Cinionic announces end of service for Barco Series 1 projectors, effective 9/30/20

[Leo Enticknap]

See attached - no more parts available after September 30.

[Brad Miller]

Get rid of film. Digital is perfect. In fact, we the studios WILL PAY FOR YOUR DIGITAL CONVERSION!

Meanwhile...welcome to the reality.

[Mike Blakesley]

Well... there was a hook in that. It was actually, "we'll pay for your conversion...but not the inevitable, unavoidable upgrades!"

And then in parentheses "(If you're not big enough, you're on your own for everything, but we just wish you'd go away)"

[Marco Giustini]

I suppose that with the money saved on staff they can afford new projectors every 15 years. How much does the cost of one projector compare to the cost of one projectionist?

[Steve Guttag]

You can't put a price on human life, Marco!
If one goes with the new RGB laser projectors, your starting point is going to be over $50KUSD per projector and you may also be forced into a new server...but sticking with a projector. If you change one a year, that would be $50K/year (complicated math)...how many "Projectionists" were paid $50K/year as a percentage (factoring any taxes/benefits...etc)? Then factor in repair costs. Did any one pay $2K-$5K/year on extended warranties for film projectors? Did any film projector have repair parts knocking on the $30K range? What is the cheapest typical repair part on a digital projector compare to the film projector? Did you ever have to "reseat" any film projector parts or reboot them? What was the life cycle of the film equipment? No matter how you cut it...equipment and labor, digital is more expensive to the exhibitor. There are labor savings but it has been a long time since being a projectionist was at a career level income, when it comes to showing films to the masses. Screening room projectionists (film or digital) are still higher paid but they are typically a lot more than building shows and "rebooting" entities with some light cleaning on the side too.

[Leo Enticknap]

To answer this question, you'd need to calculate the total cost of ownership, and operation, of the digital cinema equipment at a given site, including the staff hours needed to operate (build playlists, etc.) and maintain it, versus the total cost of ownership and operation for a 35mm installation. Presumably the larger chains, with centralized accounting operations, should be sitting on the data that would enable this math to be done, especially for sites that were playing film for a statistically significant number of years before the conversion, and then digital for a significant number of years after.

The controversial part would be if you included the cost of film prints and DCP distribution into the calculations, or not. I would guess that if you did, the cost of presenting movies using DCI-compliant digital cinema equipment would likely be cheaper than 35mm overall, but possibly not by that much (10-20% or so). I suspect that digital cinema equipment has turned out to have higher maintenance costs than many anticipated at the beginning. What those figures would also show, however, is that a significant chunk of the up-front cost of movie technical presentation has been shifted from distributors to exhibitors, but that film rental prices have not decreased to absorb it. Were you to leave out the cost of media altogether, the figures may well show that digital cinema is more expensive.

That would make for an interesting dissertation for some MBA student, to be sure! Don't think they'd be invited to present their findings at Cinemacon, though...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

You can't put a price on human life, Marco!

A job, which is what Marco is referring to is not human life and there is always another job. A job is something a human does and it comes with pay... call that a price if you want to, because it is.

Digital IS expensive to buy, and maintain... period. But there IS at least one major chain that is converting all 7000+ screens over to laser because of the obsolescence reasons mentioned in this thread. It's still not going to spur me to go to their awfully designed and run sites though.

Mark

[Dave Macaulay]

Major chains have business experts that can do the math on TCO: capital cost of new equipment, power cost saving with modern projectors and sound equipment, maintenance cost, etc. And they seem to be certain that laser is the way to go... many thousands of Barco laser projectors have recently been ordered for chain wide replacement of series 1 "Avatar" projectors plus S2 Sony, Christie and NEC projectors. Make what you want of that.
But, how long should a manufacturer continue supporting old products? Dolby ended service for its DSS servers, there are many other products (with manufacturers still in business) where parts and repair are NLA and support either gone or dependent on reaching the "old guy" who has been around long enough to remember them.
Try to get parts for pretty much any film projector.
And expect some good deals on used projectors soon, if you're looking for them.

[Leo Enticknap]

Major chains have business experts that can do the math on TCO: capital cost of new equipment, power cost saving with modern projectors and sound equipment, maintenance cost, etc.

Sure, but when the original 35mm to Series 1 conversion happened, there wasn't much point in doing that math, because the studios were forcing exhibitors to convert (by gradually withdrawing the availability of 35mm prints). Sticking with 35mm wasn't an option, because studios and distributors refused to give exhibitors that option. Added to which, at that time, DCI projection systems hadn't been around for long enough to know what the TCO would be over the realistic service life of the equipment.

They do now have that data to be able to compare the cost of replacing existing xenon projectors with new xenon projectors, or RGB laser (assuming that the manufacturers' claims of the service life of laser projectors is at least ballpark accurate), hence the rapid take-up of laser. What I'd be interested in seeing is the total cost of technical presentation using 35mm between, say, 2000 to 2009, vs. the total cost of technical presentation using DCP between 2010 and 2019 (adjusted for inflation, of course).

[Frank Cox]

I haven't calculated actual numbers, but I can assure you that the cost of keeping a picture on the screen here is substantially more now that it was in the days of film. Service calls, replacement parts and all of the associated costs around that are definitely much higher now than they were before. Not to mention the ever-present threat of having a major failure in something like the projector that would require the replacement of the whole thing. This hasn't happened here yet but it could happen tonight, tomorrow night, or in five or ten years.

There is a saving in the cost of freight to get the movies here, but it doesn't add up to anywhere close to enough to make up for the other added costs of having digital cinema.

The picture and sound are better than they ever were with film (partly because prints don't get beat to rats before I get them) but it definitely costs more than it did before to keep that machine running. The average film rental costs are getting pushed higher as well, so at the end of the day there's less money left in the pot for folks like me to keep for ourselves.

The economics might be different in a larger theatre, but I don't imagine anyone else with a single screen theatre in a small town would be much different that my situation here.

[Bobby Henderson]

If there is any cost savings with digital versus film the only people seeing any savings are the movie studios. The most obvious difference is it costs a whole lot less to dub a DCP onto a reusable hard disc drive than make a 35mm release print. A typical wide film release would have 2500 to 3500 prints issued in North America, which costs at least a few million for the prints alone. I'm not sure movie productions are seeing much if any savings over using film. The only advantage I see with shooting digital is convenience.

Seeing news of companies declaring an "End Of Life" for certain models of digital projectors is not the slightest bit surprising. Even if companies like Barco or Christie wanted to do so there is no feasible way for them to support old models of digital projectors indefinitely. None of these companies are making every single component that goes inside these units. They have to source a lot of parts from third party suppliers and those companies aren't going to make those parts forever. These fancy projectors are prone to the very same problems that can turn a 10 year old desktop computer into a door stop. Something critical breaks in the old machine and there is no way to fix it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I think these days that independents need to amortize their booth equipment off over not more than a ten year period. If they try to stretch it any longer than that it just increases the risk of sudden replacement.

Mark

[Marcel Birgelen]

Keep in mind that no multiplex employed anything close to one FTE for every screen during the film days either. Booth operations had been automated in such way that you could easily handle 14 screens with 2 well-trained FTE, especially if you were part of a chain and could rely on backup from other sites.

Given the life-cycle of about 10 years for your digital equipment, the sizable investment into this equipment, the costs for regular maintenance and repairs for almost inevitable equipment failure over such a lifespan, I'm almost certain digital is more expensive for almost all exhibitor models, no matter if you're an independent or a chain. The cost-savings are primarily on the side of Hollywood. While they financed quite a big chunk of the conversion, their savings will probably go in the hundreds of millions every year.

[Marco Giustini]

I guess this has been discussed over and over again. However if I think of my personal experience where a 16-plex employed 14 projectionists (some FT, some PT) by the time you add taxation and the whole cost of the 'human resource', it's a big sum.
Not every screen must have a massive laser projector: smaller screens will have a small 6E or similar which costs a fraction to buy and to maintain. Scheduling is now done by one person, remotely, for all sites and digital flexibility allows for much more revenues from commercials as they can be tailored much more precisely to the customer's needs. The duty manager can be working PT to look after the shows if required. (*)
I'd be curious to see an actual calculation that keeps into account everything. I'd be curious to see who 'wins'.

* - I'm not suggesting this is the correct way of managing a cinema, but this is what I see happening around.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Local 110 in Chicago came up with one operator every six screens after the last negotiations. And that was not too much of a problem. But in places like Hollywood where many theaters are still single screen sites one operator still runs at least 4 screens and moves around by bicycle.

Mark