Unit uses any existing supply (4V Ac or DC to 12V - would like to find an exciter supply that can't deliver that !) and sets up with ease - gain is 4 divns from the minimum on a CP500 and HF gain (slit loss boost) is near minimum.

Units have been in the field for years without prob - any comments on longevity of these would be welcomed.

Are there many lasers in the States ? Should I bring a sample to ShoWest ?

(PS - no comments about half finished web site please - we know but prioritise looking after our existing customers over spending weeks at the keyboard )!

Peter

--jhawk

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With the units that you are installing, has this problem been overcome and if so, how?

Mark, laser diodes do result in very low crosstalk, at least as good as a reverse scan system. This is because all the light rays emitted from the diode are parallel, so there is no light cross-over in the region between the film surface and the solar cell, as there is with other light sources. Also the light intensity across the usable area of a laser diode seems to be about as consistent as it is with a red LED, so distortion appears to be pretty much the same as with an LED.

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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935

Would you like an easier question?

Have had a look at one of these re your comments Ray. Stripped the unit, projected on a a large wall a long way away and light appears to be clean. Compared this to an ASL unit and the difference was obvoius.

Crosstalk is immeasurable, as it should be

Re distortion, whilst we've not metered it ourselves we have done a lot of A / B comparisms. Using the Dolby Jiffy film the sweeps are clean (audibly, looked at on the scope, also plotting L vs R) and sound less distorted than the Cinemec basement reader kit (just happened to be one in the same building - NO disrespect inteneded to CInemecannica).

Any of these in Oz ?

Cheers

Peter

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Peter, I know Hoyts here have been installing Walter Voigt's lasers on their Kinoton machines and are reporting very good results. Who is the manufacturer of the units that you are installing? I would be very interested in taking a look at one.

We initially installed JaxLites on Kinotons but found noise, hassle (pre amp, 2 new PSU etc) and stray light to be problems. Don't stand next to projector 6A at an unnamed West End cinema with a white coat on !

We've left the exciter lamp holders intact in all machines we've done, allowing in an emergency the operator to refit the exciter lamp and lens (OK, a bit of guesswork but there's at lease a chance he or she will get the thing working) in the event of a laser failre.

Cell vunerability neednt be the problem it used to with a laser. Sure, a wraparound is going to write off a Cinemec cell regardless of what you do but because of the flexibility of location of the lasers / cells the cell and bracket can be far further back (as much as the cell allows anyway) thus avoiding snagging the cell.

Price wise, as I said we started using these units as a solution for Kinotons, although they seem to to work our well for Century etc. With these kits listing at £GBP366. i.e around $USD512 I thought they were one of the cheapest on the market - if anyone has a better solution for Kinoton my chequebook is open. Retrofit kits here aren't as easy as in the states, as most of our older machines are Westars (2001 i.e. Century) with just enough differences to make installing a Component Engineering / Kelmar / other third party kit a pain.

Yes, BACP's kits use the lowest LED current. We've looked at these and they seem very good however they are caught in a "no mans land" between cheap effective upgrades (i.e. the lasers) or the real McCoy manufacturer's kit.

What is the rollout of cyan tracks in the US ? Here all but one major chain has finished their upgrades, and this chain (using our lasers no less for Century sites) will be complete in a month or 2. Have there been many cyan releases ..

Cheers

quote:

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Sure, a wraparound is going to write off a Cinemec cell regardless of what you do...

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Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I've often thought that one way of preventing polyester film from causing damage like this would be to revive a piece of technology that was last used in the days of nitrate, namely a device which automatically cuts the film in the event of it jamming.

In nitrate-era projectors these were situated in the spoolboxes - in the event of a film path jam whilst the lamp was lit, these two cutters would slice the film, with the result that if it did ignite, only the 10 feet or so actually in the projector mechanism would burn. The rest of the reel would be safely sealed inside the two magazines.

The way this could be adapted to protect the soundhead in the event of a platter wrap would be to mount a motion sensor on the platter's feed unit (like the sensors on a TA-10 automation reader) and a cutter unit near the top of the platter tower, just where the film is angled away from the platter towards the projector.

If the sensor detected the speed of the film passing through the feed unit starting to drop significantly below 1.5 feet per second and at a rapidly accelerating rate, the cutter would instantly slice the film at the same time as the platter and projector motors were stoppped. That would have the following advantages:

• the film is cut as close as possible to the wrap, which instantly releases any pressure on the projector.
  
• the projector remains laced up without any loss of loop, strain on soundhead &c., so there is no equipment damage and no film handling necessary in the projector in order to restart the show.
  
• the film path from the projector back to the take-up plate is also preserved. Therefore, in order to restart the show after a platter wrap, all the operator needs to do is correct the wrap itself (which, given that the film will have been sliced before it got serious, shouldn't take very long) and rejoin the sliced film.
  

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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935

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I assume you already have failsafe switching for this purpose and you are referring to the damage done during the time lag due to the momentum of the projector motor as it slows to a stop...

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None of the 'wrap detector' devices attached to platters I've seen have even been activated until a certain amount of pressure has already built up (indeed, they are activated by a build-up of pressure through the feed unit rather than detecting a reduction in the speed of film movement) and as you say, the motor wind-down time then makes the situation worse.

A spring-loaded system whereby the platter maintains a 'buffer' of excess film that would be fed out to buy time in the event of a wrap shutdown could work. However, in all the systems I've seen it would need to hold at least 10 feet of film and would depend on being activated before any pressure had built up between the feed unit and the projector's entry sprocket (but there again, so would a cutter).