It seemed that it was manufactured very well. The fit of parts was very good. After installing, we found that the DTS system would not track correctly; I forget exactly what it was, but it turned out that an additional transformer had to be added to boost the voltage to the motor- it was running too slow. We never tried to operate an interlocked show, because we were too nervous about it not running in sync. I'm sure they worked those problems out by now.

Ours had a 2 lens turret, and that thing would spin very fast. If you used an older anamorphic adapter (the classic type that flares out to about 4 inches dia.) and left your fingers on the focus knob, the spinning adapter would pinch your thumb between the lens and the knob. The (curved) gate and trap (bands) is a simple arrangement, but can't be removed easily; certainly not for routine cleaning. This means, for example, that if you ran a real black and white film, I don't know how you would throughly clean out the emulsion particals.

The sound 'head' used a laser beam for an 'exciter' lamp and was really bright; no problem making Dolby level. But, you need a few special tools to adjust the analog optical lens. It's an 'inertia' type of soundhead (you don't put tension on the film around the sound drum, like a Simplex or a Century; it runs free like a AAII or a Cinemecannica.) There's a toothed belt to run everything. It looks like there's a microcontroller IC to operate everything.

I noticed a flicker in the lower left of the screen, but I didn't get a chance to figure out what it was. The shutter is a fairly small diameter, and is mounted unusally close to the aperture plate. While normally this is good, I was wondering if there a problem there. There was no shutter ghosting.

The drive motor was pretty odd: the shaft was fixed and the motor body rotated. Nothing wrong with it, but it was weird.

When I used this projector, I felt like I was handling a finely made peice of machinery. I also felt that it would not survive the kind of beating uncaring 'thread-up monkeys' might inflict on it. (Although I felt the same way when I first saw a Cinemecannica V5, yet they still do OK.)

The manual (which is avaiable at the download page) is very well done. Although there are some amusing German-English translations ("The disk type shutter with its advantageous light efficiency cares for optimum exploitation of the Xenon light.") Make Xetron give you at least one good quality copy, rather than the 'copy of a copy' we got.

You might think that I didn't like it, but to even things out, the picture quality was outstanding. We had the film, "Ghost and the Darkness" and it looked wonderful. however, I felt this was a 'screening-room' projector, not a 'can beat the shit out of it' projector. But our company just bought 8 of them, and our tech guy usually does his homework, so maybe I'll be surprised. If you live near Connecticut, I can show them to you.

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