Suggested IMB for a difficult cinema owner. (Not Dolby/GDC, target NEC Proj)

[James Gardiner]

A lot of projectors are on there last legs, and so I was discussing this with a friend cinema owner...

He insists on not using Dolby IMB. Probably not GDC either.
What's left worth using that's new? Target NEC projectors. (I would get a Barco IMB if it was a Barco projector)

[Leo Enticknap]

Qube, maybe? But I know absolutely nothing about them, and have never even touched one.

Why is your friend opposed to Dolby and GDC? Is it something about the IMSes themselves that he doesn't like, or bad experiences dealing with the companies (or their dealers)?

It's certainly going to be a challenge if Dolby and GDC are ruled out. I haven't installed any other IMBs or IMSes in NEC projectors.

[James Gardiner]

Thanks Leo,
Yes, I know Qube have units, but I thought they stayed in their region and didn't really sell into the world market. The old super-micro-based external SMS / XPD product didn't go well.
Didn't QSC (old USL tech) have something as well?
Christie seems to still be pushing a unit. but that's Christie-specific.

[Carsten Kurz]

It's simple. Not Dolby, not GDC? No IMS for NEC.

QSC gave up the USL IMS, which was a very promising product featurewise, but came at the wrong time.

[Gordon McLeod]

The cube IMB is still available as well I believe the Digicine one that had some installs in the UK they were the first to offer it as a standalone for serries one

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Qube, maybe? But I know absolutely nothing about them, and have never even touched one.

Why is your friend opposed to Dolby and GDC? Is it something about the IMSes themselves that he doesn't like, or bad experiences dealing with the companies (or their dealers)?

It's certainly going to be a challenge if Dolby and GDC are ruled out. I haven't installed any other IMBs or IMSes in NEC projectors.

The Qube servers I was familiar with ran on an industrial version of Windows 7 which was pretty darn stable. So I assume the current manfacture Qubes must run on at least Windows 10, and better yet, hopefully 11 since Microsoft stopped all support of 7. Windows 10 is only going to have support for a few more years at best. So if you want to get a customer really mad at you then sell him a Qube.
I'd reccomend GDC and then Dolby in that order, only because GDC has pretty much the best tech support, not that Dolby doesn't have equal... but a support person answers the phone at GDC almost 24/7.

[Shibu Paul]

The GDC SR-1000 IMB with diskless CineCache 2TB Is best options. i am using 13 numers from few years .

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

The GDC SR-1000 IMB with diskless CineCache 2TB Is best options. i am using 13 numers from few years .

Shibu, what part of NO GDC/DOLBY did you not understand? The OPs client does NOT want either of those options. Do you have any suggestions other than those?

Qube would be my go-to in this case. I had a few locations with them some years ago, and they were pretty solid, no real issues. I didn't care much for their interface, to me Dolby has the best, most "user-friendly" one, and if you needed to go "under the hood" on Dolby, it wasn't too bad, and I liked the idea that the average user couldn't really get too deep into it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Shibu, what part of NO GDC/DOLBY did you not understand? The OPs client does NOT want either of those options. Do you have any suggestions other than those?

Qube would be my go-to in this case. I had a few locations with them some years ago, and they were pretty solid, no real issues. I didn't care much for their interface, to me Dolby has the best, most "user-friendly" one, and if you needed to go "under the hood" on Dolby, it wasn't too bad, and I liked the idea that the average user couldn't really get too deep into it.

Really Tony... The guy may as well close his theater and forget it. If he bought Qube the owner and dealer would become enemy's in 30 days or less. This is why they don't sell Qube here anymore. If he bought one, he might wait for parts for a long time. Sadly, there used to be other options not all that long ago. DTS was one option, and it was a very good server. There was also a German made server as well... So that owner is going to have to accept one of the two just from a practicality stand point if nothing else. If it should fail, you don't want to be off screen for many weeks waiting on parts from India. Qube equals Land Rover in my book. I have experience with both, but more with the latter... Both are junk.

Edit: I just looked at the Qube website and the Qube XPS appears to be just an ECinema Server. So far, I do not see a DCinema server on their site. No wonder they don't sell them here... This also gets funnier and funnier. They call their OS "Reasonably Secure".

[Marcel Birgelen]

The supply situation with Qube used not to be that good around here, I'm not sure if their server solutions are still being sold here... I guess they concentrate their sales efforts on Asian markets right now.

You were hinting at it yourself, if you could swap the projector with a Barco, then I'd say that their IMSs are pretty usable, also from a user perspective. Before we switched to the IMS3000 in our screening room we've used their Alchemy IMS for years. The only thing that remained buggy until the very end was the Atmos support in combination with the CP-850, even though newer firmwares solved some of the problems, it never entirely went away. I know we're not the only ones with similar problems, but for the rest, the thing has been pretty reliable.

I see a little maybe for GDC in there? So maybe it's worthwhile to convince him to go the GDC route? At least that would be a viable option in combination with NEC projectors.

Don't know if you want or able to share, but it would be interesting to know what happened here.

I think Mark does have kind of a point here... this is a niche industry with limited options available. If you want neither of the options on the menu, well, what's left? And if Qube is as "available" as it is here in his neck of the woods, I'd consider using it a serious operational risk.

@Gordon McLeod: Digicine was acquired by Hollywood Software, which has become comscore. I think their IMB product died somewhere in the process. Comscore being primarily a "big data" company probably wasn't interested in providing a playback solution for such a niche.

[James Gardiner]

I have informed the cinema owners, he really needs to select Dolby/GDC for best results for a new NEC projector. Especially as Quote engineers are rare here.
The XPD unit, I had to look after for quite some time, it was the worst player I have used. the drive subsystem needs regular reformates to avoid famin issues...
You cannot log into the console while playing to it will glitch pictures.
you must use RDP. config files are very hard to manage. The interface is very limited. They stopped updating it many years ago and didn't bother keeping it up to snuff. They seem to have only implemented features needed to keep them up to DCI requirements and stopped.

I am not sure of the IMB units they made after this.. And I thought they were still Windows-based. Bad move. But due to my experience on the XPD, I would not recommend it over the others. But then again, the others have had issues in the past too. But I feel not as bad. As Qube has lemmings all over India to deal with these issues, I think they sold more in those regions. And I understand they had features that leveraged their advertising business too built-in. So Qube only really had any market share in regions it was dominant in.

But this may have changed. This is why I asked.

[Steve Guttag]

James, my opinion is, you are correct that Dolby and GDC are the server companies one should most-consider. They are not tied to a specific brand of projector and have vested interests in their server line that are not tied to projector sales. Depending on their problem with their prior Dolby product, excluding Dolby may or make not make sense (was it a support thing or did they not like the product at all?). If it is support, it is the same company. If it is the product, the IMS3000 is a different product that was developed by different people. And why would GDC get lumped in with a bad experience with a different company? That makes no sense to me.

If this person was my customer, and they didn't want the Dolby server, I'd have no problem "selling" them on the GDC SR-1000...at least in the USA...the support is nothing short of phenomenal. You can get a 10-year warranty on it for a reasonable price (10-years being the 3 included plus 7 additional...cost less than a replacement server at current prices). Perhaps GDC support is not as good in your part of the world? I just don't get why GDC would be lumped in with a Dolby experience.

Mind you, I have had a customer that was in the opposite...they had a bad GDC experience and refused to consider them for the replacement of a failed GDC server and went with Dolby (IMS3000) has been happy ever since. We all have our histories that guide our personal preferences.

[Jim Cassedy]

This also gets funnier and funnier. They call their OS "Reasonably Secure".

Thanks, Mark- - That's the best laugh I've had all week!"
( Ok, so I've had a really lousy week -but it's still funny!)

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

In India Dolby and Qube are affiliated... believe it or not...

[James Gardiner]

Well, to add to that Mark, Qube or Realimage was absorbed into Scrabble. And worse yet, there is now only one dominant Exhibition Chain.
So imagine only one integrator/advertising company/cinema chain for all of the U.S. There would be repercussions or undesirable behaviour I would expect. as is typical when an industry is a complete monopoly.

Somehow India has gotten itself into that position.