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Author Topic: Blue line down the middle of the screen on series 2 Barco? Andrew Thomas Master Film Handler Posts: 273 From: Pearland, TX, USA Registered: Jun 2012 posted 02-06-2016 11:58 PM                     quote: Jason McMillan Andrew, Do you mind if I ask which drive in you purchased? Was it the Showboat, by chance? That is the one quote: Marco Giustini they won't charge you 20.000 for a refurbished light engine - if you return the old one. $20,000ish is the price of a refurb light engine for the 32B. So far, one vendor has quoted a credit of $1200 for the return of the busted light engine, while the other three has said they give no credit. It will likely be much less than the $20,000 to repair whatever is causing the intermittent contact issues, but I would be without the light engine for a couple of months. But with the plan to add a third screen, it just makes most sense to go ahead buy the new projector and send the light engine off to get the repair quote.  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 02-07-2016 04:51 AM                     I would ask someone else because I believe you can swap your engine for much less than 20.000!!  |  IP: Logged Andrew Thomas Master Film Handler Posts: 273 From: Pearland, TX, USA Registered: Jun 2012 posted 02-07-2016 09:59 AM                     The Barco list price for new is slightly over $26,000, and refurb is slightly over $21,000. I've checked around and all places are around that or no more than $1500 less. That's just what it costs.  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 02-07-2016 12:23 PM                     Andrew What I'm saying is that Barco should be able to do a repair-exchange to the engine at a fraction of that cost. That is, you receive a new/refurbished engine, swap the faulty one and send the other back.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-07-2016 12:52 PM                     So Barco doesn't send a repaired replacement light engine out FIRST? NEC does this if you need to send one in for repair. You have to put up a big deposit on the repaired replacement you are getting though. Then you get billed by them for what it cost to fix YOUR light engine but you just leave the one in that you received. The warranty on the repaired one is 1 year on what was actually repaired. Not 1 year on the entire light engine. I have only had to replace one NEC light engine that was out of warranty because of too many stuck pixels caused by someone doing demolition of a wood platform right next to the projector. In this case we bought a new light engine and kept the old one for parts. The formatter boards are still good and so are two of the DMD's. I would not hesitate to fix this stuff right in the booth... It is not THAT hard. Just takes time and patience. Mark  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 02-07-2016 01:27 PM                     Did they comment on what actually caused these pixel to become stuck? Dirt? Vibrations? Spikes, Electromagnetical fields? - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Andrew Thomas Master Film Handler Posts: 273 From: Pearland, TX, USA Registered: Jun 2012 posted 02-07-2016 02:13 PM                     The Barco folks outlined the process this way. Step 1: Pay $250 for the diagnostic on the repair Step 2: Send the busted unit to Belgium Step 3: Wait at least 4 weeks for the diagnostic to be completed Step 4: Get quote for the repairs Step 5: Approve the repairs and pay the full repair cost Step 6: Wait 4-12 weeks for repairs to be completed Step 7: Receive back the repaired light engine So it doesn't sound to me like they do any sort of swap service. Maybe that is an option and he just didn't mention it? quote: Carsten Kurz Did they comment on what actually caused these pixel to become stuck? Dirt? Vibrations? Spikes, Electromagnetical fields? To be frank, while the tech was very pleasant...he really didn't do any investigation of the cause of the problem. Just confirmed that it is something in the light engine that is the issue. I wasn't very impressed with the company, but that is who Barco recommended.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 02-07-2016 03:00 PM                     Sorry Andrew, I meant Mark to answer this for the case he mentioned just above. In your case, the repair could come out a lot cheaper if you are lucky, so I would definitely go for it. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 02-07-2016 03:25 PM                     I still insist that Barco DO offer a repair exchange option. What you have been quoting is the repair only option - which will probably be cheaper but, as you noticed, will leave you off screen for a while. That's why I suggested to ask someone else.  |  IP: Logged Andrew Thomas Master Film Handler Posts: 273 From: Pearland, TX, USA Registered: Jun 2012 posted 02-07-2016 03:53 PM                     Thanks for the tip! I'll look into it more on Monday.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-07-2016 11:08 PM                     Carsten, I suspect that it was excessive shock. The wood platform that was demolished by the theater manager (without permission) was attached at one side to a tall wooden pedestal the projector pedestal sits on top of. This whole column affair was brought about by an inept contractor who didn't know what he was doing back when these screens were added on. Seems he forgot the projector had to be well above the top row of stadium seating! The platform was not a structural support type of thing but it was attached to the column the projector was atop of. Constant banging to loosen the 2x6 joist's and braces had to be what caused this because it was all fine a couple weeks before whenI was there before that demolition commenced. It affected the green and red DMD's and it caused a total of 29 pixels to become stuck (that's how many I could count) Normally if you want to buy a light engine for an NC-2000 it's 28k new, same price as the projector minus lens. However, they can be bought from NEC dealers overseas for in the $12,500.00 range, so NEC here in America is just gouging the customer. I was lucky to be able to get a brand new light engine from MIT out of a projector that had slight shipping damage (bent lamphouse area) for 12k with a one year warranty. Out of over 300 other NEC's I only have one with a random stuck blue pixel. That has been stuck for over a year now and hasn't gotten any worse so the customer is just going to leave it. NEC would repair that prism for about 5 to 8 grand. The one with two bad DMD's would be about double for repair which is why we grabbed the one from the damaged projector while we had the chance. I now hold the bad prism in my safe in case it's needed for parts or if another prism fails for this customer then this one can be sent for repair. Or if I just happened to need formatter boards or other parts off of it then I have those. Mark  |  IP: Logged Andrew Thomas Master Film Handler Posts: 273 From: Pearland, TX, USA Registered: Jun 2012 posted 03-14-2016 10:38 PM                     One more update. I have been running the A/C in the booth much cooler than usual, but not just for temp but also to dehumidify. Since doing this, the blue line has not appeared. One of my managers forgot to set the thermostat down on Friday and we had blue line that night for the first time in a month. Also interesting, the line moved position. Looked to be identical in width (around 100 pixels), but was appearing on the left third of the screen instead of nearly dead center. A slightly higher A/C bill is worth delaying the major cost of repair/replacement!  |  IP: Logged Barry Floyd Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1079 From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 03-16-2016 02:12 PM                        I've had this issue before with my Barco DP-2K23B with a GDC SX2000AR server and IMB. I'd almost bet it's 100% temperature related. Mine always has been. Our concessions / projection building at the drive-in is centrally heated and cooled with an electric heat pump. When the HVAC system was designed and installed back in 2003, the HVAC engineer compensated for the exhaust air removal from the projection rooms by putting in larger duct work in the booths as opposed to the rest of the building. We have 8 inch ducts everywhere in the building except the projection booths which have 14 inch ducts. In the summer months, it can be a comfortable 73 degrees in the rest of the building, but the projection booths hover around 59-62 degrees. In the fall when we turn the heat on, it's still 73 degrees up front, but the projection booths hover around 80-85 degrees. Usually on the first weekend when we have the heat on is when we experience any projection issues, and it's always one vertical line running (just left of center) down the screen. Our technician explained that the extreme swing in temperatures of the booth physically heat and cool the chasis of the projector to the point where the boards in the electronic card cage on the operator side of the projector expand and contract enough to cause them to "creep" out of their back plane connectors just enough that it causes weird things to show up on screen. Powering the entire projector and server rack down, pulling the operator side panel off the projector and physically un-screwing and re-seating EACH board in the cage so far has corrected the problem each and every time. We're now on our 3rd season with digital projection, and the first two years we've had them, I usually have to do a board re-seat about the first week in November. I've only had to do it once on each projector each season. I installed throttling dampers in the projection room ducts over the winter, so hopefully that will get rid of the issue.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-16-2016 06:09 PM                     I hear and read about a lot of board re-seating having to be done in Barco's. I have never had to do it in any projector here in the Mountain States, Barco, Christie or NEC. This must be a humidity related thing... but I wonder if treating the contacts with some Caig Pro Gold would help this situation at all. Have any of you tried this? Mark  |  IP: Logged Andrew Thomas Master Film Handler Posts: 273 From: Pearland, TX, USA Registered: Jun 2012 posted 07-25-2016 10:36 PM                     A quick update. After we started running the booth cooler and running the dehumidifier, the blue line went away except for a few minutes a couple of random nights. Late last week, it started happening again. I figured it was due to the near 100 degree weather and high humidity and our AC system not being able to keep up. We went ahead and cancelled our shows on that screen for the week and have been trying to find a used 32B or similar to replace it so we could send off the light engine for repair. Since we weren't running any content, I decided to test out a few things. I ran a movie start to finish and got the blue line nearly immediately and it stayed the whole run time. Played it through a second time after a 40 minute break, exact same thing. I then started tinkering. In order, I did the following. 1. I removed the three cables from the signal back plane to the blue DMD. No more line, so obviously the issue was somewhere in the blue DMD signal path. 2. I moved the green DMD cables into the blue sockets on the signal back plane to try and rule out the problem as coming from the signal path. The line did not appear, even as a different color. So probably not back plane. 3. I plugged the blue DMD cables into the green socket to see if the line came back...and it didn't at all. 4. I plugged the green and blue DMD cables back into their correct sockets and ran test patterns and have now played back half of the feature and no lines at all. So at this point, I'm thinking either the socket on the backplane or the connected on one of the blue DMD connections is getting loose. Either way, I'm happy that it seems to be working and even more disappointed in the service company that didn't bother to get in and do what I did. It literally took me 15 minutes and most of that was turning the projector off and on!  |  IP: Logged

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