Small Room Projector - Barco vs NEC

[Jason Sharp]

Ballpark price on the Espedo with GDC built-in?

I have no idea on the pricing or availability. Maybe one of the re-sellers can chime in. If you're going to CinemaCon you can see it in person.

[Mike Blakesley]

Maybe it's finally time to get organized.

Maybe, but it's mostly the smaller places like ours that need to do things differently (but can't), and if we all banded together and "rose up" against the studios, they would probably just tell us to go pound sand. They truly do not give a shit about us unless we owe them money.

[Steve Guttag]

You also get collusion laws that prevent exhibitors banding together on some things (though studios, due to their relatively small group can magically, independently, fix pricing/rules.

It is like "right to repair" Most manufacturers of things (not most cinema things) are trying to weed out the ability to replace parts, including batteries in phones and things. The consumer's ability to just go somewhere else is progressively reduced as just a handful of companies can do the same thing.

[Brad Miller]

I also would nut buy anything from any company that makes you buy an extended warranty just to get their projector, indeed... that IS extortion.

You know Mark, that's like a company forcing you to continue to extend your warranty year after year just so you can get the log info from a machine that you already purchased.

It's also like a company that forces you to buy a warranty on a non-supported "end of life" product just so you can get the certificate extended (when the company intentionally set the certificate expiration date at a pathetic 10 years for planned obsolescence).

Obviously you agree how shady all of these sort of business practices are.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

What you are implying is not at all true in my experience. No one there forces you to buy an extended warranty just to be able to read logs. DCI sets the time frame on the certificate, not the manufacturer, and if you want to, renewing one is easy and inexpensive, and is done on site. Not every one's can be. I never had any issues getting logs read. All but four of the classic servers I installed are still in and running. One's MB died and three were traded in on new. So there are still about 250+ in use. Most of those certs will have to be renewed by the end of this year or next year, or tje equipment will have to be replaced. How many manufacturers have offered trade in credit on their old gear? Parts manufacturers average production span on chips is between two and five years. At least three manufacturers that immediately come to mind have discontinued support on cinema products because chips are NLA. It's also interesting to note that two server manufacturers used almost the same identical Super Micro mother board.

[Leo Enticknap]

To be fair to GDC, they have never refused to provide log analysis/fault diagnosis for an out-of-warranty unit when I've asked them for one. But encrypting their logs gives them the ability to do that in future, which is obviously something to consider when making purchasing choices. They do seem to have a bit of a control freak corporate mentality, though, and this is one manifestation of it. Another is that if you ask them for media block certs, they require you to give them the name, full postal address, and details of a contact person where the unit is installed. A third is that they will not give you a patch to correct an out-of-budget secure clock: they insist on connecting to the site via Teamviewer and making the adjustment themselves. A fourth is passwords to install updates. Dolby, Barco/Cinionic, and Qube do not have these policies (earlier DolRemis did require a license file to install media block updates, but this was dropped with the IMS3000).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

To be fair to GDC, they have never refused to provide log analysis/fault diagnosis for an out-of-warranty unit when I've asked them for one. But encrypting their logs gives them the ability to do that in future, which is obviously something to consider when making purchasing choices. They do seem to have a bit of a control freak corporate mentality, though, and this is one manifestation of it. Another is that if you ask them for media block certs, they require you to give them the name, full postal address, and details of a contact person where the unit is installed. A third is that they will not give you a patch to correct an out-of-budget secure clock: they insist on connecting to the site via Teamviewer and making the adjustment themselves. A fourth is passwords to install updates. Dolby, Barco/Cinionic, and Qube do not have these policies (earlier DolRemis did require a license file to install media block updates, but this was dropped with the IMS3000).

There is no way to patch the clock in GDC servers. The only way is for them to remote in and change it in the database. I used to know how to access the database but never needed to do it since everything syncs to NTP. I have long forgotten how to even do it.

Update passwords are no big deal since they are attached to the actual update file and can't be lost. All in all I have zero complaints considering that almost all of them are still running. Ditto for the SX-3000, although they were a little wonky at first. But so was the SR-1000.

in my case, GDC already has had the location address and contact name of the owner since the server was.purchased. All I do is give them the serial number of the server.

I somewhat agree on the control freak aspect. But if you step back and look at why they do it. It is obvious that it's in the theater's best interest. Like the update passwords... You don't want people that are not qualified trying to install updates...

[Steve Guttag]

Why lock the logs? What purpose does that serve? What information are they gathering that they feel the need to lock the logs? Only GDC has charged for certificate extensions. Only GDC wants the exact physical location of the server for getting the certificate's PEM file to issue to studios.

Yeah, GDC does offer trade-ins...but they want the old server...not just the mediablock...have you priced out shipping a box server to GDC from the East Coast? With the current offering of trade in, it is almost a wash. The trade-in is just to steal some people away from other brands.

So far, GDC has been the hold out on even providing their API for integration with control systems, like Q-SYS. GDC's best saving grace is that their Tech Support is excellent. The SR-1000 has not been problematic (though really slow to boot up, fully).

[Darin Steffl]

We decided on the NC1202L because it's available within 3-4 weeks. Our goal is to be live by June 10 for Jurassic Word so we can show more new release movies this summer. We'll see how everything goes.

We should have all the electronics within 4 weeks to go live so it's a matter of us getting the room ready and getting chairs. Recliners may not arrive by June 10 so we'll have temporary seating and make sure customers know the room may not be fully furnished with the good seats until they're installed.

The contrast ratio is pretty bad at 1600:1 on this projector but it's the only small laser projector that will arrive on time. The espedeo won't work because they don't have a lens that works for us. Ceiling mount is not possible for us here because it's not tall enough to keep the projector out of reach of people.

[Stefan Scholz]

I have no idea on the pricing or availability. Maybe one of the re-sellers can chime in. If you're going to CinemaCon you can see it in person.

You end up in the same region as a Barco dp2k 6s including ICMP used to end for the final customer. Final price here is around 30 grand including the built in GDC media player/ sound processor unit.
The weak part is the limited number of lenses they offer for this cinema type, being 3. With 1.5 to around 2.5 as maximum. As it is silent, it can be hung from the ceiling, and some of that defiance is taken away.
I had tried to use the Espedeo in some rural non profit theatres in my federal state, but we ended up in the need to place projectors in the booths, as those are multi use venues, which have limited movie shows, and extensive other uses. So everyone needing a presentation projector would try to fiddle the cinema setup.
At the end it might be Barco SP 7L due to size considerations. Which from finance is no problem, the federal state pays for them.
I haven't seen the Espedeo image quality so far. It seemed to be a dual modulator Time division multiple color generator, on 0.47" based chips. As a dual modulator it has chance for decent contrast. I am curious.
Even if Barco's contrast is better than NEC Sharp, I have to admit, I do not like the color of the phosphors at all, and Barco SP 2k lasers do not really perform better, than NEC. Both are contrast free, and in case of laser the color is poor in my vision.
For me, best image was a serviced Sony 320, followed by my old NEC 1200/2000 or a Christie 2210 with a Konica Minolta lens. Of todays units, only Christies 4440 and hard to get UHC lens came close to what I likE, but that's way too big in most applications.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Why lock the logs? What purpose does that serve? What information are they gathering that they feel the need to lock the logs? Only GDC has charged for certificate extensions. Only GDC wants the exact physical location of the server for getting the certificate's PEM file to issue to studios.

Yeah, GDC does offer trade-ins...but they want the old server...not just the mediablock...have you priced out shipping a box server to GDC from the East Coast? With the current offering of trade in, it is almost a wash. The trade-in is just to steal some people away from other brands.

So far, GDC has been the hold out on even providing their API for integration with control systems, like Q-SYS. GDC's best saving grace is that their Tech Support is excellent. The SR-1000 has not been problematic (though really slow to boot up, fully).

Like I said, locking the logs has not been an issue for me. Few problems to begin with and if you tell them you are on site they get to it very fast.

GDC sent boxes and had UPS pick them up the only time a customer did a trade in, but that was a couple years ago when the SR-1000 was brand new. .Will they now? It may also depend on what kind of deal the dealer can make with them, it its just a couple servers, or if it's a large plex worth of them.

Slow,? Probably. It runs on a Raspberry Pi that has a quad core ARM processor. The Atom in the SX-3000 is also pretty pokey, and the Atom processors were discontinued last April by Intel.. Linux can be slow to boot, and to run with some types of processors that you might think it would run fast on. But since the majority of places are just booting once a day it's pretty irrelevant.

Lower left Pix is a Raspberry Pi 3B The current one is the 4B. Up to 8GB of ram and two USB 3 jacks, 2 USB 2 jacks. Right pic is a Pi 4 under the shield, or heatsink.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

[James Wyrembelski]

Maybe, but it's mostly the smaller places like ours that need to do things differently (but can't), and if we all banded together and "rose up" against the studios, they would probably just tell us to go pound sand. They truly do not give a shit about us unless we owe them money.

A friend of mine put his conspiracy hat on a while back and suggested that there may be something to ComScore with all of this. Since, back in the day, you used to be able to look up anyone that had open grosses. Now, it's just within your branch. He's been dying to know how much in grosses all smaller theatres (think 1-4 screens) pull in collectively across the states. His conspiracy was that the distribs don't want us seeing how much we pull in collectively....otherwise we just might find that voice.

Unlikely that's the reason, but I wouldn't put it past them either.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Form the association of small theater owners. Then you can compile grosses from all the theaters.

[Mike Blakesley]

James may be right, they may not want the bunch of us to know how much we contribute to their coffers, but I think we are likely mostly a break-even for them. If they didn't have us, they'd probably not care. Hell they already don't care about the millions in upfront money they lose when they decide to send some of their most high-profile movies straight to streaming just to get a few subscribers to their "plus" service.