This is topic What About Theatrical Bulb Supply? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 08-04-2006, 04:18 PM:
We received a post card from them today quoting incredibly low prices on xenons. Their web site gives warranty info that is comparable to most. Anybody know what is being sold? 3K bulbs are quoted at $324. The web site is tbsbulbs.com.
Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 08-04-2006, 04:38 PM:
Some of those lamps have very low warranty hours compared to some
Also it says nothing as to the source of the lamps nor their lumen output
Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 08-05-2006, 08:21 AM:
If these are Chinese made lamps be careful. One customer of ours tried that and we made a ton of $$ selling them new reflectors for each site they tried them. Ka-Pow!
Mark
Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 11-27-2009, 04:21 PM:
It has been 1210 days since the last post.
Posted by Cameron Andrews (Member # 5246) on 11-27-2009, 04:21 PM:
I realize it has been a long time since the last post on this, But I was hoping to see if anyone else has tried Theatrical Bulb Supply Bulbs and what they thought. I have been using them in a few machines for over a year. I don't have the equipment to measure the lumen output, but there isn't a noticable light difference. They don't last quite as long as christie or OSRAM but when you break it down to $/hour it is still significantly cheaper. Yet I don't know anyone else who uses them. Am i missing something?
Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-28-2009, 12:20 AM:
I know of a couple places using them with no complaints, AFAIK.
The company is very tight-lipped, however, about where the bulbs are manufactured.
Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-28-2009, 01:57 AM:
Yea, they're those Chinese bulbs stay away from them..
I did a service call on a small town theatre way up north from here and we went through two of these idiotic bulbs when I changed them out. Lamphouses were the little Christie CH10 variety that sat on existing projector bases. The ower bought a good wad of these little 1000w "charlie bulbs" for cheap.
One exploded as soon as I hit the power and the other one (this what was funny..) started okey, but then went into horrible flicker then the upper part of the bulb's envelope just broke off with a funny "ping" when it went .. and I had already turned down the taps on the Christie rectifiers to "1" to start down low then I can turn them up to proper operating levels...The owner was a little ticked so to say. I put two more of these bulbs in and haven't heard so far on how they're doing (owner got his warranty taken care of by TBS), but I know that I'll be back up there soon doing another bulb replacement knowing that he's never going to get the life and dough out of those bulbs as if he stayed with Christies..
Sure, for example, a 1k Christie bulb may cost close to $400 bucks whereas the TBS bulb of the same size, you may get for a hundred less. But, in the long run, you'd be buying more of TBS's bulbs to make up for the one Christie bulb's price... Thus, are you really saving your money?
Sadly, the bulbs I pulled out that day were Christies that have been in there for over 10 years and had 10k plus hours on them..they didn't look that all bad-almost hated to pull them since they looked so good, but the light output and color was rather flat and knarly looking.
TBS also remanufacture bulb modules for countertop digital projectors and resell them close to a hundred below new bulb prices.
If you have a cinema with tonnage of preshow digital projectors and have tonnage of burnt out modules, you send them to they people and they rebuild them by putting in a new bulb element.
We get remans all the time from these people and you can definitely tell that they've been reman with some of the reflectors all banged up from bulb explosions..
-Monte
Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 11-28-2009, 07:27 PM:
We tried 'em. We bought six 3K bulbs for $1000 with the provision that if we were not satisfied, all unused bulbs could be returned for full refund. One bulb failed to strike initially and was promptly replaced. All the rest performed normally. The issue was that all failed passively at around 1000 hours. They either just went out during operation or would not strike when turned on an hour after a normal run. Light output was noticeably lower than other bulbs at the same power setting---92 amps.
I can't recommend them especially now that the price is quite a bit higher.
Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 11-28-2009, 09:37 PM:
There is no mention on the bulbs or packaging of where they are made, the brand name is "Cine-Lite"
Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 11-28-2009, 10:59 PM:
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
