New Strong LMS based on NAS storage

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Everything from IBM takes a long time to boot. But how often are you rebooting that stuff, anyway? Once it is installed and configured, reboots should be rare events. (I suppose that we should use "IPL" instead of reboot in the context of IBM stuff, but the point still stands.)

I honestly don't have a problem with a limited-lifespan NAS as long as the vendors involved are up front about this. This is commodity IT stuff, and a 5-year lifespan is expected. I'm sure that it could be built to last ten years, but the cost would be more than double. A cheap-but-good-enough NAS box that supports NFS can be bought today and delivered tomorrow (or built today out of commodity hardware from the manager's office). The server and the projector are the expensive, hard-to-repair bits here, and those need to be designed for long lifespans.

That said, I mostly agree with Tony's comments about D-cinema being expensive and not providing significant benefits for exhibitors who were doing a good job with film. Regardless, we're stuck with it now, so we might as well try to make it as good as it can be, while still showing movies on film as much as possible.

I do have a problem having to pay 5 grand base price for one that lists at just over $1700, and I know theaters will too. It appears to me that one could also run any Wind Blows OS on that thing and have it also function as the booth access computer and NAS. WD actually runs Windows Server on some of their NAS, although its not directly accessable.

[Scott Norwood]

I do have a problem having to pay 5 grand base price for one that lists at just over $1700,

I get that. I wouldn't do it, but I can see why some people might value the idea of having one support contract for everything and no finger-pointing between vendors. Vendor support is worth something, and it might be worth $3300 to some venues. At least with the storage being separate from the server they have that choice (or is it only sold as a package deal?).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I get that. I wouldn't do it, but I can see why some people might value the idea of having one support contract for everything and no finger-pointing between vendors. Vendor support is worth something, and it might be worth $3300 to some venues. At least with the storage being separate from the server they have that choice (or is it only sold as a package deal?).

It appears to be a package. Qnap also makes a 6 drive version of this same NAS. What I really like are the two expansion slots. In real life over the last 12 years, I never ever had anyone fill up the 6TB of space I put in my GDC racks Dell servers. So unless you want to store a hell of a lot of content I can't see anyone needing 80TB of storage.
The Sat download catch server actually only stores a finite amount and then automatically deletes the oldest content. If you want to save some content that's on the catch server, you just move it to the TMS or one of the local local cinema servers.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It appears to be a package. Qnap also makes a 6 drive version of this same NAS. What I really like are the two expansion slots. In real life over the last 12 years, I never ever had anyone fill up the 6TB of space I put in my GDC racks Dell servers. So unless you want to store a hell of a lot of content I can't see anyone needing 80TB of storage.
The Sat download catch server actually only stores a finite amount and then automatically deletes the oldest content. If you want to save some content that's on the catch server, you just move it to the TMS or one of the local local cinema servers.

I don't really understand what their offering is here. If they're selling just the QNAP boxes for those prices, it's a hell of an up-charge compared to the price those things are going for in retail. Those NAS systems should actually be sufficiently beefy to run the TMS itself, at least for a limited number of screens. The bigger unit even supports VMWare, so you could run the TMS as a VM on this machine.

I also didn't know Strong has their own LMS/TMS, last time I checked they were reselling Comscore.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

... Most theater owners were more than happy to take their gear to the scrapper. They far preferred the cleanliness and ease of operation of digital. Plus, I think everyone of them said... " no carrying those dam film cans and boxes up or down.any.more"...

My impression is that multiplex owners were more than happy to reduce their projection personnel more than anything else. The smaller caliber owners, especially the ones that lost the chance of VPN, found it harder to pay out loans for that transition. The reduction on personnel, or lack of need for specialised personnel, often couldn't (or can't) compensate for the rise of expenses for purchase and support and maintenance of the equipment. The intervention of an out-of-house specialist became more necessary (more frequently) than it was in the past.
Of course, when someone had to work their way out of such a predicament, they would enjoy the benefit of not having to deal with the (heavily) physical nature of film.

My other impression is that those that were happier about the fact that film equipment was taken to the scrapper are the ones that no longer need to print film in order to get their work shown in a cinema. That being equally big production and distribution companies, independent creators and everything in between.

[Steve Guttag]

While I won't say zero, I'll say that the vast majority of the theatre owners I dealt with were not only not more-than-happy, they absolutely hated the entire process, especially the volumes of money that they had to spend at virtual gun-point (buy the equipment or go out of business). Some bought into the lie of being able to have greater access to content in more rural markets since they wouldn't have to strike prints only to find that wasn't the problem before, they just didn't want to supply the content, at that time and wanted to keep the per-screen gross high by releasing in major markets. While I think the vast majority prefer the look and sound of their digital equipment, they don't like the expense that comes with it and it is a continual expense as things fail or, without notice, need to have a board reseated here/there or a server rebooted any one of a dozen reasons...etc. With film, shows were more robust. Equipment failures typically needed a relatively low cost part. Most film projectors can be kept going for 50+ years and almost anything can be turned into a film sound processor in a pinch.

The improved quality of picture and sound was not on the exhibitor's mind (by and large) however. That came along for the ride as DCinema didn't have the econo-brands of film nor 50-year old clapped out equipment kicking around for the low-end market to deal with. The image quality difference between the best and the worst DCinema equipment was MUCH more nuanced to the point 99% of the patrons wouldn't know which brand/model projector they were seeing (quality wise) even if you A-Bed them they would likely say "same."

As DCinema has evolved and the S2K projectors came out, we now have a low-end projector again...still 5 times more expensive than film but often 2/3rds the price of the "regular" projectors, we again have exhibitors that clamor to the lower cost, lower image quality machines. These are the same people that would use Sankor lenses on a 50-year old piece of garbage projector with a system that scratches film, either by design or by careless threading. The S2K projectors have abysmal contrast (and quite noticeably too) but that seems to matter little...they're cheaper! The LP lasers on them have improved their contrast on some but then the color isn't so good. They get a wink and nudge passing grade on DCI compliance but hey, they're cheaper! I can't completely fault exhibitors on this since the cost of the booth is now 4+ times the cost of their film booth and they get to pay that again a few times over the life of the theatre, unlike before.

It will be interesting to see how the used market pans out in the DCinema world. It is a HUGE gamble to work with S1 projectors as more and more parts become unavailable and your choices in servers are now down to 1 (for new)...the GDC SR-1000. I do applaud GDC for making their S1 cage for the SR-1000. It's clever and probably wasn't all that big a challenge and it is for, likely, a shrinking market but it can offer a solution to an exhibitor that has a working S1 but has consumed their first server. The problem with a used S1 market is that you don't know how close you are to having to throw away the projector based on what your next failure is. You never had that with film. Wolk probably made or would make whatever part your 50 year projector needed and even the most expensive film projector part is nothing compared to digital projector parts. So, people will likely need to stock up on used projectors to ensure they can keep one or two going.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Steve, Did your customers NOT qualify for VPF's? I only had three that didn't and two of those were Drive Ins, the third a second run six plex. All my customers made good deals with their banks to get the money to do the conversions and almost all of them still recouped 75% of the cost after interest paid the banks.... I serviced one independent large chain of 110 screens that fronted their own money for the conversions.

BTW: A six plex I converted that recently closed was offered 25K for six screens worth of gear by two different entities.. That's a little over 4K per screen, and I think represents what a dealer would offer for 10 year old S2 projectors in this day and post COVID era.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Mark, I had to break this down since you had made many points I want to address. :

Tony, Have to disagree with you on that. The conversion to digital cinema really cleaned up a lot of theaters presentations from what it was with film. It also eliminated an industry full of really nasty chemicals

And those were mainly the theatres that couldn't do film right. I can agree to a point about the chemicals situation, but the labs I serviced in Los Angeles were very careful in the handling and disposal of said chemicals.

.....very short lived release prints.. Most of those prints were really crappy looking tje last few years!

Short lived mainly in theatres that didn't know how to do film right, again. As for the crappy look, I agree, but that came down to the labs "giving up" due to the upcoming demise. (And the stupid story qualities of most of the releases further killed the labs' incentive to make quality prints.)

Most theater owners were more than happy to take their gear to the scrapper. They far preferred the cleanliness and ease of operation of digital.

Because the chains especially are lazy and only care about saving a fast buck versus putting on a quality show, which DEMANDS Qualified, Competent, and talented SHOWMEN to actually entertain an audience. Example: In live sound, many house mix consoles and many monitor mix consoles are computerized these days. Yet it STILL requires operators who KNOW and understand the dynamics of the performing talent on stage, the acoustics of the venue, the changing temperatures and humidity (critical to avoid feedback and ringing especially in the stage monitors) AND the SKILLS to adapt to the volume of the crowd and all of the other factors.

Plus, I think everyone of them said... " no carrying those dam film cans and boxes up or down.any.more".

Again, pure laziness. Big deal. It's not like film turnovers happened EVERY DAY, and in many cases teardowns and builds were only happening every other week at most. The issue was that too many locations depended on ONE person to handle all the builds and tears for more than four screens (which I consider to be the MAX number of screens ANY multi should require ANY single projectionist to handle on film changes, and a max of 6 or 8 screens for daily operations.)

Steve, Did your customers NOT qualify for VPF's? I only had three that didn't and two of those were Drive Ins, the third a second run six plex. All my customers made good deals with their banks to get the money to do the conversions and almost all of them still recouped 75% of the cost after interest paid the banks.... I serviced one independent large chain of 110 screens that fronted their own money for the conversions.

Oh c'mon now. Of the tens of thousands of theatres forced into digital, how many DID get VPF's? Maybe YOUR territory was lucky enough to have such good numbers, but there were far too many independants and smaller chains that were placed in severe financial hardship (or forced to close) because they couldn't afford or qualify for the then ridiculous costs associated with the conversions.

BTW: A six plex I converted that recently closed was offered 25K for six screens worth of gear by two different entities.. That's a little over 4K per screen, and I think represents what a dealer would offer for 10 year old S2 projectors in this day and post COVID era.

And what was the original cost of all that gear? How old was it? Based on costs of the average install depending on how old, that looks like a valuation of literally pennies on the dollar returned on the investment. BEFORE the digital conversion, refurbished film gear still commanded a MUCH greater resale value than what ANY digital gear does, AND IT was and can still be used with films made over a century ago. How long will current digital DCPs be reproducible? I say less than 30-40 years from now, you won't be able to play them at all.

Steve's post is spot-on. (Post #21) I point out this from his post:

While I think the vast majority prefer the look and sound of their digital equipment, they don't like the expense that comes with it and it is a continual expense as things fail or, without notice, need to have a board reseated here/there or a server rebooted any one of a dozen reasons...etc. With film, shows were more robust. Equipment failures typically needed a relatively low cost part. Most film projectors can be kept going for 50+ years and almost anything can be turned into a film sound processor in a pinch.

Exactly.

[Steve Guttag]

I'd say, by location probably a 50/50 mix of VPF to non-VPF. The Art House people normally couldn't qualify as a VPF site as they are often independent "studios" that were not part of the consortium so one would have to PAY the VPF entity for the privilege of using the equipment they subsidized. By screen count, probably it is closer to 75% of our screen are or were on a VPF deal as our standard theatres also typically have larger screen counts.

VPFs were a bit of a scam too. They pick up 70-80% of the tab, excluding any sound upgrades, over a 7-10 year period...on the 1st round of equipment. We've definitely had servers that didn't make the 10-years and projectors that dropped pretty much at 10-years (S1s...I have yet to retire an S2 of any brand). So the exhibitor is on the hook on the 1st round for 20-30% of the cost of the upgrade that does not sell one extra ticket nor one more tub of popcorn. They get, essentially nothing for their investment beyond having to keep investing. I'm sure the shipping costs of the prints is a reduction for the exhibitor and it is a big selling point of DCDC (normally 1/2 the shipping cost of the Hard Drives). At least with DCDC, the exhibitor only has to pay for the electricity to run the thing (and have the shipping on the content they actually use). That is a better deal. VPFs were just the grease to commit the industry to the new, more expensive for exhibitors, technology. And with that, exhibitors got nothing in return but short-life equipment and ever changing standards to keep up with. And the latest kicker are the release windows that have shrunk to zero. The distributor continues to be an adversary of the exhibitor right down to being a competitor.

So...back on topic a bit...

One of the bigger TMS systems, ACE (the descendant of the TCC) has a "cloud" option (as do other TMS systems) so the site only really needs a NAS to load content into. The actual TMS software isn't on site but merely tells the equipment to move the content/keys around.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I had approximately zero Art houses, rather first run multiplex's that occasionally ran art fare. So it was of little consiquence to them to not get a payment once in a while because the studio was not on the VPF list. As far as costs, the sites that were still fairly new got D to A converters rather than new processors. We kept all the Panastereos and many CP-650's that way. I was glad to see the old electronics finally go by the wayside. I did not do a lot of conversions to S1... and the ones I did install were only for 3D at that. I advised all customers to hold out for S2 if they could. And all did just that. Aside from the initial expense of it all, most came out ahead on costs. There were fewer breakdowns and equipment problems. Less power used and the equipment was written off on the expense column. Some sites changed to once a year service visits from the three or more visits I had been doing. Updates were done remotely once NEC got the auto update feature going. Aside from short equipment lifespan, which will not affect those that properly ammortized their gear, there were zero complaints. I know those customers will be ready to replace what needs replacing in the near future. Oh, and another thing that helped save money was GDC doing their VPF program. No monitoring required, and no expensive LMS rack required. Not to mention no booth monkeys...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Tony, Here is how I saw things and what transpired for me. It was quite similar for many other Technicians I know. How many locations did you convert Tony?

Mark, I had to break this down since you had made many points I want to address. :

"And those were mainly the theatres that couldn't do film right. I can agree to a point about the chemicals situation, but the labs I serviced in Los Angeles were very careful in the handling and disposal of said chemicals"

Those theaters that couldn't do film right probably probably accounted for 70% of the locations in this country. And certainly about half the locations I serviced that were run by "booth monkeys'. Has more to do with getting rid of qualified projectionists where there were som. I was a member of the Chicago Local and I can tell you that about half their members were not qualified to flush a toilet. At one site they send a one armed guy... nice guy though... to run 70mm. First show he had the film in the JJ backwards and the show came up with no sound. Many of the jobs in that local were patronage jobs And as far as film labs go, it is irrelevant how they handled the chemicals, of course they did it right so it wouldn't make anyone in the lab sick, but it is rarely disposed of correctly in the environment. There are still a number of toxic ingredients in color film processing, including cyanide.

"Short lived mainly in theatres that didn't know how to do film right, again. As for the crappy look, I agree, but that came down to the labs "giving up" due to the upcoming demise. (And the stupid story qualities of most of the releases further killed the labs' incentive to make quality prints."

No, The prints often looked awful. It was not because at the end there was a shortage of prints. I saw brand new prints that looked putrid.

"Because the chains especially are lazy and only care about saving a fast buck versus putting on a quality show, which DEMANDS Qualified, Competent, and talented SHOWMEN to actually entertain an audience. Example: In live sound, many house mix consoles and many monitor mix consoles are computerized these days. Yet it STILL requires operators who KNOW and understand the dynamics of the performing talent on stage, the acoustics of the venue, the changing temperatures and humidity (critical to avoid feedback and ringing especially in the stage monitors) AND the SKILLS to adapt to the volume of the crowd and all of the other factors."

See my reply above about booth monkeys... The unions had their share of them too!!

"Again, pure laziness. Big deal. It's not like film turnovers happened EVERY DAY, and in many cases teardowns and builds were only happening every other week at most. The issue was that too many locations depended on ONE person to handle all the builds and tears for more than four screens (which I consider to be the MAX number of screens ANY multi should require ANY single projectionist to handle on film changes, and a max of 6 or 8 screens for daily operations.)"

It was not laziness in second run houses where they often change prints every week. I even saw once in a while in first run where all films changed...And it's not about laziness... it's about intelligence in the operation off the equipment. My older customers who had been in the business a very long time are also included in that group.


"Oh c'mon now. Of the tens of thousands of theatres forced into digital, how many DID get VPF's? Maybe YOUR territory was lucky enough to have such good numbers, but there were far too many independants and smaller chains that were placed in severe financial hardship (or forced to close) because they couldn't afford or qualify for the then ridiculous costs associated with the conversions."

Tony, First off, there were two rounds of VPF's. The first round covered S1 installations up until GWB tanked the economy. In 2020 there were about about 44K screens in the USA., just before COVID shut it all down. And like I said, all but three of my customers got VPF's and there are plenty of articles on the net that say we lost 1000 theaters that could not afford it. I wonder how many of those 1000 theaters were not viable businesses, and not operating in the red? I had one second run and two drive ins that could not get VPF's. But none the less, of my customers closed their doors. The ones that did not get VPF's still converted and a few even took advantage of special discounted deals that either NEC or Christie offered.

"And what was the original cost of all that gear? How old was it? Based on costs of the average install depending on how old, that looks like a valuation of literally pennies on the dollar returned on the investment. BEFORE the digital conversion, refurbished film gear still commanded a MUCH greater resale value than what ANY digital gear does, AND IT was and can still be used with films made over a century ago. How long will current digital DCPs be reproducible? I say less than 30-40 years from now, you won't be able to play them at all."

The cost depended on the size of the screen... In my cases all the gear installed was new in the box, I never installed used digital gear. I installed about 30 S1 systems up to late 2010 to cover for 3-D and as soon as S2 became available, then all subsequent conversions I did were only S2 gear...

Also Tony, Film is not dead by any means like you think it is... .

"Steve's post is spot-on. (Post #21) I point out this from his post:"

It's spot on for the places he services...


Exactly.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'd say that for many chains, digital was more of a blessing than a curse. For them, it was an opportunity to scrap a bunch of people from their payroll and essentially outsource the whole process of presentation. The bottom line must have looked very promising to them: less cash-out over the years and a "more reliable" presentation. Also, they usually had the means to do digital "right" and actually benefit from the conversion: with high volume comes a lot of bargaining power and access to a much broader set of financing options, probably also at very favorable rates.

But for many independents, especially the smaller ones and those that didn't qualify for VPF, this whole process wasn't particularly enticing and quite a few struggled to make the switch for years and also quite a few didn't make it at all. The primary problem here is that digital cinema offers very little "marquee value", especially for the costs involved, because everybody else around you is doing it too, as they simply have no choice.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

"I'd say that for many chains, digital was more of a blessing than a curse. For them, it was an opportunity to scrap a bunch of people from their payroll and essentially outsource the whole process of presentation. The bottom line must have looked very promising to them: less cash-out over the years and a "more reliable" presentation. Also, they usually had the means to do digital "right" and actually benefit from the conversion: with high volume comes a lot of bargaining power and access to a much broader set of financing options, probably also at very favorable rates."

I was only servicing one large chain at the time of conversions. The rest were owner-operators that had owned their theaters for decades. But even the large chain did not dispense completely with projectionists. They kept the best four they had at each site.

"But for many independents, especially the smaller ones and those that didn't qualify for VPF, this whole process wasn't particularly enticing and quite a few struggled to make the switch for years and also quite a few didn't make it at all. The primary problem here is that digital cinema offers very little "marquee value", especially for the costs involved, because everybody else around you is doing it too, as they simply have no choice."

I guess the manufacturers did not offer any discounted systems and zero interest easy financing like they did here. Barco did not offer any deals here BTW, that's for sure. Oh, and there was one aspect of Digital that still does have marquee value, and that's 4k. I even installed 4k in a drive in that has a 115' wide screen, and that put the DI in the next town 30 miles away clean out of business.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm pretty sure Sony did some bargaining deals with several chains as big-volume deals seemed to be their primary focus. Also, I'm pretty sure that some Belgian chain got some nice trade-ins on their Series 1 Barco gear, after they outfitted nearly every room with it early on.

As for 4K, yeah, there might have been some marquee value to it. But most independents already struggled to pay for their borderline-specced 2K systems. I remember some of them buying into "upgradeable" 2K systems, only to find out that the price of the upgrade almost bought them a new projector...

But nowadays, 4K doesn't have any marketing value whatsoever. The TV you buy from the bargain bin at your local Walmart is a 4K TV and the thing to have right now is an 8K TV...

I also remember a few independents jumping on the HFR-bandwagon, selling their almost new S1 equipment to buy into S2 equipment... What content did we get in HFR besides the Hobbit? Gemini Man in 2019?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

No one I know never had any interest in the HFR jig. Same with Atmos. Absolutely zero interest and many of them could easily afford it. Getting to 4K, I think it still has some marquee value in cinemas... And yes, it's very expensive to convert say an NC-3200 to 4K, but the light engine is over 35K USD to buy outright. So I doubt there were any of those conversions done. The difference to buy an NC-3200 vs NC-3240 is about 30 grand. The large chain I serviced almost went with Sony, but I headed that off at the pass by reminding them how Sony dropped the ball on all their SDDS processors.. Down the road a short way, they were glad they went DLP.