New Humminbird enhanced Sonar Software

[Joby @ Humminbird]

As many of you know there has been a considerable amount of discussion on the Humminbird -vs- Lowrance 2D Downlooking sonar over the last year or so. We have been working on a new software release that will address everyone's concern on this issue. My boss released the following statement to the SI Yahoo site this afternoon. I am excited to pass this information on to all of you. There are some pictures as well on the bass fishing home page web site.
Mark wrote:
I will be giving seminars @ 1:00 and 5:00 this Saturday at the Gonzales, LA Cabelas. One of the topics at this seminar will be a major enhancement that we will be releasing within the next couple of weeks. This enhancement is in downlooking sonar. We have been working on a major upgrade to our downlooking sonar for over a year. The amount of detail that you will be able to get on the downlooking sonar is incredible.

Just to explain the process a little:
As I have mentioned before we are constantly looking for areas where we can improve our product to assure that it is the very best product on the market. The goal of our efforts was to create a downlooking sonar that was superior to anything on the market today. We gathered feedback from consumers who were critical of our downlooking sonar and talked to them to make sure we understood what they felt were the shortcomings of our downlooking sonar.

Marketing and Engineering then worked together to develop a downlooking sonar that would address the shortcomings that were brought up by the critics. We also wanted to make sure that we didn't loose the features that we now have in our downlooking sonar that people love.

When we had what we thought we were looking for we went back out to these critics and gave them pre-released software with the changes incorporated and asked their opinion on the new software. So far the feedback from this group that has tested the software is that they are blown away with the incredible detail of the software and the great lure tracking performance. We also have given the pre-released software to some of our regular pros and field testers and their comments have been along the same as those of the critics.

One of the primary advances in the software is the enhanced jig tracking capability. Other advantages are enhanced detail of both structure and fish. There is one main NEW setting in the unit. This new setting is a setting for TVG. Currently our units use TVG. TVG for those that might not know is Time Variable Gain. The great value of Time Variable Gain is that it adjusts sonar returns to compensate for differences in depth. For example if you were fishing with another brand of fishfinder (no names mentioned) they don't use TVG so if there were a 10 pound bass in 10 foot of water and the same exact 10 pound bass in 50 foot of water the return from the 10 pound bass in 10 foot of water would be much larger and stronger than the 10 pound bass in 50 foot of water because of the differences in depth. With our current software the TVG will make adjustments to the returns to compensate for the different depths and both returns will have the same strength and size. The downside of TVG is that to accomplish the compensation there is some reduction in overall signal strength capability.

The new software will provide more flexibility to the user than other products on the market. If the user wants to get a cleaner screen presentation and utilize the advantages of TVG then they would operate with the TVG ON setting, which is comparable to how our product currently works. This setting is also best for very shallow water conditions, which explains why our product outperforms the competition in very shallow water. If the user wants to track jigs, spoons or drop shot or get the absolute greatest amount of detail of fish and structure they would use the TVG OFF setting. By utilizing this approach we have provided more flexibility in our units than the competition has. I am going to create an album called TVG OFF to show some of the detail you can expect with the TVG OFF setting. One of the downsides of not using TVG is increased surface clutter. If you have used competitive products you are aware of this. We have also included an much improved Surface Clutter adjustment in the new software as well.