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Depending on the plex size, the number of screens on one core, the price can favor Q-SYS. But one isn't really comparing same-same. The control portion of Q-SYS can't be underestimated as well as how things tune up. Even in a cookie-cutter plex, I can make the use case for Q-SYS. I have a set up now where you can do a master booth shutdown (or power up) but it also checks to see if any content is transferring and if so, it checks back every 5-minutes to allow all content to transfer before shutting that particular screen down. You can't do that with a CP950 and most automation systems yet it comes along for the ride on the Q-SYS system. Multiply those sorts of features out, and the case for Q-SYS just grows.
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Wow Leo, I actually had a test site running the 5000 in commercial operation and never saw the plug-in. The test program ended before it was ready I believe. Was the plug-in any good? I think there was a lot of promise there and they were very close.Comment
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Q-SYS is a nice example of how non-cinema technology is invading the otherwise closed and niche market of cinema. The price of systems like Q-SYS will drop over time and we'll probably see a healthy competition between Q-SYS and other manufacturers of similar "software based Audio Networking" solutions.
It will be interesting to see what will become of the "traditional" IMS in the future. Will we still be playing DCPs in 10 years or will the DCP delivery method make way for "content delivery solutions" that are more akin to direct streaming solutions with some local buffering?
While the DCP has been proven to be a pretty secure delivery vehicle, what sense does it make if content is being delivered to streaming services day and date? Those same services could very well deliver the same content in higher bitrates to "professional subscribers" like cinemas as wel...Comment
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The plugin let you drag and drop transport buttons, status fields, and that sort of stuff into the UI, and control functions using control routers and/or the block controller. It was essentially pretty good, but had some rough edges (one that I remember was that the time remaining field only gave you the time remaining on the CPL being played, not the overall SPL). A little more finessing and it would have been great, but I think the plug was pulled on that project before it got to that stage.
If your Internet connection goes down while you're watching Netflix, that's a show disrupted for 3-4 people at most. In a crowded movie theater... The cost of local storage is low enough, and the encryption methods for DCPs secure enough, that I can't see any argument for doing away with local storage to serve the last mile, even if content delivery to the building goes completely online.Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen
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Yeah, that's why you probably want some "local caching", more like the way the first iteration of Netflix streaming used to work a year or 10 ago... There you essentially downloaded your movie before watching it.Originally posted by Leo Enticknap View Post
But you can imagine other solutions... The cost of connectivity is going down, if you're running a chain of multiplexes, you could decide to host your content in some centralized datacenter or maybe even "the cloud", using some redundant high-performance fiber connections to your central datacenter or "said cloud".
I see more and more stuff moving into the cloud, some of which I'm not sure it entirely belongs there. Quite a few theaters have moved their ticketing entirely into the cloud for example. Also, we're now starting to see how entire N-plexes are getting centralized on one or two centrally located Q-SYS boxes. The next move will be centralized storage, which is entirely doable with modern SSD backed storage and 10G connectivity...
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GDC has a system of almost live streaming from a TMS directly into individual media blocks (SR-1000s) already, with, as you suggest, a small amount of local SSD buffer cache in each SMS. The gotcha is that the networking requirements are very high end and very exact (both in the performance of switches and cabling). It was trialed in a 12-plex I originally installed in 2019 just before the pandemic hit, but that trial was abandoned because the streaming playback was too glitchy and unreliable. What that exercise said to me was that for a new install, or if you're prepared to tear out a lot of drywall to install cat7 and fiber throughout your building, it might work; but for most retrofit situations (i.e. if you're not doing a new install or major refurb of the fabric of the building at the same time), it isn't viable. Given the low cost of local storage and the speed of non-livestreamed transfer of content within a theater (i.e. between TMS and SMS), it's a solution without a problem.Comment
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Yeah, you'll need a 10 GBit nework right into the IMS, so preferably fiber not just into the booth but also into the IMS. This would require retrofits for existing installs, but for new installs, fiber is hardly more expensive than Cat7.
The core switching would require 40G or maybe even 100G interfaces as uplink towards your storage and same for the storage server. You probably want to run your storage server on PCIe backed SSD storage to be able to serve a 12-plex from a single storage machine.
This hardware is still a bit cost-prohibitive, but prices have been coming down rapidly. In the end, there is a continuous drive to centralization and I think this development is pretty much unstoppable, even if the net-positives are limited.
We've recently been looking at consolidating our storage and replacing some of our aging and quite power hungry storage infrastructure. One offer we got from Dell was a storage box with like 40 TByte net storage on PCIe backed storage in two 1U boxes... yeah, they were a tad pricey but if you need a plan to eliminate 12 potential NASes in a 12-plex, it may actually just work, if you want to take the risk.Comment
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Is there any IMS on the market that can take a fiber transceiver?
Returning to the subject of the topic, the cat745 has an SFP port on it, but it was never activated in any version of the software. I once had to install a projector located around a 260-270ft cable run from the server - close to the theoretical limit of cat6 - and asked Dolby if I could use a fiber transceiver in that SFP slot. They told me no - it doesn't do anything. Presumably USL had plans for it when they did the initial hardware design, but those plans never came to anything.Comment
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The Cat745 has two SFP-shaped openings, don't know if they actually have a backplane connection.
But no, no IMS currently has an SFP or rather SFP+ port, even those that do support 10GBit ethernet, so you'd need some kind of media-converter, which hover around the $200 range for 10G-BaseT to SFP+ models. But you probably need something like a switch anyway, as you probably still would need 1000BaseT connectivity. You could get a 24 x 1000BaseT and 4 x SFP+ switch, manageable for anywhere between $500 and $1500 new as your "booth switch" (including optics/tranceivers if you buy them wisely and don't spend tons on overpriced OEM optics...), you can use VLANs to segment your network. Of those ports, you could use 2 SFP+ ports to uplink to your core switches, redundantly, another 10GE port could go to your 10GBaseT port on your IMB and the other 24 ports can be used for all the stuff on ordinary 10/100/1000 ports...
One IMS alone will not fill up a 10GBit uplink, so there is sufficient capacity left on those switch uplinks for "all the rest", including Q-Sys.Comment
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Even if no-one has seen the Dolby cat745 low battery warning in action, I did encounter the ICMP's this morning, and it seemed to do its job well. This was a very similar location to the cat45 that inspired the start of this thread: a college screening room that had been totally shut down for about 18 months. Interestingly, the low battery warning did not appear when I first booted the projector and ICMP. After doing various other checks and maintenance (the self tests, pulling, contact cleaning, and reseating the boards, cleaning the air filters, etc.), I updated the ICMP from 1.4.2.1 to 1.4.3.8, and after the reboot, got this:
low_battery smallpic.jpg
I'd brought some CR2477Ns and California contraband (a plastic drinking straw), and so swapped it out: rebooted it, and the error went away. Got away with that one. I caught this one just in the nick of time: the old battery was almost six years old...
ICMP_battery_smallpic.jpg
...and had fallen well below 3 volts:
old_battery_voltage_smallpic.jpg
But the certificate was still OK. Only just, though, I'd guess.
The drifted secure clock (unsurprising, given how long the ICMP had been without power) is a thornier problem. It's drifted by 52 minutes, and the patch Cinionic has can only adjust by up to 30. They're working on that now and have promised to get back to me.
But it appears that for the ICMP at least, the low battery warning feature on later versions of the firmware works, and gives you enough warning to swap it out.Comment
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Leo, you photo doesn't show it well...the battery is the CR2477N, is it not? It has that mini-flange on it like the CAT745 battery? The flange and writing face up.Comment
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The battery that came out (pictured above) was a plain CR2477 - I replaced it with a CR2477N. The difference is that the CR2477 has no flange, and the positive terminal is the top and side - negative is the bottom surface only.
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The CR2477N has a plastic insulating ring around the bottom facing surface of the flange. The side below the ring and the bottom surface are both negative - only the top, and the rim of the flange, is positive. The cat745 and USL IMS can only take the CR2477N, because the holder is grooved to take the flange, and the negative contact is on the side (battery mounted vertically).
CR2477N.jpg
The Barco ICMP and ICP-D battery holder can take either: the rim of the holder is low enough for the bottom of the flange to sit on top of it, but the spring-loaded contacts, top and bottom, will also hold a regular CR2477 in place (they have the same overall height). Because the N variant will go in all of them (Dolby/USL and Barco), that is what I carry around with me.Last edited by Leo Enticknap; 09-13-2021, 09:29 PM.Comment
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