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Author Topic: Christie Opens New China Manufacturing Facility Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-20-2010 06:23 PM                     Mark...the image posted...from an NEC NC2000C. Thus far, Christie has given me the least amount of smearing of the units I've installed (SB, M and ZX). I have a DP2000 that has too much Red smear, in my opinion. I have a Barco DP2K-20C that is darn near perfect yet I have another one that has some smear...if it is an intrinsic design issue, it should be more consistent. Though I have seen green smear...it is, by far, the cleanest of the three colors. There is probably something to Barco having a green focus pattern in addition to the normal full color focus pattern. Please note, I'm not trying to pick on NEC just judging it on the facts and noting where it is strong and where it is weak. It is definitely weak on light as compared to the other two. I just completed an NEC NC2000C that is doing the job asked of it and it is living up to expectations. However, it was designed in what light it could deliver. I found it a more difficult installation than Barco (or Christie). I think the software is quite weak for the NEC and could stand much improvement. There is, no doubt, a bit of being used to the others, particularly Barco. But there can be any denying, the lamp alignment is flimsy, and the software will mislead one in optimizing the alignment so it should be avoided. I will do my best to get the most out of an NEC as I would with a Christie or Barco however I do think there are limitations imposed by the projector/software...that said, except for studio screening rooms, I don't think the movie going public will notice. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-20-2010 08:04 PM                     Steve-Brad, I know you'renot nit picking Steve. But I guess neither of you read my post. I said "use it for what it can do and you'll be fine just like any other piece of gear." Of course it isn't going to do a 40 foot wide screen with Dolby 3-D! All of my 3-D installs of this projector have been on ~30 foot wide 1.4 gain screens and this has left plenty of head room with the standard 4kw lamp. This will also allow for operatin in 2-D with either a 2kw or 3kw standard cinema lamp. There have been zero operating problems so far with the projector. You would have to ask Rodney Dye about the mis-focus and which color but it is. He elaborated on it when he stopped by the shop one day. It is a design issue with the pr ism and not being able to get that color chip in the exact plane it needs to be in. Back when we assembled projectors in the shop when I was working for CLACO I saw the same mis-focus on each ZX that went through the shop, he also pointed it out. You would in theory see it on every CP-2000 since they use the same light engine. When aligning each chip at the factory in it's proper focal plane they also have to take into account to some extent the chromatic abberation of both the prism and the average of all the lenses and set the focal point of the chips that way. Technicolor had to do a similar thing in it's three strip cameras but it was done by altering the glass mix for the camera lenses so all three primary colors landed in their proper focal planes. DLP of course is just the reverse. This is one of the main reasons why I would like to see well designed resolution patterns in each projector. HDTV has some decent patterns for checking this and they may well be very applicable to this situation. The problem in your photo may have nothing at all to do with the actual projector and may lie in the lens... or it could also be the other way around. There is no way at the moment to actually tell although Century Precision no dout has a properly set up lens projector in a darkroom in which any DLP lens could be tested for resolution at any point in it's zoom or focus range. On the base thing... I never cared for the Strong bases... the ones with the car jack for elevation. The EPRAD bases for the most part come built to your specs and are ot cheap! You can have the sub panel installed for what you need or just get a basic sub panel. The tilt point on the pedestals is at the nodal point of the optical system of the projector which is really nice. Racks are removable and can be wired sitting on the bench then installed in the pedestal after it has been moved onto the site. There have been several minor changes to the pedestals since I installed my first one and all these have just made it easier to dael with. I dislike the BARCO peds because of the hard to find European hardware required and the Christie peds are just way to basic. Many dealers don't even bother with the mid sized Christie ped and they make their own or adapt others. I don't see why the EPRAD peds might not also be adaptable to some of the BARCOs and Christies as long a the projector foot print is with in the shelf size. To me the software is a non-issie and it just amounts again to learning it and also using the right projector for the right job. I agree a Barco wold be better for jobs involving lots of modified formats or needing to modify on the fly. It IS the easiest software to operate! I however believe a good tech can be just as proficient at operating all the others and achieve more or less the same result. As technicians we have to be able to run any software involved in our day to day jobs in a fairly efficient manner... there IS a learning curve with all the software out there. The more you use it the easier it gets. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-21-2010 08:57 AM                     Wait...the "standard" 4K lamp for the NC1200 is the NC-16LP402...aka DXL-40SCN. It is just an 11900 lumen system...if you had a 30-foot wide 1.4 gain screen...when everything is new...balls to the wall, with Dolby 3D...you, at best, are going to get about 3.26fL...by the end of the life...2.5fL. Now if you use the high brightness lamp then 4.7 when new and 3.7 when towards the end of life. And that life comes at 650 hours... Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-21-2010 05:47 PM                     You're right Steve, it was the high brightness 650 hour lamp, I remember setting the lamp expiry warning to 600 hours! I measured these levels with the Minolta CS-200 and verified later on with very similar f.l. readings from my Spectra. Both meters are in calibration. More likely the Harkness 1.4 gain screen was higher than 1.4 or the projector was doing a bit more, possibly both. The lens used was the 2.4 to 3.9 ratio and the throw was about 90 feet to the 30 foot wide screen. The screen would need to be near 1.68 gain to get what I did and this wouldn't surprise me a bit. I did not have the time to calculate the gain of this particuluar Harkness due to installation time constraints but I will measure it in a couple of months when I go back. Lamp was running ~100% or about 115 equivelent amps in flat, no where near the top end of that lamp. One beef I have with the NEC is that percetage means absolutely nothing. They need to change that to amps! Even theater managers and the lesser but still evil booth monger can deal in amps! I did install one NEC 2000 and Dolby 3-D on a 14 year old 32 foot wide matte white Harkness screen back right after Showest and I got what you calculated I should be getting with the 1.4 gainer. About 3.25 fl. This customer is getting a new screen very shortly to improve the light level. In his case he has a properly curved frame and is getting a 1.8 gainer. No customers have complained about the low light level. It is too low for me! This was installed with the Phillips LTI Helios short gap 4kw lamp. Oddly no lumens spec exists for this lamp at least on the Phillips LTI web site. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-21-2010 07:34 PM                     The NC2000C tops out at 138A. When running the high brightness lamp at 100%, you are at 138A. Hooking up the DCC software can confirm this. Also, I'm pretty sure you can get this information by scrolling down the menus into the "Lamp" section. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-22-2010 09:46 PM                     Steve... A current rating on this rectifier by iself is more or less meaningless. The XDC-4000N in the NC-2000 will actually go as high as 4160 watts. The operating voltage of these lamps is higher ~29 volts indicitive that the rectifier in the NC-2000 is constant voltage. The top end of this lamp is 130 amps. 29 X 130 = 4160 watts. I don't happen to have the lamp specs handy for the 16LP410 or the 402 but they are probably operated under similar conditions. It may also be very possible that the power supply is programmable based on the lamp selected. FYI: There is a major software update just out (Service Pack 1). It adds about 12 other lamps to the memory list. I just did an update on one tonight. It a very straight foreword upgrade to do and everything is done from the update page in the DCC software. The built in checker also compares the software that is presently loaded into the projector versus what you have in the update package... Pretty nifty!  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-23-2010 02:18 AM                     Yeah...there is one that came out on the 14th of June. As for the lamps...YOU can supply the information on the lamps and yes they do take into account current and wattage (and with that voltage can be derived). It is good to know that they supplied some more lamp types as I had to manually key in the Ushio models (same as NEC but with Ushio numbers...I rather have the same lamp model that is on the box listed rather than say a DXL-40SCN is the same as...yadda, yadda, yadda. Now here is a new one for me with NEC...So does the service update help the unit from being so easily confused? That is, if you tell it, at the start of the show, to strike the lamp, run Macro003 (3D Flat, in my case)...that will lock up the projector and require reboot!!!. You can't give it two instructions at once. If you separate the instructions by 5 seconds or so...it will ignore the second instruction if it isn't done with the first. No buffer in there? Also, on the software update...I didn't find any list of bug fixes, features added. That is something both other manufacturers provide with their updates. I DON'T update just for updating's sake...if things are running well and what the update is supposed to do isn't needed/desired...I'll wait until a feature comes out or a fix is made or a compatibility is required.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-23-2010 12:14 PM                     Both NEC and Strong highly reccomend doing the update. It is a major one and is worth having the list of lamps alone! This alows booth personell to safely change to a different wattage lamp much more readily. You can't depend on them to enter a whole list of lamp specifications accurately. It does also fix other bugs as well and I will find out some more on that. One of the fixes is for the ICP which itself has also been slightly modified for compliance. It does not fix the cue issue. That has to do with the computing power available. The reason for that issue is during title select the lens is also doing it's move when the macro or title is selected and this consumes the most processing power of all the functions going on. If you can leave out the title select from the cue macro it is less of an issue. Also, are you using cue macros or just seperate cues... cue macros work much more efficiently. It works much better if you use macros. The title will go back to the last one used on power up. I use 30 seconds of black and have a Start cue in the server for each of the different formats. That cue includes lamp on and title select. I set the douser to open at power up as it's totally unnecessary... so is the key lock which can also be disabled. The key lock might be nice for location work though as a safety from other prying fingers.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-23-2010 11:29 PM                     The Key lock can sort of be disabled. It will always be keylocked when it powers up...but if you disable the keylock...it won't relock itself after that (until the next power cycle). So the NEC can handle multiple cues eh? The hits keep on a comin'. It is so graceful that it locks up! Thanks for confirming the problem. I have worked around it but I was hoping that it was something that software would fix....I guess not. I agree that the end users will not key in the different lamp specs...which is why I keyed them in myself (for the lamps they will be using. I'll be updating one tomorrow. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-24-2010 11:42 AM                     Steve, If you can get away without doing a title select in the macro then you can throw what ever you want at it. The simple cues take little computing power to accomplish. It's just the lens positioning function that comsumes the computing power on that board... it is moving the lens six different ways. I can imagine a future software update will alleviate at least some of this. Like the ZX and M it's just a little bit slow and needs time to process the commands, although IMHO it should have some sort of buffer to store them until it can complete all the commands you have put in. It's a minor problem once you know how to deal with it, every manufacturer's projector has some different issues to this very day! We just have to learn how to deal with them efficiently. If you do the upgrade don't be in a rush but you'll fnd it very easy to do. About as easy or easier than the BARCO. Expect about a 5 min re-boot the first time you bring the projector back up. The NC-2000's I've installed normally boot up in about 45 seconds... thats dam fast! Once in a while I've noticed that it does a long boot... especially if the server is left off. It is merely waiting for the server to boot for DLP Comm and the Decryption Certificate... you will see these warnings briefly post on the side LCD screen. However, it will contuinue to boot up eventually even if it doesn't see those. Takes about ~4:30 to complete, just like a Christie. This long boot only happens once every so often, probably because the server has been left off or because the Decryption certificate has expired. The DFC 100 for instance HAS TO SEE a valid 3-D license at least once every 24 hours or it will not boot up. If that ever happens to you just plug your laptop to the usb and open the DFC set up program... it will immediately dafault to standby and you can manually operate it. Mark  |  IP: Logged Pietro Clarici Expert Film Handler Posts: 136 From: Foligno (PG) Italy Registered: Sep 2008 posted 06-24-2010 12:07 PM                        quote: Mark Gulbrandsen If you can get away without doing a title select in the macro then you can throw what ever you want at it True, and - at least on Doremi servers - you can always program a macro to have a delay of your choosing between one command and the next. For example: dowser close - title select - wait 40 sec (zooming from Flat to Scope or viceversa) - dowser open. You link that to 40 sec of Black or Black 3D pattern, and it works fine. It takes time and that's why we tend to avoid creating playlists with different aspect ratios, but it can be done. And title selection isn't the only cpu-intensive operation: on lamp strike, it takes approximately 20 seconds for the projector to register the next command. When I was setting up my fist macro, I put "dowser open" immediately after "lamp on", and the dowser never opened. It took me a while to realize that I had to delay the second command for the macro to work.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-24-2010 04:40 PM                     Yeah...I found that the Lamp On set you back just shy of 16-seconds before you could issue it another command. It seems like this update did fix the crashing issue but it now just ignores subsequent commands until it finishes. So you have a 16 second delay from lamp strike until your next command...for me it WILL be a Macro to ensure the projector is always set properly for the movie to be shown...since that command follows with the movie itself...and that can be upwards of 20-seconds...so this movie is going to be starting upwards of 1-minute late, every show? All because the projector can "deal" with normal start up requests? I have told them to omit the douser close at the end of the show since that is really superfluous if the lamp is being turned off/on. I do have them issue a douser open after the first clip starts to ensure it is open but nothing to close it. As for boot ups...Barco has the others spanked...they are pretty darn fast nowadays. Also, starting with the Series 2 machines, their lens shifts are also very fast. Barco can have everything built into the Macro, if you want so you don't have multiple commands, if you don't want to. I have noted that sending multiple requests at the SAME time can leave you without something being executed...at least on the DP2000s. Have not had the problem on the DP2K-20Cs but most of my customers know not to do that anymore and there is little need since it takes a little bit of time for the lights to dim and all. The software update, for me, just added the Ushio DXL lamps...which I had already added. As for updates. The NEC is a very clunky one...you check what you need to update....update those one at a time. Check again, change modes, update those, reboot, change modes reboot again. It is all manual too...there is no "update" button and it all just happens...no you have to go through it step by step. I can see advantages but for most, just like "Express Install" works on most programs, having an "express update" would be welcomed. As for updating Barco...there is the "update button" and you merely point it at the update package. On the later series 1s and the series 2s you do have the DC Toolset that is "awkward" in my opinion (unnecessarily complicated and a second program to have). However, doing updates just requires selecting the package and pressing update. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-24-2010 08:32 PM                     When updating an older DP 100 the auto update killed the switch mode power supplies. The only aspect of the update that did not work was that. The power supplies can be revived but only after installing them one at a time in anothermachine and down grading just the switch mode stuff. Hence I prefer NOT to just let a firmware package auto install itself. One system at a time is much more logical and if you have introduced a problem it will be just one section and you'll know right away which one is bad. Hence you can see why I appreciate the NEC updated. Not only does it tell you if the different software packages are compatable with each other it also verifies each load. On the start macros we just run them during 30 seconds of black. No need to start late... Just start the show one minute or 30 seconds earlier to allow the system to go on screen. He'll, they don't fire the space shuttle engines and leave... Start sequence begins about 45 seconds before the engines fire. Then they run for about 7 seconds while they are verified by the on board computers. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-25-2010 07:00 AM                     Okay...so you found one instance where an "update" did harm. Note, there is no reason why an auto update wouldn't flag an incompatibility between a package and a system every bit as efficiently as the NEC manual one. The problem was in whom ever approved the update and didn't see the ramifications of what some of the updates would do. That was Barco's fault, not the concept of the update and how it was performed. Note, I never ran into this, myself, but I do see how it can happen. My solution is to not update "just because." I want to know what the update is suppose to bring (Features) and what it is supposed to fix. If I'm not experiencing the problems it is supposed to fix or the features will not be utilized...I pass on the update until one comes along that offers something. Shoot, I had some early CP500s that were running on firmware 1.2 their entire lives because they NEVER had a problem and the customer would not have benefited one nit for a new feature. They never glitched either. Yet I know of many that updated to 1.61 at some point and experienced the memory dump from a power surge...one plex had all but two screens go down because the rest dumped. Barco and Christie provide a list of what the update package does and they both seem to keep available older packages too. On the NEC update...you get nothing. You don't know WHAT it is supposed to be updating. Since I was getting a projector that would crash almost every show, the update could at least help...and it did. As for starting upwards of a minute earlier...that is silly. The start time is the start time...with digital everything, the lights should start dimming at the start time and the show should begin by the time they dim down. Even old antique film systems can do that! There is simply no excuse for the projectors to not be able to due multiple things. The starting of the lamp should be handled by its own system...same with the lens, douser...etc. But even a basic computer can handle multiple tasks better than this. More importantly, the END USER should not have to think for the projector on how the projector operates. They should just have to operate it. If it needs time to do a function, it should at least cue up the request and get to it once it completes an earlier task. That sort of buffer has only been with computers for about well...ever...think keyboards...they depend on such a buffer. And since there not too many requests that the outside world will be requesting at start up...it need not be a very large buffer! Or you could take the Barco approach and have the option of putting EVERYTHING in the Macro so you only make one request and it will execute everything...whatever. But the end user should not have to factor in extra time for each request or risk "confusing" the projector. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-25-2010 09:22 PM                     quote: Steve Guttag My solution is to not update "just because." Depends on what's on the fix list and in the case of auto update I would want to know more about what it does or does not... In the case of the DP-1-00 we were taking it from MPEG to JPEG so it was not a matter of do I do it or not, we had to do it... I also did a second one in Seattle that was still MPEG and I skipped the SMPS upgrade and no troubles with that one. Mark  |  IP: Logged

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