he liked perfection, he was on the phone to me regularly during testing, he may send me several firmware updates in a week to test various things and didnt like releasing things until they were good enough to release and i stopped giving more issues on things that should be.
yeah they are pricier but made from better components he has always told me not the cheaper components on cheaper cameras and they will last longer.
he did tell me he was doing more before he left us but that never eventuated as he left us.
I know Ric put a lot of effort and care into what he did. He was also instrumental in certain ways in influencing other dash cam manufactures to improve their game. I believe he was also highly influential early on in convincing the industry to shift to more stealthy camera designs for the western markets that eliminated all the bright chrome and big attention getting logos that were popular in Asian markets. He was quite masterful at promotion and public relations about the alleged superior quality of his products but the bottom line was that Street Guardian cameras were no more nor less reliable than any other well known brands of dash camera on this forum despite their higher prices compared to similar models from other manufacturers. While many people reported excellent performance and reliability of SG cams, others had nothing but problems, many of which were minimized or even outright denied by Ric and Jon. The general practice with SG was to promptly replace defective cameras, act like the problems never exactly existed in the first place or were very rare and then quietly would resolve any flaws and manufacturing issues in the background. This made customers happy, created loyalty and protected the brand by minimizing awareness of what was sometimes a more widespread issue than many people were aware of. Many customers were treated like someone with a unique or rare problem who were getting prompt individualized attention that provided a satisfactory resolution and sent on their way when in fact they very often were among many reporting the same problem. Any long time member here on the forum who paid close attention could witness this process first hand, especially if you'd experienced the same problem.
In my case, I received five SG9665 units before I finally got one that worked properly. One even arrived DOA (nothing but static on the screen) The first one had a focus problem that Jon insisted was a "one off" and then the second camera went badly out of focus worse than the first one, yet Ric and Jon continued to claim for years that the out-of focus issues were "extremely rare"
despite dozens of threads and countless reports about the problem here on DCT.
There were other serious issues, such as the
high contrast/dynamic range problem that went on for a year and a half of stalling, denial and asking to see more 'examples' until it was quietly fixed without ever actually admitting there was a problem in the first place. I first contacted Ric and Jon privately about the problem out of discretion so as to not make a public fuss but after many months of being asked to provide more and more "proof" and documentation and then being told to wait months for the next firmware update only to eventually discover months later when the firmware was released that it didn't address the problem at all I lost patience and finally went public about the problem with the above thread that then also went for many months without a resolution.
I endured a lot of flack, push back and SG fanboy abuse over this one from certain members on the forum including and especially you, but I was heartened to receive many supportive PMs from other members who reported the same issue and similar experiences with Street Guardian and their products.
I had two SG966GCs. In the end both of them died from the endless boot looping issue.
I don't know what came over me but I went out and purchased another Street Guardian camera, the
SGGCX2PRO+ but the image quality was so poor that I returned it. The footage had major pixelation issues, which I found intolerable considering all the hype about the camera and what I had just spent, so I returned the unit. Sometime later, I saw on the forum that Street Guardian acknowledged the problem and admitted that the pixelation issue was a firmware shortcoming that was scheduled for an update but by that time I was done with Street Guardian and no longer owned the camera. How can any company release an expensive new camera with a problem like that and not be aware of it?
Meanwhile, I've been running two Viofo A119 V3s for 4 years now without a single glitch or issue despite the harsh environment they operate in. They far exceed the performance, features and reliability of the SG9665GCs but cost half as much.
global.canon
