This is topic Weird Dolby Digital Error Display in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Ray Derrick (Member # 1001) on 04-19-2002, 07:13 AM:
I was speaking with a projectionist recently who reported a curious error display on his DA20's any time he ran the Charlotte Gray trailer. As the trailer began, the error rate indicator displayed the following numbers in sequence:0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,R,6,C,D,E,F
followed by:
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,R,6,C,4
30 seconds later the same thing happened again except the second string was slightly shorter.
The film played in digital the whole time.
My first thought was that there is actually somebody at Dolby with a sense of humour, but of course that is a ridiculous proposition 
Then I thought maybe it has something to do with code downloading from the film to the DA20 (but on a trailer?).
Does anyone know what this all means? I am curious.
------------------
Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 04-19-2002, 09:41 AM:
Did something on the trailer trigger a display test function? If the "R" is realy an "A", and the second "6" is realy a "b", then that is hex 0 through 15 (0-9, and A-F).
Posted by Ray Derrick (Member # 1001) on 04-19-2002, 06:24 PM:
Yes that occurred to me too, but I couldn't remember if the error display is alpha-numeric or just numeric. If it is the latter then it would indeed be a hex count. But why did this happen in the first place?------------------
Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 04-19-2002, 07:13 PM:
Possibly the trailor contained update for the software in the DA20 and that was it uploading
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-19-2002, 07:43 PM:
Question:When a print has an update for the Dolby Digital unit, does it upload and update the unit each time the film is played? Or does the decoder know it has been updated and ignore that particular code?
Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 04-19-2002, 07:47 PM:
Another Question: I don't know DA-20s specifically, but if the film was updating the software, wouldn't have kicked into analog for a moment to re-initialize the digital decoding software?
Posted by Stephen Jones (Member # 16) on 04-19-2002, 08:51 PM:
When a print has a software update for a DA20 encoded into the Digital track it does what ray has described eg. 0 - 10 and in the reverse 10 - 0 and it only does that once.When the print is played again in that theatre the DA20 reconizes that it has the software update and won't load it again, this of course happens in each theatre you run that print in that has a DA20.
But it is unusual to get a update on a trl I have only had them on prints.Dolby dont say which prints have updates on them you only know when the DA20 does the 0-10 thing etc.The sound remains in digital while this happens.Steve 
Posted by Mark Hathaway (Member # 1044) on 04-19-2002, 09:03 PM:
almost as weird as the cat673 card flashing "HELP ME" after comming back from dolby for repairMark hathaway
Posted by Rick Long (Member # 213) on 04-19-2002, 10:47 PM:
I would love to see this. Can anyone list any current trailers that have updates on them? Thanks.
Posted by Pete Naples (Member # 761) on 04-22-2002, 12:20 PM:
Yup, it's dynamic upload going on. I thought they only did this on feature prints. We used to get a 'heads up' warning when an update was going to be released, so that you could then field all the calls from projectionists going 'my DA20/CP500 has gone nuts, then it rebooted'. Joe, yeah the DA20 or the DA20 sus-section in the CP500 must re boot when the new code is loaded so it can be utilized. It will of course revert during that reboot. I can't remember as I haven't seen it for ages, but I have a feeling that the re boot will appear in the CP500 event log.