CP850 Support Being Scaled Back

[Leo Enticknap]

From Dolby:

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Reading between the lines, this suggests to me that anyone who has a CP850 go bad with a failed component that Dolby has run out of will be offered an RXO for a 950 or 950A. Not a big deal in itself, especially as the Atmos license, DAD and tuning data can be transferred from from one to the other (or at least they could when I did an 850 to 950A upgrade earlier this year). But it might mean some cable reworking in the back of the rack.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, that writing was on the wall quite a while now. First the End-of-sale and End-of-Support notice and now it's clear they essentially ran out of spare parts. I guess this is what you get when you essentially design your hardware on top of commodity PC hardware. Since SuperMicro stopped supplying those components long ago, you're stuck with a limited number of spare parts. At least, if you own all your designs, you might have to replace some components once a while, you usually still can produce NEW spares, even years after your initial run.

We've replaced our CP850 with an IMS3000 about a year and a half ago. We did get a big discount on our Atmos license, this allowed us to keep a fully functional CP850 with Atmos license as a fallback machine. Apparently, the license-trade-in still is applicable over here, as long as you're the first owner of the device. In case of an in-warranty replacement of a CP850 with a CP950A, they obviously need to honor your existing Atmos license.

Like Leo indicated, the CP850 has different wiring and a slightly different rack footprint too, compared to the CP950A. Something to keep in mind.

[Lyle Romer]

Yeah, that writing was on the wall quite a while now. First the End-of-sale and End-of-Support notice and now it's clear they essentially ran out of spare parts. I guess this is what you get when you essentially design your hardware on top of commodity PC hardware. Since SuperMicro stopped supplying those components long ago, you're stuck with a limited number of spare parts. At least, if you own all your designs, you might have to replace some components once a while, you usually still can produce NEW spares, even years after your initial run.

We've replaced our CP850 with an IMS3000 about a year and a half ago. We did get a big discount on our Atmos license, this allowed us to keep a fully functional CP850 with Atmos license as a fallback machine. Apparently, the license-trade-in still is applicable over here, as long as you're the first owner of the device. In case of an in-warranty replacement of a CP850 with a CP950A, they obviously need to honor your existing Atmos license.

Like Leo indicated, the CP850 has different wiring and a slightly different rack footprint too, compared to the CP950A. Something to keep in mind.

That's part of why things like avionics cost so much. In order to provide parts for decades the manufacturers either need to stock a ton of spare parts inventory (which requires a lot of upfront capital) or essentially pay the components producers to keep production lines going at very low volume. Dolby can't charge enough for cinema processors to be able to do that.

It was different when their stuff was made out of cards and motherboards with discrete circuits with a few off the shelf, standard rudimentary ICs. Then they could practically support the products forever. They (or you) could probably produce all of the replacement parts for a CP-200 today if desired.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

Like Leo indicated, the CP850 has different wiring and a slightly different rack footprint too, compared to the CP950A. Something to keep in mind.

And let's not forget there is no analog input. (Admittedly, except for the microphone and the HI/VI.)

[Steve Guttag]

Stereo non-sync is available on a CP850 as an analog input (same with the CP950 family).

[Leo Enticknap]

In terms of the audio inputs, the CP850 and 950 are similar:

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The issues in terms of what you can actually connect are that:

• The 850 has an optical S/PDIF, whereas the 950 does not
• The 850 has a mono analog output for the booth monitor, which isn't there on the 950, because it has a built-in monitor speaker.
• The 850 has two HDMI inputs, whereas the 950 has only one.

Neither has a 5.1 or 7.1 analog input, so this isn't an issue when upgrading from an 850 to a 950; whereas it could be when upgrading from a 750 to a 950 (the 750 does have a multi-channel analog input).

I have only been affected directly by any of these gotchas once. A college theater wanted to upgrade their 850 to a 950 because of the known issue with the 850 whereby if the HDMI input is used extensively, the RAM can fill up and make the web UI glitchy and unresponsive, requiring the thing to be rebooted. The booth monitor speakers were in a physically separate room from the CP850, so the built-in monitor wouldn't work. A Trinnov isn't an option either, because of no HDMI. So they're continuing with their CP850, with the power going through a WattBox that automatically power cycles it at 3a every morning. The long-term plan is to Q-Sys the entire place.

A potentially more annoying problem is, as Marcel notes, that the connectors are in different places on the rear panel. So if the installer of the CP850 was anally retentive about dressing the cables such that they are only just long enough to go where they need to go, prepare for several hours of soldering and zip tie cutting when you swap it out for a 950.