NOTE TO INTERNATIONAL CONTIBUTORS:
Please add $15 to your contribution to ensure shipping to your location.

Update #3 - 5/13/13

Hey everyone, we continue to be blown away by the support you are showing us!  The team is very excited to start utilizing these funds to build out the studio and order equipment but we have just a few days left to get some more contributions.  To sign off, we have a very unique PERK that we added: Signed Legacy Hardware.

If you sign up for that perk, you'll get the Tshirt, the banner-free site, entry into the GOLD CLUB (http://pcper.com/goldclub) and also a piece of legacy hardware signed by Ryan Shrout and Josh Walrath.  Selection of these parts will be first come, first serve, so get in quick!  Here is what we have to offer:

Update #2 - 4/25/13

Wow, what a great week here at PC Perspective!  In just about 7 days were able to hit our first goal of funding with more than $10,000 in contributions from about 120 fans!  To say that we are proud of these results and grateful to our fans would be a huge understatement.  THANK YOU for continuing to make this site better with each passing day.

I do want to point though, since I was asked a few times on Twitter, that you can still contribute to our project here and we laid out plans for contributions up to and beyond the $20,000 mark.

"An update of this caliber would allow us to increase not only the quality of our videos dramatically but would allow us to very quickly turn around new videos as the need to rewire the cameras and connections for each shoot would be gone."

So please, if you are willing and able, we would love to be able to expand our video production even further so increasing our funding over the next 23 is crucial!  

Thanks again for everyone's support!  I hope to have a preview of the new Tshirt design soon as well!  Stay tuned!

Update #1 - 4/19/13

Wow, we are incredibly excited about the outreach of support we have seen in our first day of this Indiegogo campaign! The entire team at PC Perspective is proud to have a dedicated audience that wants to see us grow and expand!

I did want to make a clarification: all contributions OVER $100 will also be entered into the PC Perspective Gold Club, so feel free to donate over that level and you will still be included in that group with all of its benefits.

Also, because our two $1000 contribution levels have been grabbed so quickly, we are going to brainstorm for some new ideas for perks, so expect to see a couple of new options on the right hand side over the next day!

We have had some requests for more info on the upcoming set designs, and our designer Joey Northcutt hooked us up with a couple of different renders.  Enjoy!

Thank you again for all of your support!!

If you are anything like us, you love technology.  Motherboards, graphics cards, processors, SSDs, monitors, laptops, tablets, cell phones and more.  And you also love reading about them, hearing about them and seeing them, dissecting them and finding out what makes them tick.

You probably also care about deciding which of these impressive technologies you are going to buy, so you depend on honest, thorough and timely reviews of devices to help you make your buying decision.

At PC Perspective (www.pcper.com), I have been reviewing products since 2004 and actually worked on Amdmb.com and Athlonmb.com since 2000.  My life has been built around my love of technology and my desire to offer up opinions and information about it. 

Over the last 8+ years at PC Perspective, we have tried to stay ahead of the curve in content distribution including starting one of the first hardware-focused podcasts in May of 2007 and introducing video reviews in January of 2009.  (We have come a long way from THIS! http://www.viddler.com/v/e41ff04a)

I am confident that high quality video content is the future of our medium and while we have been able to do quite a lot with the basic technology and setup we have here today, my goal is to be able to bring the readers regular, high quality video content on all aspects of technology.  We want to not only have video reviews for products but we want to be able to do near-daily content updates on the news of the day while balancing that with long-form interviews of personalities that make the industry function.  We have dabbled in some of these content types and the responses have been great, but we need a higher quality setup to really do it right.

What we want to do

Our goal with this project is to build the funds necessary to turn our office in Florence, KY into a high tech video production outlet that starts with a quality set design and better quality equipment. 

The first step is the set - we want to stop producing our videos in front a painted wall and introduce a set designed by professionals and for professionals.  We have had the design for some time now and simply haven't had the ability to get it built - that is where we are hoping this drive comes in.  

Our design spans the entire length of our office and will act as the background for three different set segments permitting individual, short-form videos, round table discussions and a more casual interview setting.  Each of the "fins" in our design are individually milled in a C&C plant in Cincinnati and will be lit by LED lights that are RGB controllable depending on the mood and project we are discussing.  

Each new mini-set will require additional lighting as well so we'll be adding in new LED panels that can be adjusted for brightness easily.  Additional cameras will be installed so that we can film each area without having to relocate the few cameras we have now each and every time.

Add in some updates to our live video production station (desk, displays) new furniture, additional cables and the need to have an electrician run some new lines for us and we found a reasonable start up cost at $13,000.  You may notice our fund raising goal is less than that, but we feel if we can hit that level we are seeing dramatic commitment from our fans to proceed regardless.  

Stretch Goal: $20,000 For Production Gear

Our primary goal is to get the necessary funding for the updated sets, providing us the space and ability to record more, and more unique, videos on technology.  In an ideal world, we would love to hit a higher level of funding to update our current control hardware from a single PC to a more professional setup.

This update will basically entail a handful of Blackmagic Design devices including a video hub that allows easily connecting up to 16 cameras and switching between them, a quad-HD-SDI capture card for receiving the output of the video hub and a collection of HDMI-to-SDI converter boxes for each camera to convert the HDMI signal to the video hub SDI format.

An update of this caliber would allow us to increase not only the quality of our videos dramatically but would allow us to very quickly turn around new videos as the need to rewire the cameras and connections for each shoot would be gone.  

I know $20,000 for video production might seem like a lot of money to you, but in truth, this financial boost would get us up to the same production and quality levels of many of your home news channels!  The cost of these tools has dropped dramatically and what used to cost several hundred thousand dollars can now be done for the $20k we are looking for on this project.

Should we be fortunate enough to continue past the $20,000 mark in our project, don't worry, we have plenty of ideas for how to properly utilize the money for additional hardware to assist us.  Items like hardware studio switches and hardware video processing off loaders are the next steps!

What you get

Other than supporting one of your favorite online outlets, we have also lined up some sweet perks for contributors to our project.  We have ad-free versions of the site, Tshirts and access to the PC Perspective Gold Club that has some pretty ridiculous giveaways!  If you support us even further you can get some individual time with our team to tell us why you supported us, answer your questions or even join us for an episode of the PC Perspective Podcast!  

Come visit the offices, join the process of creating a new show or make fun of Josh's laugh in person - it's all possible!

What is the result?

So then what?  Other than the killer perks you can get for contributing to our project what will helping to provide this hardware to PC Perspective result in?  

Better quality shows.
More shows.
More interactivity.

The key to these upgrades in set and hardware is drastically lowered turn around time, enabling us to spend more time CREATING shows and less time moving things and reconfiguring in the office for shows.  Many times we would like to produce different kinds of content but the time involved in deconstructing the set we use for the PC Perspective Podcast and reconstructing is simply not possible.  

Our vision is to make PC Perspective the premiere spot for technology video content including reviews, analysis and interviews.  We have already started down that path with many industry personalities making their way to Florence, KY for live streaming segments, but I know we can do so much more given the right environment and the right equipment.

If you love technology as much as we do, and you want to see the quality of available technology content go up, then would you kindly help us and contribute what you can to the PC Perspective set and productions project??