Small Room Projector - Barco vs NEC

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

NEC makes a reliable projector. One has to be very careful on the boundry areas around those projectors to prevent them from circulating their own hot air and cooking (the NC1000, for instance, blows hot air out the back AND draws in the back so if there is a close barrier, it will circulate the hot air). NEC's S2K projectors (.69" chips) have VERY POOR lens registration. If your set up will require having the lens zoom/shift between formats, forget it. There isn't enough resolution in the gearing for it to hit its mark twice in a row. All projectors drift over time but NEC's S2K projectors can't even hit the same place twice, ever. If you are going to just lock the lens in place (1.85 screen) then that isn't an issue..

NEC's also monitor the air intake temperature on critical blowers. If the room is filling up with air that's too hot, the air the sensors will shut it down. Had it happen with customers that have front mounted 3-D adapters and then forget there are air filters behind the 3-D rig.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I still want to know how a room with 12 seats is gonna pay for itself. Even with a lot of the usual deductions on new build stuff it doesn't work out too well in my calculator. Past customers that wanted small, intimate screens found the minimum, back then, Late 90's and mid 2000's was about 30 seats. Interestingly, an old customer of mine in Downers Grove, IL just added on to his flagship theater with 31 seats. It's just that nothing adds up here, unless you go with inexpensive older Series 1 stuff. Then it might all work out...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Here is an article about the addition.

[Darin Steffl]

I still want to know how a room with 12 seats is gonna pay for itself. Even with a lot of the usual deductions on new build stuff it doesn't work out too well in my calculator. Past customers that wanted small, intimate screens found the minimum, back then, Late 90's and mid 2000's was about 30 seats. Interestingly, an old customer of mine in Downers Grove, IL just added on to his flagship theater with 31 seats. It's just that nothing adds up here, unless you go with inexpensive older Series 1 stuff. Then it might all work out...

Like I said earlier, it's not about the number of seats at all. It's that we can move movies to this small screen on week 2 or 3 and bring in another new movie in our 200 seat room. This should help us nearly double the number of movies we can show per year, increasing attendance dramatically. We can show more new releases on release day instead of waiting 4-6 weeks later when most people have already seen the movie they want.

This is the screen where a movie goes to die so we can get the next big movie sooner. Or it's the room a family can rent out for themselves like a VIP suite. The room alone won't pay for itself but the increase in attendance in the big room from showing more movies per year on release date will more than pay for this small screen.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There are lots of if's to doing that. Mostly it involves IF distribution wants the movie on your larger screen for a minimum number of weeks. It also.involves IF distribution let's you move it at all. Don't forget they are not your friend. They will control your theater to suit themselves. Having a Booker that books 50 or more other locations can give you some leverage, but not always. Often he can move your dieing film to another theater all together and you can get two new films. I have seen all of the above happen at multiple places over the years. Then.the Booker ads to the operation.expense too.

[William Kucharski]

First rate, well run companies don't go around whining in public about how they are not making a profit. They suck it up and think long term.

It was once possible to do that, not so much anymore.

For example, the shipping cost to get a shipping container from one port in Japan to the US used to be $1000.

It's now $10,000. Price increase since 2020.

[Sam Chavez]

The price of the hardware has to be published and announced and people buy it according to that price with whatever discounts one can wrangle. Shipping is always quoted separately and of course is much more variable and volatile. Nothing new there.

Cost to build a finished product is inclusive of everything involved. If you are losing money you announce a general price adjustment for all involved at the next opportunity. But no whining.

[Mike Blakesley]

Like I said earlier, it's not about the number of seats at all. It's that we can move movies to this small screen on week 2 or 3 and bring in another new movie in our 200 seat room.

I've written about this before and I see problems with it too. In our case.... we had Sonic 2 last week in our 194-seat house. It did killer business. Last night (beginning of week 2) we were nearly sold out again and we already have about 15 sold for tonight's show, plus another 20 or so for two shows tomorrow. This week Dumbledore is opening. There is NO WAY that Paramount would have sat still for us to move Sonic into a 9-seat house with the kind of numbers it is doing. We might get away with it at first until they found out how many seats were in house #2 and after that they'd probably make us wait to get the movie.

This is all just speculation, I could be full of hot air here, but I hope it works out the way he hopes. I would love to have a 2nd screen here but I wouldn't put one in unless I was sure we could do at least 40 seats or so.

[Darin Steffl]

It all depends how the movie we have is doing. We wouldn't always put a week 2 or 3 movie in the small room exclusively. We could move it between rooms with multiple showtimes too. So a week 2 movie could play at 4pm on the big screen and 7pm on the little screen. This offers us flexibility.

[Mike Blakesley]

Well... the flexibility of a cinema often bumps heads with the rigidity of studio policies. You might find yourself doing a bit of flying under the radar, if you get my drift.

We could have done killer business this week playing Sonic 2 as all matinees, and opening Dumbledore in the evenings. Studios: Nope, sorry, no screen sharing allowed, we don't care about the money.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I still want to know how a room with 12 seats is gonna pay for itself. Even with a lot of the usual deductions on new build stuff it doesn't work out too well in my calculator. Past customers that wanted small, intimate screens found the minimum, back then, Late 90's and mid 2000's was about 30 seats. Interestingly, an old customer of mine in Downers Grove, IL just added on to his flagship theater with 31 seats. It's just that nothing adds up here, unless you go with inexpensive older Series 1 stuff. Then it might all work out...

There is a bit of a mixups of terms here. A "screening room" for me is something different than a small cinema room. A screening room usually isn't accessible by the public. We have our own screening room, but we don't charge per seat, we bill per hour.

But even in the "small cinema room" space there is an ongoing shift to "deluxe VIP showings", where you pay considerably more per butt than you'd do in a normal, public viewing in an "ordinary" cinema auditorium. Combine this with "VIP seat service" and you might have a business model that works. We're currently involved with multiple such projects where bigger rooms need to be converted into smaller "VIP rooms" seating no more than about 10 to 12 people per show.

I'm not sure if I really like this trend and to me it's still questionable if it will have staying power, but cinemas are increasingly competing with larger TVs, non-existing exclusivity windows and less incentives for people to get out of their homes in general, so this is one way to try to motivate them. Besides watching the latest blockbuster, you can also rent a room to play your favorite video game with friends, do some Twitch-streaming, karaoke, you name it...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

That's correct in my world too. But he intends it as a second "move over" house.

[James Wyrembelski]

They're bringing the hammer down harder lately as well.

[Mike Blakesley]

It's really pretty irritating. The studios have used the pandemic as an excuse to "innovate" and experiment with windows and etc. thus devaluing their product to the point that it's worthless after about 4 weeks. Meanwhile the theater industry -- the industry that got the studios to where they are today -- is NOT allowed the same freedom. We're basically playing by the same rules as in 2010, except they insist on longer play-times these days.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It's really pretty irritating. The studios have used the pandemic as an excuse to "innovate" and experiment with windows and etc. thus devaluing their product to the point that it's worthless after about 4 weeks. Meanwhile the theater industry -- the industry that got the studios to where they are today -- is NOT allowed the same freedom. We're basically playing by the same rules as in 2010, except they insist on longer play-times these days.

Maybe it's finally time to get organized. Since most studio master agreements are under lock and key, it's difficult to say if they dare to put those heavy restrictions in their contracts or distribution sub-contracts, but over here in Europe, the freedom to program a movie the way you want in accordance your available "room and time inventory" is much more a given and generally practiced.