Siggraph 2012: PC Makers Target Media And Entertainment Market

PC makers Dell, HP and Lenovo converged on annual CG conference Siggraph this week with an aim of grabbing a bigger stake in the media and entertainment space.

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“The PC system vendors are absolutely getting more aggressive in the media and entertainment space,” observed Greg Estes, media and entertainment industry executive at NVIDIA. “They perceive there is an opening with some of the latest decisions Apple has made.”

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HP, for instance, recently teamed up with Adobe and camera maker Red to introduce its new Z820 Red Edition desktop workstation, a customized version of the HP Z820 that comes ready for production with a Red Rocket accelerator card and two Red SSD card readers.

“We are not aiming to get away from Mac,” Red exec Ted Schilowitz told The Hollywood Reporter. “But it’s pretty obvious that Apple’s focus is in the mobile computing world. [Filmmakers] drive a lot data. Mac is viable, but if want the most horsepower, you are now looking at HP.”

Dell has formed an advisory board of professionals that use Apple’s Final Cut. According to Scott Hamilton, Dell’s vertical market strategist for workstations, some of the company’s advisors have stated discontent with Final Cut Pro X and Apple’s workstations and “they’ve said ‘we feel abandoned by Apple.’ ”

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Lenovo—which was at Siggraph with its latest ThinkPad and ThinkStation technology—is aiming to make inroads into the professional media & entertainment space by certifying its technology for tools such as the Avid Media Composer and Adobe CS6.

Siggraph reported attendance of 21,212 as it wrapped Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.