What is the oldest and/or highest mileage DCI projector you have in service?

[Leo Enticknap]

Just finished a service call on an NC2500 with a manufacturing date of October 2006, and 117,902 hours of card cage runtime on the clock. It's in a post-production screening room and has been in pretty much continuous use since it was installed new.

I was there because the LPSU had bitten the dust (lamp would go out after a few minutes). They had a new spare in stock: I swapped it in, and the projector was back to working without any complaints.

[Gordon McLeod]

We have one that is a engineering prototype for the NC2500 still operating

[Mike Babb]

In Michigan there are hundreds of series 1 Christie CP2000 operating daily.

[Pete Naples]

Plenty of those CP2000s in the UK still working happily. Some DP100 based Kinoton DCP too. We did have a Barco DP100 in use quite recently, it may well still be.

[Marin Zorica]

Also some 6 CP2000 working with Doremi DCP2000. Did not check the time, but is not low since they are all in multiplex.

[Steve Guttag]

I've definitely come across some old CP2000S projectors (and the "X" versions). We no longer have any DP100s but had one from 2004 in service for a long time. I think our oldest in OUR service is a CP2000-SB or a DP2000. Definitely towards the end of the S1 era.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I have seen a number of the experimental T.I. projectors sitting.in booths... the one used to project the first digital Star Wars. GDC also has, or had one in their training lab in.Burbank.
There may be a few DP-40's still kicking around in the dead equipment rooms of cinemas...

[Adrian Avram]

Christie CP2000 - 60300 hours - 2008 ish - still running strong
Arround 35 other CP2000-SB clocking hours as well.
The one part I never had to change in them is the cooling pump, not a single failure so far.

[Dave Macaulay]

CP2000S blue monster, over 80,000h in 2019. Powered up through the lockdowns as far as I know so considerably more by now. Still works, plans to replace it though. Has had a new lamp blower at least but no major parts failures. These things just keep going. Of course the light efficiency sucks.

[Randy Stankey]

Just finished a service call on an NC2500 with a manufacturing date of October 2006, and 117,902 hours of card cage runtime on the clock.

Doing the math, it looks like that projector was bought new, right off the assembly line then operated an average of 16 to 18 hours per day, every day since it was installed.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Doing the math, it looks like that projector was bought new, right off the assembly line then operated an average of 16 to 18 hours per day, every day since it was installed.

There were quite a few NC-1600's and NC-2500's in the Salt Lake City area. Most were Dolby Leases. Those things were practically bullet proof but they were rats nests of wiring. They took care of the rats nest via the S-2 projectors

[Jim Cassedy]

Do rats actually have wired nests?
. . . Did you ever wire one?
RatsNest.jpg
No rats in this rack ! (there's no room )

[Leo Enticknap]

Doing the math, it looks like that projector was bought new, right off the assembly line then operated an average of 16 to 18 hours per day, every day since it was installed.

It is in a dubbing stage for a studio post production facility which is used pretty intensively, so I can believe it. I was in there at 5am and told that I had to be done and out by 8, because the room was in use from that point. The projector was running with the lamp off when I arrived, which leads me to suspect that it is almost never powered down to standby - they just turn off the lamp at the end of the day, hence racking up all those card cage hours. Maybe the lack of power cycling helped its longevity? Furthermore, it runs with 7kW bulbs in it, and so has also withstood a lot of heat over the years.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It is in a dubbing stage for a studio post production facility which is used pretty intensively, so I can believe it. I was in there at 5am and told that I had to be done and out by 8, because the room was in use from that point. The projector was running with the lamp off when I arrived, which leads me to suspect that it is almost never powered down to standby - they just turn off the lamp at the end of the day, hence racking up all those card cage hours. Maybe the lack of power cycling helped its longevity? Furthermore, it runs with 7kW bulbs in it, and so has also withstood a lot of heat over the years.

From my datacenter experience, I know that "leaving stuff on" all day and night often prolongs longevity. Brushless motors can go a long way before failing and keeping stuff turning also ensures grease and oils don't start to get lumpy. A real clean environment void of (popcorn) oil and dust also helps a lot. I've seen a lot of machines with uptimes of 5 years or more since the last reboot. I guess the longest uptime I've ever encountered was something close to 20 years for a MicroVAX. Some switches with uptimes of more than 10 years, etc. Often times, once you start to power-cycle those old clunkers, they'll simply die.

The oldest projector we're still regularly using is a small art house running on a DP100. They only show a few movies a month, so it's not clocking in that many hours anymore. But, next time, I'll check the number of hours on it. They got it from a big multiplex, essentially for free as it was supposed to be destroyed. It had been in service for close to 10 years. It has had its fair share of little troubles especially with the water cooling circuit, but it's still going strong and still on the first light engine, without any stuck pixels (knock on wood).

[Alban Birch]

We're on the verge of replacing a Kinoton DCP30 with a CP2000H. We do have our open-air CP2000SB as back-up or partsdonor if something fails in the CP2000H. I'll have to check the runninghours of those 3 machines