Small Room Projector - Barco vs NEC

[James Wyrembelski]

Are we just a break even? That's why he wants to know grosses outside of his branch. He even goes as far as saying that if grosses can be open, they should just be flat out open or flat out closed. Because, a buyer can look anyone up and see them, but we're left only able to view those that are open and within our branch. (Kind of a side point) So, essentially if you book for yourself with open grosses, the guy next door can keep his closed but just ask a buyer what yours are.

Again, while unlikely, there could be something to collective grosses. I would buy the idea that we may just be break even in the grand scheme of things in the days of film. But with extremely low print cost and now internet delivery. What cost is there outside of that and maybe kdm generation? Even physical marketing material is progressively going away in favor of digital signage. I don't work on that side of things and since we're kept in the dark on pretty much everything it's hard to say either way. Again, entering into conspiracy territory, if we do collectively contribute far more than we think we do it wouldn't make sense to choke us out either. But, maybe there's a much bigger plan.

Just something to think about.

I'd also add that it's just such an odd business to feel like you're mostly unwanted or really not needed. If I don't order Pepsi for a hot minute they're right on me wanting to know if I need anything. It's not as if we're a huge account when the gas station across the street does circles around me, or the grocery store just a half a mile down the road that probably sells more in a couple hours than I do all week. But, they still want my business no matter how small.

I've went way off topic here but Darin you'll have to let us know how this small screening room works out for you. I'm hoping for the best and perhaps you'll lead the way in showing us there is an alternative way for us smaller places to get ahead.

[Darin Steffl]

Once I confirmed we'll have the electronics in place to go live on June 10, I contacted our booker today. He was so happy for us because I've told him we were planning this small second screen for awhile now.

We spent 10 mins going through what movies we CAN get this summer that we wouldn't be able to as a single, or we'd get it way too late like 6+ weeks after release.

Movies we added to our schedule that we'd have to skip as a single:
-Jurassic World
-Minions
-Paws of Fury
-Downtown Abbey - We might get this if top gun isn't 3 weeks

This is just for our schedule from 6/10 to 7/29. The top 3 movies listed will do great business for us and we'll get each of them on release date. We'd have to skip them or play them way later without our new screen. You can see our current schedule at kassontheatre.com and it seems like we have a great summer lineup now.

I'll update this thread periodically with our results and trends. My Facebook post announcing this new screen and our schedule has 191 likes and 37 shares so far in 8 hours. 5,421 people reached and 811 engagements. We're off to a good start on social media. I'm thinking about if we need to do Twitter, Instagram, and tiktok content to reach more people.

[Marcel Birgelen]

James may be right, they may not want the bunch of us to know how much we contribute to their coffers, but I think we are likely mostly a break-even for them. If they didn't have us, they'd probably not care. Hell they already don't care about the millions in upfront money they lose when they decide to send some of their most high-profile movies straight to streaming just to get a few subscribers to their "plus" service.

They do care about the millions, but those millions are made elsewhere. Those streaming numbers will boost their stock value short-term and that's what will bring in their multi-million dollar bonusses. Yeah, I can imagine that it's hard for those manager types to focus on their long-term mission, if they can make rather easy millions if they pull off some tricks in the short time they'll be in that position. There are just too many perverse incentives. The whole mission of "increasing shareholder value" often runs counter to the long-term interests of their company and the ecosystem the company operates in.

But still, the value that all those "little screens" add to their bottom-line is probably easily forgotten, until it suddenly isn't there anymore, because I'm pretty sure it's significant and at least 25% of the total theatrical market. Not only that, but I do think that the "smaller theaters" will become much more relevant in the nearby future. People may go out less, but will spend more on the occasions they do go out. As a result, they'll expect a better overall experience, something that exceeds the bland multiplex experience of yesteryear.

Yeah, they may want to walk over you and just forget about it all, but in the end, you see them always making a U-turn, as those millions they're throwing away because of "progress" eventually come back to haunt them. So, getting organized may not be such a bad idea. While there may be all kinds of anti-collusion laws, eventually, the Hollywood studios are running a quasi-monopoly, there has to be a way to be able to defend the exhibition industry from their malpractices.

[Leo Enticknap]

You don't want people that are not qualified trying to install updates...

I see no reason why end users shouldn't install software updates, and lots of reasons why they should be encouraged to do so, and equipment manufacturers should make it as easy and as "idiot proof" as possible for them to do so. This is effectively what Dolby did with the IMS3000, apart from not having the update files available on a publicly accessible website.

The only potential gotchas are attempting to install software for the wrong equipment, a bad interaction between the new version and other equipment that the device interacts with, and power loss while flashing/writing is in process. The former can be eliminated by a checking process done by the software that does the updating process, and if no UPS is used, the latter is a risk even if Ray Dolby himself were installing the update. That just leaves bad interactions with other equipment. Admittedly that's a more thorny problem, and one for which an experienced tech is more likely to be able to find a solution. But given the scale of the problems encountered by the Interop to SMPTE transition, and how fewer of those problems would have happened if projectors, servers, and media blocks had been kept up to date, I'm not convinced that the mentality of "end users should not update their equipment" necessarily does more good them harm.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

In my case none of the people I ever serviced are computer savvy enough. except a couple, to see to it that it gets done in a timely manner and correctly. In the past I have had quite a number of S2 update installs freeze up and stop. In theory this could still happen. Anyway, I do the updates remotely always with the customer present at the other end. Even though many of them have been through 50+ updates on projector, server, etc. with me over the years. Few to none would be able to remember how to do it, and there are some passwords you just don't give out. At GDC training in BUrbank... yea, a long time ago. I had attended Technicolor 3-D training the three prior days... Anyway, I had to sign an NDA that included not giving out passwords. But I am sure they are very lax about that now. GDC will send the current update for X server out to anyone, along with the instructions to install. Hence not making update files public is actually a good thing for those that are not computer savvy. Manufacturers all know things can go wrong during an update. Even the file could become corrupt just from downloading it, or loading onto a bad USB Drive... I have seen lots of those.. If I happen to be on site, which is very rare since I retired, then I will do updates when I am present. Me doing the updates while on site was standard until retirement. I visited every site at least twice yearly, some 3 to 5 times a year. In a plex you can be running an update while you pull maintenance on other screens then move the update to the next machine. Doing booth maintenance is all about multi-tasking.. So there isn't really a wasted time factor involved where one can say, the customer should have done this him self.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

This the work of Cinionic (sp). They are essentially the master USA dealer for Barco and then sell on to the cinema dealer network. Barco has excellent engineering but seemingly sketchy business practices.

Bet I won't be invited to the Barco party in Vegas!

Sam... You should crash the party anyway!

[Leo Enticknap]

Don't take it personally - I also install and fix their stuff for a living, and I've never gotten an invite, either! Invites for things like that tend to go to people with the power to make or influence multi-million dollar sales deals, not those who do the chalk face work once those deals have been done. Can't say that it bothers me - after 8 hours of standing in the booth, my priority is usually to get the weight of my feet ASAP, a quick meal, and an early night.

[Mike Blakesley]

I'm thinking about if we need to do Twitter, Instagram, and tiktok content to reach more people.

If you want to reach people under 30 you definitely need some of those. I wouldn't worry about Twitter too much. The kids are all on TikTok. Nobody under about 20 has a Facebook account and if they do, they never use it. Instagram is more for the 20-30 crowd (and a healthy number of teens too, but I've heard that it's dwindling). The other big one for teens is Snapchat, I'm not sure how you do marketing on that though.

Facebook has the Meta Business Suite that will automatically post to Instagram simultaneously with Facebook, and there are multiple other sites that will post to a whole bunch of them at once. (For a small fee, of course.)

You might also want to think about collecting email addresses and send out a weekly newsletter. We use Mailchimp for our email, and there is a link to the signup page on our website. Our email goes out to about 800 people as of now, but it's steadily increasing... at this time last year I think we were in the 600's. I just copy the "now showing" section of our website homepage and paste it into the email, add a little editorial content on the side for "news" and out it goes.

[Frank Cox]

http://melvilletheatre.com/articles/listwrangler/

[Emmanuel Nwokafor]

I have installed both the SP2K-7 and the NC1201L and I have no issues with the contrast if both machines, Steve mentioned that the NEC lens drifted over time but my experience the recent NEC projectors are very amazing as I've little or no issues with all my NEC installations.
@Darin in your case NC1000C with Dolby IMS3000 is your best option to compare the size of your screen and also it'll be less expensive to replace lamps than paying upfront of about $10K for laser light.

[Steve Guttag]

I'm sorry Emmanuel, you are just factually wrong. The contrast on the NC-1201 is miserable at 1600:1. What is the gain of the screen you are using? If it is higher than 1.3, you are not DCI/SMPTE compliant for light uniformity. As for the NEC lens drift...it isn't over time, it is with each use. Create two lens positions (Flat and Scope for a common height screen). Switch between them, the lens will not return to the same place. It will be inches off in any direction. By luck, you might, on the 10th try have it come back to where it was 10-tries ago. I haven't found ANY NEC .69" projectors that can have their lens position be repeatable (to within a pixel) from use-to-use.

[Carsten Kurz]

They may not be too accurate between changes, but they don't drift away over time as some other systems. I have set an NC900 a couple of years ago and never needed to touch it again. Admittedly, on a comparably small screen with masking.

[Steve Guttag]

I've used the NC900 as well. Even on a small screen (but no masking) it lens inaccuracy was quite evident. I can't claim to have noticed drifting over time. It is already unacceptable on the first change between scope and flat. Yeah, if you have masking and have the image overlap the masking enough, you can hide it.

[Darin Steffl]

Hopefully they've fixed the lens memory issue then on the NC1202L that we ordered. It was just released July 2021 so it's the newest, small laser projector they offer. It's about $8500 more than the NC1000C we were comparing it to. Lamp costs would have been far less over 10 years than going to laser but I felt it would be silly to buy "old" technology in 2022 for something I hope to last 10 years so laser it is.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Hopefully they've fixed the lens memory issue then on the NC1202L that we ordered. It was just released July 2021 so it's the newest, small laser projector they offer. It's about $8500 more than the NC1000C we were comparing it to. Lamp costs would have been far less over 10 years than going to laser but I felt it would be silly to buy "old" technology in 2022 for something I hope to last 10 years so laser it is.

You need to compare lamp cost to the cost of replacing the laser in any projector. While lamp cost may seem high over ten years, laser replacement is usually way more than lamp cost over that time period.. Also keep in mind that these are semiconductor lasers and they can fail at any time like any other semiconductor does.