market-speak translated

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Hi
Have been compiling a list of marketing claims and trying to interpret what they might possibly mean - quite often significant negatives are spun and put forward as desirable features. Just a bit of fun and not intended to knock anyone in particular - they all do it. A lot of license has been taken with the wording, but I am sure you will have seen some similar claims
Regards Ray

1. “the mount has a 40,000 object database” – but you will only be able to see about 150 of them, since the scope we fitted is too small to detect the rest.
2. “the scope produces pinpoint stars on a black velvet background” - because there is not enough aperture for the skyglow to be visible
3. “the mount has little backlash” – we used to say it had none, but people noticed.
4. “the camera cools down to 55C below ambient” – which is only necessary because the chip is as noisy as all heck.
5. “the camera has built in RBI flooding” - which is a fudge that is only required to cover up an annoying fault in this particular type of chip.
6. “the Aluminium adjustment knobs have been replaced with smoother plastic ones” - that are cheaper to make.
7. “guaranteed diffraction limited” – we are fairly confident that some of them will work OK and not many of our customers will know the difference anyway.
8. “5 year warranty on the mount” – and to get it repaired you only have to ship it to and from the factory in Guatemala at your expense.
9. “USB3 for high speed download” – which you will never achieve, since USB3 is an aspirational standard in which nothing ever goes as fast as it should.
10. “superlative fit and finish” - which makes no difference to the performance, but means that you will pay us an extra grand for the paint. Red anodising is really valuable and might even be worth more than the right paint.
11. “comes with an ultra-wide-angle eyepiece” – which allows you to finally see the coma in all its glory.
12. “uses lanthanum/Fluorite/FPL53 glass” – yeah, we know that only 0.01% of our users really understand lens design theory (ie know if this is at all significant), but it sure makes the scopes/eyepieces easier to sell and gives the owners an inexhaustible talking point.
13. “The camera has a tilt adjustable faceplate” – because we haven’t figured out how to manufacture it so that the chip is guaranteed to be parallel to the faceplate.
14. “The camera is Argon filled” – well we blew a bit into it at one stage. Who knows, there might still be some in there - how is anyone going to prove that there isn't?
15. “Strehl ratio of 0.977” – which we got by hand-optimising the best unit we could find, mounting it to minimise any mechanical stresses in a thermally stable environment and testing it on-axis at the single (best) test wavelength. The analysis software was set to disregard residual astigmatism and anything else we didn't like.

[AG Hybrid (Adrian)]

Careful buddy! There are some refractor lovers on this forum that will throw their diagonals at you if you keep this kind of talk up.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by AG Hybrid

Careful buddy! There are some refractor lovers on this forum that will throw their diagonals at you if you keep this kind of talk up.

Blimey, you are right! I just re-read it from that perspective and it might look a bit anti-refractor. Did not intend any offense, but maybe I should have just kept quiet.. Oh well, the deed is done and in fairness, 6 of the points apply to gear that I own and only one of the 15 is specifically applicable to a refractor.

edit: just pulled the one that might have caused most offense - thanks

[LewisM]

Premium ultra - nuff said

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by LewisM

Premium ultra - nuff said

what's your translation lewis - how about:
"Premium Ultra" - we tested them all and these are the ones that work properly
I guess that the manufacturers leave themselves open to a degree of flippancy by using such non-specific adjectives.

[AG Hybrid (Adrian)]

Ill just leave this here.

"ULTRA ADVANCED LEVEL TELESCOPE - Exceptional capability premium quality telescope for the most demanding Advanced users. Highest possible performance for those that wish to achieve much more. Increased performance on the moon, planets, stars, double stars, star clusters, globular star clusters, nebulae & galaxies. Ability to resolve celestial objects that other systems simply are incapable of achieving unless you purchase exotic quality & capability systems such as Officina Stellare"

Its a 14" dob.

[LewisM]

That definition works Ray

All funnin' and ribbing those concerned - no offence intended.

I must take umbrage to any of Stellarvue's advertising though. Talk about a load of half-truths and spin.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by AG Hybrid

Ill just leave this here.

"ULTRA ADVANCED LEVEL TELESCOPE - Exceptional capability premium quality telescope for the most demanding Advanced users. Highest possible performance for those that wish to achieve much more. Increased performance on the moon, planets, stars, double stars, star clusters, globular star clusters, nebulae & galaxies. Ability to resolve celestial objects that other systems simply are incapable of achieving unless you purchase exotic quality & capability systems such as Officina Stellare"

Its a 14" dob.

You win...

[Atmos (Colin)]

When I was buying my first serious telescope a few years back, trying to get through all of the market speak between Celestron and Meade was a challenge to say the least
Wanted an Alt/Az SCT for visual, both brands competing against one another. I swear there were subtleties in their marketing dissing the other company

[Shiraz (Ray)]

I guess there has to be some latitude given. It would be difficult to sell your product if the opposition did not play fair. Which would you buy?

The mirror is a superlative optical gem with sublime image quality. The super-precise OTA is made from ultra-pure medical-grade alloys with an exquisite high gloss finish and it is fitted with a buttery-smooth heavy-duty focuser. This system will appeal to the discerning and advanced astronomer or astrophotographer.

or

a reasonably well made scope with a mirror that is just on the 0.8 diffraction limit, that has a usable focuser up to about 1kg load and a painted aluminium OTA that will require refocusing if the temperature changes by more than 0.5C. This system will meet the needs of the average amateur, although, at 17kg, it may be a bit too heavy for some if the system is to be regularly set up and broken down.

could be the same scope, different marketing.

[xelasnave]

I call it Mac Donald marketing....
So you get a freshly cracked egg for your burger...
Presumably Hungry Jacks don't use freshly cracked eggs.
Adds are written by add people who live in a Universe of superlative adjectives.
Always let the buyer be aware.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

I call it Mac Donald marketing....
So you get a freshly cracked egg for your burger...
Presumably Hungry Jacks don't use freshly cracked eggs.
Adds are written by add people who live in a Universe of superlative adjectives.
Always let the buyer be aware.

But I guess that we are often being sold dreams rather than equipment Alex.

Part of that is the Nirvana effect - "I am sure that I would be able to take images almost as good as Hubble if only I had an XXXX". Then you get an XXXX and find that if only you also had a YYYY, "surely then I will be able to ....." The purveyors of astro gear encourage this open ended belief that eventually you will "get there" and happily manufacture all manner of gear that promises to help you along the way. Somehow though, this process has resulted in the huge advances of recent decades, so it isn't all bad. It has however moved our hobby from 3 inch achros to 32 inch Dobs - and from DSLR pictures taken on low cost motor drive mounts to fully automated imaging observatories that can crank out huge amounts of data and can also comfortably cost more than $100,000.

The membership of an exclusive club is also beguiling - "only a limited few can fully appreciate the innate quality of XXXX - anyone who doesn't own one is clearly not discerning". Some manufacturers aim their equipment at this exclusivity market by charging outrageous amounts for their gear, accepting that they will only ever have a very lucrative small niche in the market.

and underpinning it all is the breathless and sometimes hilarious marketing hyperbole

[csb (Craig)]

Professional quality.

Now that's the quality I am really after!

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

And unfortunately in today's world you need to compete in retail to survive and marketing is one such tool. But it opens up a new source of satisfaction for the less discerning. I used to love blasting past $50,000 mv agustas on the racetrack on my home- modified $1500 25 year old Suzuki. And similarly, there are many images on here taken using relatively basic and secondhand gear that are breathtakingly well executed, and I don't mean mine! Obviously the better the gear the easier it is to get good data, but there's no 'auto process' button.
Cheers
Andrew.

Originally Posted by Shiraz

But I guess that we are often being sold dreams rather than equipment Alex.

Part of that is the Nirvana effect - "I am sure that I would be able to take images almost as good as Hubble if only I had an XXXX". Then you get an XXXX and find that if only you also had a YYYY, "surely then I will be able to ....." The purveyors of astro gear encourage this open ended belief that eventually you will "get there" and happily manufacture all manner of gear that promises to help you along the way. Somehow though, this process has resulted in the huge advances of recent decades, so it isn't all bad. It has however moved our hobby from 3 inch achros to 32 inch Dobs - and from DSLR pictures taken on low cost motor drive mounts to fully automated imaging observatories that can crank out huge amounts of data and can also comfortably cost more than $100,000.

The membership of an exclusive club is also beguiling - "only a limited few can fully appreciate the innate quality of XXXX - anyone who doesn't own one is clearly not discerning". Some manufacturers aim their equipment at this exclusivity market by charging outrageous amounts for their gear, accepting that they will only ever have a very lucrative small niche in the market.

and underpinning it all is the breathless and sometimes hilarious marketing hyperbole

[RickS (Rick)]

I briefly worked for a well-known computer company where it was claimed that if the marketing department was selling sushi they would describe it as "cold, wet, dead fish." I'd be happy with a pitch somewhere in the middle ground between dead fish and your quotes, Ray

[doppler (Rick)]

A bit of Tasco poetry from the mid 80's.

[deanm (Dean)]

Wow! Look at those prices - even at today's figures, I'd feel ripped-off!

Wooden tripod indeed..!

How did anyone afford to get into astro in those days?!

Dean

[doppler (Rick)]

Originally Posted by deanm

Wow! Look at those prices - even at today's figures, I'd feel ripped-off!

Wooden tripod indeed..!

How did anyone afford to get into astro in those days?!

Dean

If you were serious the only option was to build your own scope, including grinding mirrors. Everyone else was stuck with 50mm refractors. I was lucky enough to pick up a secondhand 8" cave optical newt (my avitar pic) for less than half the price of that 6" tasco.

[rally]

One of my bugbears

CCDs with 16bit A/D converters - even though the chip only has 8-10 bits of resolveable signal, we put a 16 bit A/D converter chip on it to convert the random noise into "signal"

Unfortunately thats the case for most of them and most people cant work out the difference !

or what about promoting the scope as having 1000X magnification !
Probably has a strehl ratio of 50%, and chromatic aberration that would render most images looking like Charlie and the Chocolate factory (lots of purple)

When I bought my first scope I was assured verbally that I would be able to see the planets - ignorantly, I didnt know enough to ask them how resolved I should expect to see the planets !
After countless hours of tuning and collimation and use under near perfect seeing conditions I put it back into its box - it only ever came out once in the next 17 years - to be quickly put back away again.
Oh and that $10 eyepiece didnt help much either

But then you have Takahashi who make almost no claims at all for the best corrected refractors on the planet !