have a hard time communicating a good idea to a human standing in front of them, communicating to the entire world is an art and when it's done well it looks effortless, just like good engineering.  I've spent some time in the the world of marketing and it taught me a lot about the challenges of cutting through the noise and the constraints that a corporation will put on you.

Come on. W2AEW works for them and could churn out a dozen short videos on the features in a few days. Tek must know this, yet he clearly wasn't tasked to do so.

Coming from a corporate POV I understand Brian's and ruairi's points. I don't know the size of Tek's technical marketing team, but as a person working on a technical role for a large manufacturer which also does product release and promotion on the sidelines, I can tell that it is no easy feat to churn out polished short videos while juggling between the roles of customer support, testing/evaluation of new products, technical content creation and maintenance for each new released product. Tek is a large company, but I am pretty sure there is a lot of compartmentalization with limited resources that imposes prioritization of tasks when a product is released. As you said before, such class of equipment would have never attracted this much attention, thus indicating they did something right. 

And anyone who wants to claim that Tek doesn't have anyone else who can do it, that BS. They got Gary Waldo to do a "5 minute overview" promo videos and he did a respectable job of that and it was fairly professionally shot. Whilst it showed some cool stuff, it was as advertised, a short overview.

In my opinion that is fine: give a short intro or overview and then feed the product to the sharks for a proper evaluation, given that any corporate review would be seen as heavily biased, incomplete or would be criticized in a way or another.

Tek clearly didn't understand that their target market want to see technical videos with detail.

I like videos as well, but honestly the target market for this oscilloscope is either getting loaners to play around or receiving a visit from Tek's representative to their own site. 

They failed, and it wasn't because of a lack of resources, it was a lack of vision and execution, and a lack of understanding of what people want on launch day.

In my opinion: damned if you do, damned if you don't. Larger crowds find short videos more appealing, which would attract criticism as being superficial, incomplete or too focused on the features that overshadow the competition. Longer reviews tend to fall into nctnico's point: just give me a decent manual or, as I said before, just come to my company and let me play with a few of them.

[snoopy]

It's funny to me how often engineers lament how little marketing folks understand about tech but fail to see that it goes the other way too.  Good marketing is just as difficult to do as good engineering.  You need the people, the resources, the time and a product that warrants the investment. 

Many engineers have a hard time communicating a good idea to a human standing in front of them, communicating to the entire world is an art and when it's done well it looks effortless, just like good engineering.  I've spent some time in the the world of marketing and it taught me a lot about the challenges of cutting through the noise and the constraints that a corporation will put on you.

Come on. W2AEW works for them and could churn out a dozen short videos on the features in a few days. Tek must know this, yet he clearly wasn't tasked to do so.

Coming from a corporate POV I understand Brian's and ruairi's points. I don't know the size of Tek's technical marketing team, but as a person working on a technical role for a large manufacturer which also does product release and promotion on the sidelines, I can tell that it is no easy feat to churn out polished short videos while juggling between the roles of customer support, testing/evaluation of new products, technical content creation and maintenance for each new released product. Tek is a large company, but I am pretty sure there is a lot of compartmentalization with limited resources that imposes prioritization of tasks when a product is released. As you said before, such class of equipment would have never attracted this much attention, thus indicating they did something right. 

Why does it have to be polished ? Certainly you don't want someone shaking a camera around because they didn't have a tripod. But just someone explaining the features whilst using the scope should have sufficed and eliminated any doubts. Later on you can polish them up when you have time Anyway I wait for Shariars followup video.

[rx8pilot]

Personally - I get LESS out of a polished video with 3D graphics and bla, bla, bla. They are generally less interesting in terms of making a purchase decision. Anyone knows that you push the strengths forward by using examples that perfectly match the capability of the scope - normal marketing. A high-end scope like this is designed to solve engineering problems in the pursuit of building new products for a business. Obviously not a toy and obviously not intended for those that need whiz-bang graphics to make a purchasing decision. The target audience has a need for cold-hard data on what it can do and how easy it is to use in real-word practical scenarios.

I really like the more conversational type videos that pick a topic and run through it end-to-end without Industrial Light and Magic doing the intro animation sequence. If W2AEW did all of the feature presentations as the official Tek material - it would be great. Although he is an employee, Alan is very practical and conversational as he presents complex material. He has so much credibility, that it comes off as real and useful information as opposed to marketing material designed to cover up any limitations. If he was on the case for just 2 weeks, I could only imagine it resulting in a really nice catalog of videos presenting the new product.

Shahriar promised to do a full review as an outsider and certainly have a different view of the product from what Alan would do. He, historically, spends a TON of time designing experiments to present a concept or to expose the full potential of a test instrument. Even that is less time than the graphics, editing, music, voice over, approvals, re-edits, etc of a typical corporate splash video. The information the audience gets on the Signal Path is remarkably dense and useful. I can't imagine watching a corporate commercial for over an hour - yet I watch all of Shahriar's 1+hr videos and never notice the time.

I will agree with those that seem perplexed that there was not a release of presentations to coincide with the launch day of this scope. 

[bson]

There's also something to be said for putting a few extraordinary claims in a couple of sentences and watch as OCD engineers spend the next week turning it all inside out and exploring in great detail what your product can and can't do... 

[Free_WiFi]

There's also something to be said for putting a few extraordinary claims in a couple of sentences and watch as OCD engineers spend the next week turning it all inside out and exploring in great detail what your product can and can't do... 

[rsjsouza]

In the current world of Youtube, polished does not mean ILM-quality artifacts flying around on the screen but instead it means the video will be palatable to the general user: minimal occurrence of aaahhhs, oooohhhs, clicks and spits; no shaking cameras and with minimally decent lighting; pleasant audible quality; well scripted to prevent ramblings; with good test setups that actually explore the features to be highlighted and so on. That takes time to prepare properly.

Alan is a great communicator and his skills could have been used in this release, but no one can assume this (nor speak on his behalf) without knowing which priorities he had on his plate. Again, the target market is probably already playing with loaners as we speak... 

[bson]

Lol, nice catch - will be saving this! 

[w2aew]

In the current world of Youtube, polished does not mean ILM-quality artifacts flying around on the screen but instead it means the video will be palatable to the general user: minimal occurrence of aaahhhs, oooohhhs, clicks and spits; no shaking cameras and with minimally decent lighting; pleasant audible quality; well scripted to prevent ramblings; with good test setups that actually explore the features to be highlighted and so on. That takes time to prepare properly.

Alan is a great communicator and his skills could have been used in this release, but no one can assume this (nor speak on his behalf) without knowing which priorities he had on his plate. Again, the target market is probably already playing with loaners as we speak... 

I actually have done several videos with this new scope for the factory.  In fact, two of them are posted on Tek's YouTube page.  I will likely do more as time permits with my *normal* job, as long as they don't take the unit away from me...

[technogeeky]

This may have been answered (perhaps indirectly...) but:

Does data go over the BNC connector when the 16-channel digital connectors are used? Or is it "only" used for mechanical support?

I am trying to imagine the difference of implementation. I don't quite understand how one would combine all of the digital channels into an analog signal, if that's how it worked. But if the BNC is unused, then surely you could have made the connector for the flexchannel digital pack much smaller (in principle, if not in practice). So small that you could plug both a bare BNC and a digital pack in the same channel, and presumably switch back and forth between them.

[w2aew]

This may have been answered (perhaps indirectly...) but:

Does data go over the BNC connector when the 16-channel digital connectors are used? Or is it "only" used for mechanical support?

I am trying to imagine the difference of implementation. I don't quite understand how one would combine all of the digital channels into an analog signal, if that's how it worked. But if the BNC is unused, then surely you could have made the connector for the flexchannel digital pack much smaller (in principle, if not in practice). So small that you could plug both a bare BNC and a digital pack in the same channel, and presumably switch back and forth between them.

I don't have all of the details.  But, as far as I know, the BNC is unused by the digital probe.  However, the pins/pads that are on top of the BNC in the VPI interface are the communications/power pins that are used by the probe for active circuitry (in the active probes) and for scope-probe communications, so the digital probe really couldn't be made smaller without developing a new interface.  The goal with the interface on this scope was to maintain compatibility with all of the VPI style probes and BNC probes that are already offered (and already available in many customer labs), as well as adding the new flex-channel capability.

[Someone]

This may have been answered (perhaps indirectly...) but:

Does data go over the BNC connector when the 16-channel digital connectors are used? Or is it "only" used for mechanical support?

I am trying to imagine the difference of implementation. I don't quite understand how one would combine all of the digital channels into an analog signal, if that's how it worked. But if the BNC is unused, then surely you could have made the connector for the flexchannel digital pack much smaller (in principle, if not in practice). So small that you could plug both a bare BNC and a digital pack in the same channel, and presumably switch back and forth between them.

I don't have all of the details.  But, as far as I know, the BNC is unused by the digital probe.  However, the pins/pads that are on top of the BNC in the VPI interface are the communications/power pins that are used by the probe for active circuitry (in the active probes) and for scope-probe communications, so the digital probe really couldn't be made smaller without developing a new interface.  The goal with the interface on this scope was to maintain compatibility with all of the VPI style probes and BNC probes that are already offered (and already available in many customer labs), as well as adding the new flex-channel capability.

I doubt that the TLP058 digital probe is packing that enormous plastic shell tightly with circuitry, but you're welcome to open one up and take some photos to show us all the dense technology that required such a large enclosure...

[Tom45]

Curious about the new scope's pricing compared with past Tektronix offerings, I went to the 1976 Tek catalog.

Configuring a 350 MHz 4 channel 7904:

7904 4 slot mainframe  $4100
7A24 2 channel 350 MHz vertical plugin  $1150 each
7B80 timebase  $725
7B85 timebase  $875

Total: $8000
Total in 2017 dollars: $34,000

The 4 channel 350 MHz MSO54 : $12,600

The MSO54 offers a lot more for about a third of the cost.

[ruairi]

It's funny to me how often engineers lament how little marketing folks understand about tech but fail to see that it goes the other way too.  Good marketing is just as difficult to do as good engineering.  You need the people, the resources, the time and a product that warrants the investment. 

Many engineers have a hard time communicating a good idea to a human standing in front of them, communicating to the entire world is an art and when it's done well it looks effortless, just like good engineering.  I've spent some time in the the world of marketing and it taught me a lot about the challenges of cutting through the noise and the constraints that a corporation will put on you.

Come on. W2AEW works for them and could churn out a dozen short videos on the features in a few days. Tek must know this, yet he clearly wasn't tasked to do so. Although he did do one very cool video, but that was only uploaded onto the Tek Youtube channel 2 day ago
Maybe he did that off his own bat?
And anyone who wants to claim that Tek doesn't have anyone else who can do it, that BS. They got Gary Waldo to do a "5 minute overview" promo videos and he did a respectable job of that and it was fairly professionally shot. Whilst it showed some cool stuff, it was as advertised, a short overview.
Tek clearly didn't understand that their target market want to see technical videos with detail.
They failed, and it wasn't because of a lack of resources, it was a lack of vision and execution, and a lack of understanding of what people want on launch day.
But of course it all doesn't mean much. But perhaps they can do better next time?

I wasn't really commenting on your posts Dave, and I agree that for such a high end product the roll out has been patchy at best.  I was speaking more to the massive blind spot most engineers have for what it means to market a product and the unseen pressures and restrictions placed on the marketing team.

[Free_WiFi]

This scope is fantastic (in my personal opinion)
And if i will won it ,i absolutely do some italian spoken review.

[JPortici]

win it? Italy wasn't included in the contest

[ralphrmartin]

If I won it, I'd learn Italian to do a review.

[Free_WiFi]

  Bhooooooooooooooooo this is racism !!!!
Why italy is not included ??

[mikeselectricstuff]

Bhooooooooooooooooo this is racism !!!!
Why italy is not included ??

Italy's lottery laws - talk to your government

[BrianH_Tektronix]

This may have been answered (perhaps indirectly...) but:

Does data go over the BNC connector when the 16-channel digital connectors are used? Or is it "only" used for mechanical support?

I am trying to imagine the difference of implementation. I don't quite understand how one would combine all of the digital channels into an analog signal, if that's how it worked. But if the BNC is unused, then surely you could have made the connector for the flexchannel digital pack much smaller (in principle, if not in practice). So small that you could plug both a bare BNC and a digital pack in the same channel, and presumably switch back and forth between them.

I don't have all of the details.  But, as far as I know, the BNC is unused by the digital probe.  However, the pins/pads that are on top of the BNC in the VPI interface are the communications/power pins that are used by the probe for active circuitry (in the active probes) and for scope-probe communications, so the digital probe really couldn't be made smaller without developing a new interface.  The goal with the interface on this scope was to maintain compatibility with all of the VPI style probes and BNC probes that are already offered (and already available in many customer labs), as well as adding the new flex-channel capability.

To bring some clarity, w2aew is right that no signal is going through the BNC while the TLP058 logic probe is attached. The BNC and the mechanical lock on the probe work together to hold the probe tight to the scope. Meanwhile the VPI data pins are being used to communicate with the probe and some of its circuitry. So unfortunately another active probe would not be able to fit, be powered, or communicate at the same time in the same input.

The digital probe provides 8 digital inputs, these are routed on the main board right to the ASIC. So no crossover through the BNC. But since everything is routed through the same new ASIC its gets the benefit of sharing the same 6.25GS/s and up to 125Mpts memory, the trigger and more.

[technogeeky]

This may have been answered (perhaps indirectly...) but:

Does data go over the BNC connector when the 16-channel digital connectors are used? Or is it "only" used for mechanical support?

I am trying to imagine the difference of implementation. I don't quite understand how one would combine all of the digital channels into an analog signal, if that's how it worked. But if the BNC is unused, then surely you could have made the connector for the flexchannel digital pack much smaller (in principle, if not in practice). So small that you could plug both a bare BNC and a digital pack in the same channel, and presumably switch back and forth between them.

I don't have all of the details.  But, as far as I know, the BNC is unused by the digital probe.  However, the pins/pads that are on top of the BNC in the VPI interface are the communications/power pins that are used by the probe for active circuitry (in the active probes) and for scope-probe communications, so the digital probe really couldn't be made smaller without developing a new interface.  The goal with the interface on this scope was to maintain compatibility with all of the VPI style probes and BNC probes that are already offered (and already available in many customer labs), as well as adding the new flex-channel capability.

To bring some clarity, w2aew is right that no signal is going through the BNC while the TLP058 logic probe is attached. The BNC and the mechanical lock on the probe work together to hold the probe tight to the scope. Meanwhile the VPI data pins are being used to communicate with the probe and some of its circuitry. So unfortunately another active probe would not be able to fit, be powered, or communicate at the same time in the same input.

The digital probe provides 8 digital inputs, these are routed on the main board right to the ASIC. So no crossover through the BNC. But since everything is routed through the same new ASIC its gets the benefit of sharing the same 6.25GS/s and up to 125Mpts memory, the trigger and more.

OK. Thanks.

[rsjsouza]

In the current world of Youtube, polished does not mean ILM-quality artifacts flying around on the screen but instead it means the video will be palatable to the general user: minimal occurrence of aaahhhs, oooohhhs, clicks and spits; no shaking cameras and with minimally decent lighting; pleasant audible quality; well scripted to prevent ramblings; with good test setups that actually explore the features to be highlighted and so on. That takes time to prepare properly.

Alan is a great communicator and his skills could have been used in this release, but no one can assume this (nor speak on his behalf) without knowing which priorities he had on his plate. Again, the target market is probably already playing with loaners as we speak... 

I actually have done several videos with this new scope for the factory.  In fact, two of them are posted on Tek's YouTube page.  I will likely do more as time permits with my *normal* job, as long as they don't take the unit away from me...

Nice that you were able to do them! 

When the folks ask for the oscilloscope back, be smooth: "oscilloscope? Uhn... Haven't seen it in a while now. It was loaned to <insert large famous company name> days ago... ". That or just try to superglue it to the desk"

[snoopy]

A new video from Tek

[SigInt888]

A new video from Tek

I saw this last night - great video 

[BrianH_Tektronix]

A new video from Tek

Great group of people!