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Topic: Cyan Tracks
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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster
Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-22-2004 10:10 AM
Actually the decent imports over that same time period add up to over the price of the G.E.'s, and then there are the ultra expensive Italian lamps and some German ones too that push the white light total farther up over 5 years time. Lets face it no matter whos BXM you buy its generally pretty poor quality and each lamp change requires them to be tweeked for max high frequency response, if you're serious about your work. Exciter lamps are just not what they used to be back in the 50's and 60's.
While I can't state exactly how much we charge for a replacement LED its not 180.00 or anyplace near that price. Yes, on service contract customers they get changed out if needed as part of the contract so there is no extra charge above what they are paying monthly. As to customers that have no contract I figure about a half hour to replace, and tweek them. Yes, Kelmars do take longer, and are more difficult, so we perhaps tack on three quarters of an hour to do that along with the other service work being done. And yes I tweek the LED's position after replacing it, they do vary and this is a must. I've never had to make a service call that I can remember for just a bad LED since they've come out. Just to upgrade from IR to visible....about an hours worth of work unless its an older C.E. unit in which they have an entire upgrade kit with new LED mount, power supply and other necessary things to go visible...that takes about 90 min. To replace a CAT701 LED is about an hour with alignment and I've probably replaced more of these LED's than any others. We have yet to have a Laser scanner fail in an Ernamann nor fade out to below Dolby level, some are almost 9 years old now!. I do remember you saying that it'll be fun to replace them though, and at that time perhaps its time to coherce Sam into making an LED scanner for them, or just do a small run of custom units in our shop, either way that'll be pricy the fist time its done.
While I don't favor the red LED's for best sound quality either, they simply are not really any more expensive to operate over any other commonly used scanning light source. The only MORE EXPENSIVE source would be new IR LED's, or LASER. Those things are extremely pricy but then I have an entire fleet of used I.R. spares anyway.
If you were to have to make a trip to properly tweek each new exciter lamp that was installed for best hf response(yes it does matter) then I'd say that exciter costs would be far, far higher than LED's cost.
Mark @ CLACO
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Warren Smyth
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 158
From: Auckland ,New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 02-23-2004 06:10 AM
Welcome back Dominic quote:
if or when there is any change to the release print prices to the distributors, then the theatres should go to the distributors to get the savings passed on
I couldn't agree more. The fact is, your input here is the very first suggestion exhibitors have received from an authoritive source, that there just might be savings to be passed on to them. I think that with all that has been written to promote cyan tracks, if the public relations people had done what you have, some of the ill feeling may never have existed. The carrot is more powerful than the stick. quote:
I don't mean to pick on Dominic or John here. They've both been kind enough to contribute to this thread and deserve substantial credit for that alone, even though the issue isn't exactly popular here.
I think you have made a very good point that's certainly worth repeating Scott. The fact is, they both have to walk a difficult PR tight rope. The whole subject of cyan is very complex. It not only involves technical and financial issues but in some territories, legal as well.
Without admitting liability, Dominic has gone about as far as he dare in acceptance of the principals that
1 There may be cost savings in the production of prints with cyan tracks.
2. That any savings should be passed on through the distributor to the exhibitor.
For those who may think I've been a little hard on Dominic, let me repeat that he is an honourable man and I have very good reason to believe he also has a sense of humour. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
In closing, because I think I have made my point, let me tell you a little story about an oil company, seeing you enjoy petrol comparisons Dominic. A major oil company decided to use a different additive in their petrol a few months ago. The additive was technically fine, the only problem was, that a very small percentage of cars ( much less than 20% I would think) ran very rough. The engines coughed and spluttered so much, that owners took them to be serviced and suffered costs and inconvenience. I repeat there was nothing wrong with the petrol except that it had an incompatability problem with a very small percentage of vehicles. The result was that the OIL COMPANY had to pay out significant compensation to the owners of the affected cars. You see, we have a piece of legislation called the Goods and Services Act over here which regulates the marketable quality of goods. Where did we get our consumer law from? - Australia. Clever blokes those Aussies. ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
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I was responding to the comment that dye transfer is gone and never coming back. And yes, to have the necessary resolution the dye particles would need to be akin to the amount of dye you presently get when a color coupler molecule is activated by the developer oxidation product or however that works. Far fetched of course but not impossible. Basically it would be a ultra high rez film recorder cranking out prints from any source material that need no further processing, and, depending on the dyes, could have the quality and permanence we associate with IB. Given what can be done in microelectronics I don't doubt that a printing "head" of some sort could be created but whether it's feasible and whether such a machine could ever achieve competitive speeds I don't know.
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