No Dongles with V14

[Bruno Mansi]

Just seen a video where Bob Caniglia from Blackmagic state that new purchases of Resolve (at the $299 price) will no longer ship with a dongle, but with a software licence key.

Those already owning dongles will get the free upgrade, but it's unclear at the moment if there will be any option to purchase a dongle with any future release.

[Margus Voll]

If they switch the whole system i would say not. I bet it is more cost effective t have software keys and not millions of dongles shipped out at that price point.

[Tom Evans]

Any reason why they should continue providing dongles? 

[Bruno Mansi]

7 hours ago, Tom Evans said:

Any reason why they should continue providing dongles? 

At the most basic level, software licences are usually tied to a machine, so if you wanted to move from (say) your main workstation to a laptop, you couldn't do this without a second licence. There's a number of ways software licensing can be managed so that one licence can be moved, and the method of moving a licence depends on the manufacturer. The usual way is to deactivate the licence on one machine and then activate it on another. Often this done using an internet connection so that the company's licensing server can do the necessary switch, but if you can't get an internet connection or the server's down then you'll have problems.

Other issues with software licensing can happen if you have a workstation go bad or fail to start. Without a working computer you won't be able to deactivate the licence to transfer it, so it then means having to call support for them to manually deactivate. Other times a hardware change in your workstation could cause your licence to fail, as your unique machine ID is often created from the particular hardware ID's (eg. MAC addresses) in your workstation.

With a dongle, all these problems go away. Assuming your dongle doesn't 'go bad' (I've never heard this happening) or you don't damage or lose it, you can happily have Resolve on as many machines as you want, and you're simply carrying your licence in your pocket.

[Tom Evans]

That makes sense! I've never attributed value to my dongles, only thought of them as burdens taking up extra USB ports.

[Bruno Mansi]

An update from Day May, the president of Blackmagic.

Seems as if the $299 software 'key' will be tied to a single machine and not transferable.

If you look at the video, he says that the cheaper price was to allow people to buy multiple licences if they want to run Resolve on more than one machine.

 

[Russ Blaise]

I just ordered BMD DR Studio for $299. and it still comes with the Dongle. Though we are still at the 12.5 version. Probably what will happen when DR14 goes gold, those first time buyers of DR14 will not receive a Dongle, but have to do an online activation of the software. Will the people with the Dongle be able to activate the software from version 15 and beyond? Will have to wait and see! 

[Abby Bader]

On 29.5.2017 at 2:21 AM, Russ Blaise said:

Will the people with the Dongle be able to activate the software from version 15 and beyond? Will have to wait and see! 

You can run similar systems on activation or old dongles, you just have to update the dongle drivers. Could be the case here as well.

[Bruno Mansi]

On 29/05/2017 at 1:21 AM, Russ Blaise said:

Will the people with the Dongle be able to activate the software from version 15 and beyond? Will have to wait and see! 

Given that most people with dongles would have bought the Studio version at the old, higher price, it would seem to be bad public relations for Blackmagic to force them to pay again. It may be that they might introduce some sort of yearly subscription (similar to what Avid has) or upgrade option that allows you to keep up with current versions, but given how cheap Resolve has become, I can't see this costing even $100.

[Russ Blaise]

23 minutes ago, Bruno Mansi said:

but given how cheap Resolve has become, I can't see this costing even $100

Yeah, I don't have too much of a problem paying a small upgrade fee for each main version. (don't tell them that) :-)