Getting Multimedia Up and Running : Technology: A small Huntington Beach firm has launched a software program that analyzes what’s wrong with a system and offers remedies.
Norm Jacobson has met the dark side of multimedia, the gear that allows personal computers to play movie-like videos, animation and compact-disk quality sound.
It took him three hours to install a component to make his PC do those whiz-bang things. And Jacobson is a pro. He teaches computer classes at UC Irvine and has more than 10 years of experience getting the various parts of computers to work together.
Jacobson is one of many frustrated consumers drawn to multimedia by slick advertising only to encounter misery when things don’t work right.
“Everybody is touting how great multimedia is,” Jacobson said. “But getting it to work can be a real problem. The average person out there needs some help.”
He hopes that a new product from TouchStone Software Corp. will help.
Last month, the small Huntington Beach company started selling Setup Advisor, a computer program that analyzes what’s wrong with a multimedia system, as well as other computer woes, and gives advice on how to fix it. Setup Advisor, for instance, shows whether a particular PC is compatible with certain multimedia accessories.
TouchStone figures its new product will help thousands of everyday computer users who try to save money by following highly touted “easy to install” instructions and wind up instead with multimedia systems that don’t work properly.
Consumers are buying the $29.95 program, and TouchStone hopes to sell up to 20,000 copies a month. But the program isn’t so popular with multimedia kit manufacturers, who say their sets of hardware and software aren’t hard to install.
Therein lies TouchStone’s struggle. The feisty 30-employee firm finds its markets in the educational gaps that big companies leave between themselves and their hapless customers.
“I don’t want to create trouble for the manufacturers, but when you create diagnostic software, you’re looking to find problems in products and to solve them,” said C. Shannon Jenkins, TouchStone’s chief executive. “We’re helping the people on the front lines--the customers and the stores.”
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Ayear ago, tiny TouchStone found itself in a similar battle. It launched a program to help befuddled consumers, but it caught flak from officials at software giant Microsoft Corp., maker of MS-DOS 6.0, the basic operating software that makes PCs run.
Jenkins, along with other software industry followers, said Microsoft’s product was seriously flawed. Microsoft officials said that TouchStone’s criticism amounted to a ploy to market TouchStone’s utility software. But the software giant subsequently revised the program to address user complaints.
Tapping into new frustration, TouchStone says it expects robust sales of Setup Advisor. The Fry’s Electronics store in Fountain Valley sold 45 copies of Setup Advisor in its first weekend on the shelves.
Jenkins believes the market for TouchStone’s software could be big because of the twin tides of frustration and fascination with multimedia.
Last year, worldwide sales of CD-ROM drives--an essential component in multimedia--soared 155% over the previous year as millions of consumers bought the devices to play the video and sound stored on computer compact disks, according to InfoTech, a market research firm in Woodstock, Vt. Multimedia kits typically include the CD-ROM drives, sound cards and speakers.
But as sales of multimedia kits grow, consumers are discovering that it’s hard to take apart a computer with a screwdriver, install the equipment, and then load the software that makes it work. Installation gets more difficult as more components are added, said John Hulina, a multimedia product buyer for computer distributor Ingram Micro Inc. in Santa Ana.
Setup Advisor is aimed at easing the frustration and giving the consumer more time to enjoy the fascination. The program also should help boost the company’s earnings. TouchStone said Monday that it earned $74,500, or 1 cent a share, for the first quarter, slightly below the $75,000 earned in last year’s first quarter. Quarterly revenue grew 8% to $1.3 million from $1.2 million last year.
Despite Setup Advisor’s selling points, TouchStone’s first step in marketing the program has been to draw attention to the volume of returned multimedia merchandise as evidence that people are abandoning multimedia in frustration. The tactic has sparked criticism from multimedia manufacturers.
“To the degree that TouchStone doesn’t distinguish between good multimedia kits and bad ones and lumps us all together, I’m not thrilled about that,” said Greg Reznick, vice president of marketing at MediaVision Technology Inc. in Fremont, one of the largest makers of multimedia kits.
“PCs are complicated. But there are companies that do a good job of explaining how to use them or expand them,” he said. “We think we do.”
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Reznick said his company’s kits come with programs that can detect and solve problems as well as TouchStone’s program can. But Jenkins points out that consumers must buy the $300 to $400 kit from MediaVision to use the software that detects potential problems.
The industry’s other multimedia powerhouse, Creative Labs Inc. in Milpitas, also bristles at the notion that multimedia kits are so difficult to install that they’re being returned in droves.
“There is a common misconception in the industry about the rate of return of our products,” said Richard Buchanan, a product marketing director for Creative Labs.
Buchanan said Creative Labs welcomes any programs such as TouchStone’s that can help simplify the complicated installation process. But he disagreed that return rates are skyrocketing. Buchanan said that of the 60,000 sound cards that Creative Labs ships every month, less than 1% are returned.
“Just opening the computer is intimidating, sort of like changing the oil in your car,” Buchanan said. “It’s not easy to install things. But from our perspective, the difficulty is dramatically overblown.”
But Norm Jacobson, the UCI computer teacher who spent three hours installing his multimedia kit, thinks TouchStone’s new software is useful for heading off problems.
“If the vendors say there is no problem, that’s a bunch of hooey,” he said. “Third-party dealers who sell the computers don’t do installations well. If you call the manufacturer to get help, you have a hard time getting through or you hear some jargon you don’t understand.”
Ed Bradford, an Anaheim retiree, said he spent several days over the course of a month trying to install his $200 CD-ROM drive. Whatever he tried, including calls to the manufacturer, didn’t work.
Finally, he got help from friends at the North Orange County Computer Club. Now Bradford gets a big kick out of a music composition CD-ROM program in which he enters musical notes and his computer plays them back as if it were a piano.
“I find that the majority of people just want to find some computer-literate person and have them install their equipment for them,” said Dain Leese, a Costa Mesa software consultant who volunteers for the North Orange County Computer Club.
Such complaints may be why consumers are buying utility software.
Without much competition from other software companies for Setup Advisor, TouchStone is plowing forward. Setup Advisor is a mini-program that was included last year in its $60 full-scale utility program, CheckIt PRO Analyst. The company will market similar mini-programs, such as one to help so-called road warriors who use portable computers.
But some say that TouchStone’s opportunity won’t last long since more and more people are just buying computers with pre-installed multimedia components. Manufacturers also are revising their kit installation software so it is easier to use.
“I’d rather spend my time playing with interactive software than a screwdriver,”said David Bunnell, editor in chief of New Media magazine, a multimedia industry journal in San Mateo. “Installing a kit is a universal problem, but a short-term one” because technology will eventually make the problem disappear.
By 1995, the majority of CD-ROM sales will be through purchases of new computers that come with multimedia gear pre-installed on the machine, not from upgrade kits, Buchanan said.
In addition, Microsoft and other industry leaders are trying to adopt equipment standards, dubbed Plug and Play, that would allow consumers to install any add-on device on any PC, regardless of the manufacturer of the PC or maker of the device.
The standard technology will be built into Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 4.0 software, due out at the end of this year. But for now, Jenkins said, computer users will have to get help from something like Setup Advisor or a friendly neighborhood computer whiz.
“In the meantime, we can do a lot of useful work,” she said.
