@gunrunnerjohn posted:Look again, they're unlocked phones without a plan.
They are old models and no longer sold by any major carrier. They are being sold at a loss already. It's either sell them cheap (at a loss) or throw them away.
Why do I want lasts year MotoG for $130 when my carrier will give me the updated 2022 model for free.
Old? They came out in 2020 and 2021, hardly ancient. I'd be glad to have a two year old remote for my trains. Why is it so hard to admit that it's quite possible to make a physical remote, but they just don't want to.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Old? They came out in 2020 and 2021, hardly ancient. I'd be glad to have a two year old remote for my trains. Why is it so hard to admit that it's quite possible to make a physical remote, but they just don't want to.
Yeah, that's old.
I can see this is a circular discussion, I'm outta' here. 
In my honest opinion as someone who started in O gauge in 2020 from decades in G scale, I must say that inability of inventory of a controller has kept me from spending money on MTH motive power. It’s really their loss as I have purchased 10 brand new locomotives and four new train sets in the past two years. I have several on order right now and none of them are MTH. I built my layout around Lionel’s Legacy Control System with everything working through a remote or tablet. So MTH’s lack of compatibility is keeping new customers away. If Prime Mover really wants to move MTH along they should add TMCC compatibility back in their products.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:OTOH, maybe they did get where they are that way.
Think about MTH of a few years ago and MTH now.
Maybe. Some business are a labor of love and don’t end up making shareholders bags of money. Rather, they pay the salaries for a few tens of workers and allow an owner to earn a living too. Selling a business like that is tough.
@H1000 posted:Those phones are subsidize. They cost more than that to build, the cheap price lures you into the store to buy them and the carriers make up the lost profit of the phone on the service contract they sell you. My local cell carrier is currently offering a free $1000 (MSRP) iphone for new customers, and the same phone to current customers for $100 after trade-in.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Look again, they're unlocked phones without a plan.
Agree with GRJ. I just bought a new phone from the manufacturer (Motorola) for like $249 ($50 less than my carrier), unlocked w/ 128GiB of storage too (more than the version from my carrier).
@rplst8 posted:Maybe. Some business are a labor of love and don’t end up making shareholders bags of money. Rather, they pay the salaries for a few tens of workers and allow an owner to earn a living too. Selling a business like that is tough.
I really don't think Mike Wolf is suffering. 
He may not have kept the money in bags, but that's a fine point. 
@BlueComet400 posted:Many businesses also have "loss leaders." I worked in the rental car industry many years ago, and our loss leader was a Geo Metro, which was advertised at a daily rental rate of $10 or $15. It made the phone ring, and got people in the door, and in many cases, we were able to up-sell the customers into a larger car. Many pharmacies are doing that today with generic prescriptions. At $2.00 or $4.00 for a generic drug, the store is likely only breaking-even or maybe even losing money on that sale, but they know that once the customer is in the store, he or she is buying milk, bread, etc. and spending more than just the price of the drug.
Even if MTH only breaks even on continued production and sales of remotes, if it keeps customers coming back to buy trains, it may be wise for them to re-think this and find a way to make it work. On the other hand, as long as the money keeps flowing in their direction, there's no incentive for them to do so.
Loss leaders are typically products that are tried and true, and/or don’t require much capital investment. In order for MTH to have a remote they would need to spend a significant amount up front to even “have” the product to sell alongside their other wares.
Not to mention, the entity that has mentioned a possible future remote is now a separate business from the one that makes the locomotives. How would the entity selling the remotes at a loss make any money?
This is not to say that a remote couldn’t be done… but just don’t expect it to be cheap. I don’t, and I’m willing to pay more if it’s newer tech with more features and ensures continued operations of my fleet.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I really don't think Mike Wolf is suffering.
Well. He did take on some big court cases, so the lawyers likely have some of his earnings. Not that I think he didn’t fight the good fight.
@Mallard4468 posted:As we know from econ class, demand is the desire for a product AND the ability and willingness to pay for it. What price would a sufficient number of people be willing to pay for a new remote? $300? $500?
Legacy remotes are still selling like hotcakes at the $1000 level on the auction site. Used ones at that!
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I can see this is a circular discussion, I'm outta' here.
Hey it looks you circled back!! Great to have you! 😉
@romiller49 posted:Here’s one for ya. Why don’t MTH and Lionel both get together and come up with one remote that will run both systems.
At one time, that could have happened and if it did it would have been a win win for MTH and Lionel.
Hey, let’s no forget. Mike Wolf is retired.😂😂😂
@Madockawando posted:At one time, that could have happened and if it did it would have been a win win for MTH and Lionel.
At one time, it did happen. MTH remotes will control DCS AND TMCC engines. Then Lionel went and kept Legacy proprietary, rather than licensing it out to anyone who wanted to pay to use it.
@Magicland posted:At one time, it did happen. MTH remotes will control DCS AND TMCC engines. Then Lionel went and kept Legacy proprietary, rather than licensing it out to anyone who wanted to pay to use it.
They won't control TMCC engines without a Lionel Command Base (Base 1 or 2, or I'm assuming 3 as well, as soon as they are out). You're overstating the facts.
They will control Legacy engines, with a Command Base (Base 2) and a serial connection through a Lionel Ser2. Again, overstating the facts.
MTH kept DCS proprietary too, all of it. At least Lionel opened up TMCC.
With these things in mind how is this whole thing completely Lionel's fault, and solely it's problem?
Mike
@Magicland posted:At one time, it did happen. MTH remotes will control DCS AND TMCC engines. Then Lionel went and kept Legacy proprietary, rather than licensing it out to anyone who wanted to pay to use it.
That's not entirely accurate. You do have access to many legacy functions through DCS.
@H1000 posted:That's not entirely accurate. You do have access to many legacy functions through DCS.
You're correct, I forgot that the DCS app (which I've just started using) actually has access to many of the legacy functions, while the physical remote does not (other than TMCC features that Legacy uses). Of course, you still had to buy a Legacy base (not that there's any problem with that), which gave you the best of both worlds. Wonder if that'll still be the case with the base 3?
@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:They won't control TMCC engines without a Lionel Command Base (Base 1 or 2, or I'm assuming 3 as well, as soon as they are out). You're overstating the facts.
They will control Legacy engines, with a Command Base (Base 2) and a serial connection through a Lionel Ser2. Again, overstating the facts.
MTH kept DCS proprietary too, all of it. At least Lionel opened up TMCC.
With these things in mind how is this whole thing completely Lionel's fault, and solely it's problem?
Mike
Nobody said you didn't need a Lionel Command base, YOU'RE overstating the facts. And they'll only control Legacy engines using TMCC commands, no matter what base you have, so AGAIN, you're overstating the facts. This was a question about MTH DCS controllers in an MTH forum. I didn't bring up Lionel, another posted did, and I simply corrected him. And I suspect it's more of a case of Lionel not having any desire to license DCS rather than DCS refusing to license it.
@romiller49 posted:Here’s one for ya. Why don’t MTH and Lionel both get together and come up with one remote that will run both systems.
TMCC is open source by design. All MTH locomotives could be compatible now the the ego of the wolf is gone.
In hindsight, it would have been much more viable long-term solution (although perhaps less profitable) had Lionel and MTH both adopted DCC. Although DCS has some capabilities that DCC lacks, I would be willing to live without them in order to have greater compatibility.
I know that some MTH engines (all PS3?) have a DCS/DCC switch. Can one run these using any NMRA compliant DCC system? How difficult would it be to retrofit a decoder into a Lionel or older MTH engine?
@rplst8 posted:Legacy remotes are still selling like hotcakes at the $1000 level on the auction site. Used ones at that!
Would the number of people willing to pay that price be sufficient to support the requisite R&D and small-scale manufacturing? My guess is no. Personally, a price above $250 will make me tolerate using a phone or tablet.
@Magicland posted:At one time, it did happen. MTH remotes will control DCS AND TMCC engines. Then Lionel went and kept Legacy proprietary, rather than licensing it out to anyone who wanted to pay to use it.
Are you saying is that all I had to do was buy a DCS system and I could have run TMCC and MTH? And here I thought you had to have a TMCC base to that.
@Magicland posted:At one time, it did happen. MTH remotes will control DCS AND TMCC engines. Then Lionel went and kept Legacy proprietary, rather than licensing it out to anyone who wanted to pay to use it.
You're off on the wrong road.
I have some additional Legacy units in place should I need them in the future.
But, I run my car through my iPhone ... so, if necessary, I can adapt to running my trains through my iPhone.
I don't want to do that, but re-learning and adaptation are big parts of adulthood.
@RixTrack posted:TMCC is open source by design. All MTH locomotives could be compatible now the the ego of the wolf is gone.
For the umpteenth time, this is not true.
Lionel published the commands to talk to the TMCC Base and the Legacy Base.
They also published code to help developers talk to the base. The commands on the 455 kHz track signal are not “open source” and no one can make engines that are compatible with that unless they pay a license fee and pen an agreement with Lionel.
That’s not open source and it’s not even open. It’s just standard licensing of proprietary technology.
MTH did exactly as Lionel intended. They created a device that interfaces with the Lionel Bases using the published serial command structure. This sold a few extra DCS systems maybe, but was mostly a boon for Lionel because they could keep selling TMCC and Legacy engines.
P.S. Integrating TMCC and Legacy control into the DCS remote was an expenditure that MTH was willing to gamble on. Since both systems will mostly operate together without issue, it was a customer friendly thing to do, so MTH engine owners wouldn’t have to buy a second remote from Lionel, and since the base and remote were pretty much always offered separately, just pick up a TMCC Base. It also allowed existing Lionel customers who wanted to get into DCS to sell their existing TMCC remote after getting the DCS remote and then another person could maybe get a deal on said remote and pick up a TMCC Base separately.
@rplst8 posted:MTH did exactly as Lionel intended. They created a device that interfaces with the Lionel Bases using the published serial command structure. This sold a few extra DCS systems maybe, but was mostly a boon for Lionel because they could keep selling TMCC and Legacy engines.
Actually, though I don't know how effective it was, I suspect MTH figured that allowing people to run Legacy with their DCS system would encourage people to start buying MTH engines to run with their TMCC fleet. I can't imagine that MTH just wanted to sell a few extra DCS systems, the bread and butter was DCS locomotives.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Actually, though I don't know how effective it was, I suspect MTH figured that allowing people to run Legacy with their DCS system would encourage people to start buying MTH engines to run with their TMCC fleet.
You're probably right John. There's the intent behind it, and then reality. But I'm guessing at both. That said, people like to paint a one sided story about MTH having "a closed system" and Lionel an "open source" one.
While not "open" let alone "open source" Lionel did provide a narrow way to control their engines through the serial port of the TMCC Base. Additionally, MTH cooperated and respected that interface. That's probably all we could have ever hoped for from these two extremely competitive and litigious companies.
In the end though we're in this for the trains, not black boxes that let us control them. MTH added DCC with the most recent PS3 locomotives, it would be nice if Lionel would follow suit. Additionally it would be great if one of them would come out with an easy to use DCC based remote controller that shows the HO and N boys how it's done, and then they could sell it to that crowd as well.
@RixTrack posted:In my honest opinion as someone who started in O gauge in 2020 from decades in G scale, I must say that inability of inventory of a controller has kept me from spending money on MTH motive power. It’s really their loss as I have purchased 10 brand new locomotives and four new train sets in the past two years. I have several on order right now and none of them are MTH. I built my layout around Lionel’s Legacy Control System with everything working through a remote or tablet. So MTH’s lack of compatibility is keeping new customers away. If Prime Mover really wants to move MTH along they should add TMCC compatibility back in their products.
I actually started about the same time. It seems that I'll never hear proto sounds because of the lack of tiu or wtiu. I like mth but without the components to run them they may as well just shutter up completely.
@Greg M posted:I actually started about the same time. It seems that I'll never hear proto sounds because of the lack of tiu or wtiu. I like mth but without the components to run them they may as well just shutter up completely.
The modern MTH ProtoSound 3.0 engines will run on DCC. You could get yourself a DCC controller/booster etc. and run them via command. Otherwise, you can always run them in conventional mode (AC or DC) until such time the DCS WTIU becomes available again.
Lionel and MTH are both suffering from the supply chain issues that have plagued us since the pandemic started. Many electronic components are no longer available or have long lead times which have caused delays in them delivering their new command control products.
It seems the companies offering DCC have been spared, but I'd venture a guess they are relying on a large back-inventory of product since the HO market is so much bigger.
MTH can still run Lionel engines. It is the same as the past,you run a cable from the tiu to the Lionel command base. MTH still supports that and Base 3 will allow it.
Right now neither Lionel or MTH has a command base ,Cab3 won't be available until late next year,MTH was supposed to be April from what I heard at York. It is components, it is still a mess at the source, Apple and the big boys are having problems, let alone small fry.
"Loss leaders are typically products that are tried and true, and/or don’t require much capital investment. In order for MTH to have a remote they would need to spend a significant amount up front to even “have” the product to sell alongside their other wares."
Why would MTH need to invest additional capital to continue producing what already works? The existing DCS remote is, in my opinion, tried and true; it has now been around for decades, and MTH surely has recouped their capital investment on it by now. Sure, it has the weak link of the thumbwheel cradle, but it can be repaired. I think most people here would agree that the current design works very well, and if you're careful with it, it can last a long time.
Even if the issue is the 900-megahertz transmitter/receiver, I find it hard to believe that there isn't something else on the market that would work just as well, even if it meant retrofitting existing units with the new components.
Back in the day, there was, no doubt, a fair amount of capital investment and R&D that went into the production of Lionel's E-Unit and look how long it lasted. For decades, its basic design was unchanged because it worked.
@BlueComet400 posted:"Loss leaders are typically products that are tried and true, and/or don’t require much capital investment. In order for MTH to have a remote they would need to spend a significant amount up front to even “have” the product to sell alongside their other wares."
Why would MTH need to invest additional capital to continue producing what already works? The existing DCS remote is, in my opinion, tried and true; it has now been around for decades, and MTH surely has recouped their capital investment on it by now. Sure, it has the weak link of the thumbwheel cradle, but it can be repaired. I think most people here would agree that the current design works very well, and if you're careful with it, it can last a long time.
Even if the issue is the 900-megahertz transmitter/receiver, I find it hard to believe that there isn't something else on the market that would work just as well, even if it meant retrofitting existing units with the new components.
MTH has already mentioned that a remote (in the distant future) may be a possibility. If I were them, I would focus on building a unit that could do DCS and DCC and then they could sell outside the 3-rail market.
That said, they would have to invest additional capital. That capital is going to spent on labor, re-engineering the circuits or interfaces to off-the-shelf parts to do the wireless communication. It could be Bluetooth, WiFi, or some other tech - but it takes time to work out those details, and get them certified. I think part of the reason the Texas Instruments 900MHz part was so attractive was that it carried an FCC approval (I think). In fact, based on how the other parts of the TIU and remote connection work, I'm guessing that part was used for 900 MHz wireless phones that people used to buy for their homes. With the declining usage of that band and of home (land line) phones the part was probably discontinued with no reason to reengineer a new one.
@rplst8 posted:MTH has already mentioned that a remote (in the distant future) may be a possibility. If I were them, I would focus on building a unit that could do DCS and DCC and then they could sell outside the 3-rail market.
Don't hold your breath for a new remote.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Don't hold your breath for a new remote.
I don't see a new remote coming from ANYONE. Lionel's still producing the Cab 1L remote (since what, 2013?) for those who feel the need for a physical remote, even though it doesn't support many Legacy features; but AFAIK, have no plans for a newer, updated version because they, like MTH, feel that an app can access all of the features, with none of the expense.
The old remote is sunk technology. The connectivity lkely isn't the issue, given the new MTH tiu supports wi Fi natively a new remote could easily use that ( and I suspect would make FCC cert either unneeded bc it is existing standard, or relatively easy). If ppl w existing tiu wanted to use new remote, they would need to buy the wiu wifi module,remote could work with that.
The real problem is they would need to re engineer the technology in the remote itself. Not so much the buttons&however they replace the thumb wheel, but the layer that translates that into the DCS commands.
I spoke to the guy at the MTH booth at York,and he said they were having such a rough time with the new TIU ( one thing he said was components that were supposed to be produced suddenly didn't happen&they had to re- engineer it for what they could get.) That a new remote was way,way off scope for now, they hadn't had the bandwidth to do any work on that.
Quite frankly I didn't get the impression it was likely to happen. Reading between the lines I think they are afraid that if they create a remote that the parts will suddenly not be made&leave them up the creek without a paddle,the new TIU was that hard I suspect they dont want to have that kind of grief w a remote. Apps are relatively easy, written for an OS that is standard.
All I have to say is, that after being away from trains/DCS for about 10 years....this is one interesting read! Glad my old stuff still works....for now! Greg
The handwriting was on the wall several years ago, and I stocked up in TIU's and remotes.
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
