DCP-2K4, Blackmagic 6GHDI converter, and static.

[Devin McNamara]

Well guys I haven’t had much luck with this. Unless there is anything else I am missing, I think I may tear this down and build my gaming rig into the chassis.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Maybe you can elaborate a bit more about your setup? What exact BMD converter do you have and what are you trying to achieve? Static in those kind of digital systems is often caused by excessive cable lengths, bad shielding, ground loops, etc...

[Devin McNamara]

It is a BMD HD-Link pro DVI HD-SDI to DVI converter. It claims in the specs to be capable of decoding the SMPTE 292m signals that come out of these. It also claims to be able to take 2K and could feasibly convert it pixel by pixel to scale it to any monitor. I’m just trying to hook this up to a projector for my outdoor theater. It’s going from the dolphin card, about ten feet, into this converter and out to my projector. I have already edited the Cinelink file to be “0”. Even thinking that maybe my dolphin board was bad I took said converter to the theater where there are a bunch of these Doremi’s. All confirmed working and still failed to get an output. I have, personally, both a 1.0 and 1.2 with DCI firmware card. Both fail to give me any valid output. So I don’t believe the problem is the card itself. All the content on the raid is unencrypted.

[Marcel Birgelen]

So, to be clear, you're only playing unencrypted DCPs with this setup, as you mentioned that all content on the RAID is unencrypted?

What does the picture look like? Do you see the picture with static in it, do you only see something that looks like pure digital noise or do you see something that has patterns?
I'm not able to find all the specs of the converter, accordign to BMD it's apparently discontinued. Are you sure this thingy is capable of converting the DCI-P3 color space to something your projector likely will understands, like Rec.703 or sRGB?

[Devin McNamara]

Yeah my goal is to just play unencrypted DCPs with it. It is very similar to the static you would see on an old tv that is not tuned. Only it appears to be slightly purple. Most people here call it “cinesnow” they say this is the link encryption software causing this. According to the specs the converter is only capable of 4:2:2 YUV, 4:4:4 YUV and 4:4:4 RGB. Could this be messing with me. Does this bad of a color mismatch cause all this trouble? I would at least think that I would see something but with the wrong colors. But I’m not sure.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Encrypted content should look like pure digital noise.
Mismatched color space, but a matched resolution should result in a picture in weird colors.
Mismatched resolutions should at least end up with some visible patterns on screen.

Given the fact that the stuff you're seeing looks more like digital noise, it looks like you're still sending out an encrypted signal.

But keep in mind: If the thing can't handle DCI-P3 conversion to something that your projector supports, you're already out of luck and should look at other avenues.

If you want to play only unencrypted DCPs, you could also opt for another player solution like NeoDCP, which works on a regular Windows machine as playback device.

[Devin McNamara]

I wonder it is actually possible to get around it. Others on here seemed to have done it. It isn’t just about DCP playback however. I’ve got a Blu Ray player and a pc out there for playback as well. The biggest driving factor for trying to get the Doremi working is its scheduling and automation abilities. I’ve already got movie theater grade equipment out here (Christie ACT, JSD-80, serial commands to control the projector). All of which I have gotten to work. I think it would be neat to be able to automatically get a DCP movie of my choosing to just play on its own at whatever time I set and for it to switch off lights, set the sound input, and set my projector to the proper inputs. All while I’m outside the room talking to my friends and family who come to this.