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Author Topic: DCinema equipment lifespan - why so short? Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-23-2008 10:46 PM                     quote: Steve Guttag the Dolby people claimed that their system ran best with a 50-foot cable and hence that is the length they supplied... Actually for all the Dolby Servers I've installed I made up custom HDSDI cables and they are not over 6 feet in length... no problems with this length. I know of a number of other installs with very short lengths too. From what you've said and if thats what they claim it tells me the output buffer is definately not up to standards. I wasn't implying that today is the time for fibre although we are very close to it.. I'd say in a year or two it'll be overall as cheap and will replace copper in most situations... and yes... price the fibre cable. It is really dirt cheap. The connectors are high priced but not out of range of anyone. Its the fibre NIC's for the server and other connections involved that are expensive... now in the 100.00 price range for a 3-Com gigabyte 32/64 bit PCIx card. The price is way down from just two years ago though! I found 40 meter full duplex pre-made fibre cables on the net for 48.00 each with connectors installed... pretty inexpensive!  |  IP: Logged Ron Funderburg Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 814 From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA Registered: Nov 2007 posted 04-23-2008 10:59 PM                        Funny thing is the phone companies were the pioneers in the fiber optic world and abandoned it because plain old copper could carry more data quicker!  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-23-2008 11:10 PM                     Ron, The problem isn't multiplexing a gazillion things onto the copper... the phone company is great at doing that! The problem is speed limitations of copper and distance... fibre is a gazillion times faster and can go way way further unaided. The fibre speed is only limited by the speed at which the lasers them selves can be modulated. The common fastest fibre ethernet system that exists now is the 10 gigabit of whihc the standard came to be in 2002. 10 gigabit will mean really fast movie transfers and very short load times... but we are probably 7 or so years away before the 10 gb system may be affordable. BTW: the technology for 10gb over copper does exist but its limit is similar to 1000 base ethernet or 330 feet. The switches and optical NIC cards are still very expensive. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steven J Hart Master Film Handler Posts: 282 From: WALES, ND, USA Registered: Mar 2004 posted 04-24-2008 07:24 AM                        quote: Funny thing is the phone companies were the pioneers in the fiber optic world and abandoned it because plain old copper could carry more data quicker! That is funny - 'cause my local phone provider is just completing a project installing fiber into every home, every business in town. They plan to retire their copper system within a few years. The copper terminates inside our theater with a box sporting 3 modular phone type jacks and 6 ethernet ports. Maybe someday the distributors will be able to send encrypted DC content directly to the theater without hard disks. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-24-2008 08:12 AM                     Doesn't surprise me at all Stephen, they are doing the same thing in my town right now. hat conversion will definately clear up my slow popke DSL service once and for all but its about a year from being completed. Those that don't know about gigabit ethernet there is a good listing of the different systems over at Wikipedia. UNder the "See Also" links at the boottom of the Wikipedia page also see the links to 10 gig ethernet and 100 gig ethernet. Mark  |  IP: Logged Jason Burroughs Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 654 From: Allen, TX Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-24-2008 08:57 AM                     Mark, Actually the distance limitation for 10gig on copper is more like 30 meters unless you go with very expensive Cat6a, or the yet to be approved Cat7. Both of these are shielded cables and are difficult (though not impossible) to terminate, and the connectors are more expensive. Like you said, fiber is the way of the future. 10gig on 50micron XG (laser optimized) is very common. Also fiber is FAR more durable and reliable than copper, in addition to being completely immune to RFI. Connectors are somewhat pricey, but comming down, and is easily terminated with pre-polished connectors. Termination with pre-polished connectors is faster than copper IMHO. In addition the cost of copper is only going to go UP. 100gig is on single mode fiber using a 1500nm. lightwave. [ 04-29-2008, 02:05 PM: Message edited by: Jason Burroughs ]  |  IP: Logged Ron Funderburg Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 814 From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA Registered: Nov 2007 posted 04-24-2008 12:57 PM                        Let me restate this! Several years back several Rural cooperative's removed the fiber optics from the phone poll between towns in their service areas. The reason stated (other than they have to keep their profit margin at or under 10%) was that fiber optic did not preform well on poll set ups. 45 mile an hour straight winds with gust to 70 miles per hour were snapping the fibers inside the cables and phone and data service then terminated from either side of the break to the other side was terminated. So they removed all the between town fiber and replaced it with large twisted copper cable. Now if they bury it they will probable go back to the fiber. One of friends that worked for one of the cooperatives felt (his opinion) that the cable gave better service for internet.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-24-2008 02:28 PM                     Man, I can't believe they actually hung the fibr stuff... Even in rural Utah and the desert its all hurried. I wonder if your phone company ever thought to try that. Mark  |  IP: Logged Ron Funderburg Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 814 From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA Registered: Nov 2007 posted 04-24-2008 03:07 PM                        Mark you must remember they are a cooperative and as such have to keep the profit margin at 10% or less. They do a lot of dumb things with most cooperative phone companies to use up the funds and then re-do them later. The problem they have in that area with burying them (no longer live there) that there are just hundreds and hundreds of miles on polls already. Their internet service kicks hell out of anything I have had around here but the 6 months I lived in town and had cable out in the country right now not even AT&T provides service so you use either satellite or wireless. We are on wireless now it is way better than the satellite was. but in the boonies of the OK panhandle you had ADSL (and top of the speed ADSL) at a lot less cost at nearly every farm. I lived out of town and never had a problem. They did bury the phone cables in our area just before we moved I suspect that they switched to fiber when they did that. Of course you have to watch out for the prairie dogs, molls and other underground vermin in the area they love to chew on anything that they can!  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-24-2008 08:00 PM                     Ron, Or they coulda scrapped out the poles and burried the cable. Dismantling the pole system would have kept their profits way down... perhaps at a loss instead. At any rate they will be forced to use fibre and bury it in the very near future... With the soaring price of copper and high labor and length of time it takes to pole mount any type of cable it just won't make sense any longer. They may even get such a high scrap payment out of the old copper stuff that it would pay for the fibre. A lineman friend once told me that they can bury 10 times the amount of cable that can be strung on poles in a days work shift. Mark  |  IP: Logged Ron Funderburg Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 814 From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA Registered: Nov 2007 posted 04-25-2008 09:45 AM                        We travel back often and the panhandle is still covered with polls for telephone. Don't know when they will switch or that they aren't switching or haven't switched. I don't live there just travel there. They will do whatever they need to do it is a far better company about taking care of customers than any other communication company I have seen. Then again if you live in a cooperative area and have their service you own the company which makes you the boss as well as the customers. I just got a payment from them I think I have one year left before they have paid me for all that owe me but I guess this could be the last one. It is smaller than the others were so it is probable the last year it was a partial year.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 04-26-2008 11:01 AM                       Haha! Ron, until I saw Mark's last post, I thought you were talking about some sort of computer polling! And I couldn't make heads nor tails of what the heck you were talking about. It's POLE, guy, not "poll".  |  IP: Logged Ron Funderburg Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 814 From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA Registered: Nov 2007 posted 04-26-2008 11:28 AM                        Sorry Tim! To two and too pole, poll, loan, Lone the English language is strewn with sound a likes that have no where the same meaning. Then there the words that are spelled the same and have different a lot of land, or a lot of candy. All in all the spoken word is far easier for me than the written one. I know dumb excuse. It gets worse in my house, my wife was born in England, grew up in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Australia and uses words terms that it has taken 10 years to get use.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 04-26-2008 03:42 PM                        |  IP: Logged

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