Capturing the Market

Digital lecture capture and broadcast solutions have been around for only about 10 years, but are poised for healthy growth. Frost & Sullivan research analysts estimate that the market (which amounts to $25 million currently) will quadruple by 2013. It's still dominated by a few key players, however: Sonic Foundry holds a hefty 40 percent-plus market share, and only a handful of vendors provide the lecture capture systems in use at most major universities. The cost of these systems varies widely, though, depending on the features and functions available. In general, vendors charge a fairly inexpensive licensing fee for software--DyKnow, for example, charges anywhere from $24 to $108 per license depending on the product and volume. Watch out: Hardware, training, and maintenance costs can run into tens of thousands of dollars a year. Many vendors offer programs that capture content in some form or other; even an iPod, for example, can be used to record a lecture and play it back. A full-fledged content capture system, however, is designed "specifically" for that purpose and offers a spectrum of features tailored to K-12 or higher education instructional content. This article provides a sampling (in alphabetical order by vendor name) of major lecture capture solution providers whose products fit that definition.