There is a thread on CN about AP waiting times, which is worth a read, it is in the refractor forum. From what i can gather, Roland, the old gent in the video, is for all intent AP. He is personally involved in every scope setup and quality checks. For this reason it will never be a big company, it is his baby. I believe scope production is limited to no more than 100 per year, and there is a waiting list.
From what I have read, if you plan to go down the path of absolute encoders they really should be at point of manufacture. Something to do with optical alignment (referring to the encoder here, not the telescope) really needing to be factory set and not just an addon in the field.
Without finding some unbiased information its hard to tell how reliable it is. Cannot exactly remember where I read it (was when I was looking into a new mount) but it could very well have been information against those companies looking at having addon absolute encoder (AP & Bisque) as opposed to factory set, aligned and built in (Planewave, Astrosysteme Austria plus a couple of others that offer this).
Only AP offer field installed encoders. The mount I believe is prefigured to receive them so perhaps the alignments are already done. But there is no way AP would offer it if it were not able to be done perfectly in the field. They don't operate like that.
