Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Dolby Digital Reader Pricing and Needed Equipment.

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Posted by Thomas Dieter (Member # 2507) on 04-28-2007, 10:47 PM:

Hey everyone,

I was wanting to know if anyone could tell me a few things on this. We are looking to convince the owner to get us a Dolby auditorium, as he's already agreed to allow us to get another DTS. We would prefer a Dolby theatre instead of a DTS, but we need some information to convince him.

Currently we are running 5 screens with Center Surround Sound (SR), and one with DTS Digital, SR backup. One of our SR theatres is running a CP50, and another is running a CP55. I assume that these are compatible with a Dolby Digital reader, Yes?

Neither of these auditoriums have a sub behind the screen, but our DTS does. Would we need to purchase one? I would assume that it would be suggestible.

Does anyone have a price on a used DD unit?

If there is more information that you need, please either leave a message, or email me.

--Tom

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-28-2007, 10:59 PM:

Based on your description...I would stick with DTS. What does Dolby Digital have to offer you? The CP50 really wasn't supported by Dolby for Dolby Digital though the CP55 was. However, Dolby has discontinued the DA20 and there are VERY few out there floating around in the used market. Those that are out there are commanding near new prices.

Adding to your costs will be a digital reader of some sort. Either basement (my preferred) or penthouse (excellent units from Dolby and BACP available with BACP more cost effective).

Compare that to the DTS XD10...it comes with the reader and they have breakout boards to work with either your CP50 or CP55.

Now if you are going to talk you boss into a new CP650, then that is another story...then you are talking about a complete upgrade and the CP650 with Dolby Digital makes sense.

Steve

Posted by Thomas Dieter (Member # 2507) on 04-29-2007, 07:25 AM:

quote: Steve Guttag
Now if you are going to talk you boss into a new CP650, then that is another story...then you are talking about a complete upgrade and the CP650 with Dolby Digital makes sense.

To put it this way, I myself and my manager would like to have at least 1 Dobly house to go with our DTS house. We honestly would like to have all of out theatres in digital, but we know that that is way out of our league. At this momment we have "the best picture presentation in the company" so says the owner. I don't doubt it, but all the other theatres have 2 DTS digital units, while we are stuck with 1. We want to use his quote to convince him.

From what I hear, there should be some used dolby units out there that someone is looking to sell just to drop cause of the digital installations that Carmike and other theatres are doing.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-29-2007, 08:01 AM:

As someone that has tried looking in ernest for DA20s...I'll tell you they are not just out there for the taking...and those that do show up don't sell that cheap. But good luck in your search.

I still don't see what you have against DTS that makes you want to have Dolby Digital...speaking from both a audio and financial angle.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 04-29-2007, 08:56 AM:

Be aware that the CP650 / Cat 702 combination setups that I've seen warble horribly unless there's another reader mounted on top of it. Ours have been like that for three years, and our "solution" was to move the SDDS reader on top of the Cat 702 to help dampen the bouncing motion of the film. Others here have reported the same problem. And according to our engineer, Dolby says "Yeah, it'll do that." But some of the folks here have claimed to have never heard it in any of their installations. So I'm not sure if it's a case of a batch of bad units, or if folks aren't sure what to listen for, but the fact is that there are at least some units out there with this problem. The CP65 / DA20 / Cat 699 or 700 installations that I've seen do not do that. But since you can't get those anymore, if you're determined to do Dolby, I would very highly recommend that you go with a basement reader if you're pairing it with a 650 because of the better dampening mechanism in that reader.

I also agree with Steve that sticking with DTS is a better option financially. Not to mention that the optimal DTS setup sounds very slightly better than an optimal Dolby setup. But that's not to say that your audience will tell the difference in the audio between Dolby and DTS because they won't. It's very hard for even trained ears to hear the difference, but there is one.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 04-29-2007, 09:35 AM:

I agree that you should stick with DTS although I don't agree that DTS sounds better than Dolby digital. The problem I see is that in my experience talking to movie theater patrons, the Dolby name is known more than the DTS name. Although the majority of people won't care which is advertised, the Dolby name is better known. Will they be able to tell the difference between Dolby Digital and DTS? Never.

Posted by Thomas Dieter (Member # 2507) on 04-29-2007, 10:03 AM:

Here's my beaf with DTS. Yes it's a great Digital Sound setup. No you can't tell the difference between Dolby and DTS, atleast from a consumer stand point. When asked personally which I prefer, I usually say one or the other and never bash either, for each one has an excellent sound quality.

But in the sub run business, where just about everyone thinks "you get what you pay for," and other sub run businesses basicly encourage that mind set here why I don't like them. DTS discs don't always arrive with prints, and calling and getting a set of DTS discs from the distributor or whom ever is a pain in the ass. The DVD cases that they ship them in are worthless and do nothing to keep the discs from being scratched. Finally, although the trailers are DTS timecoded, not all the trailers are on their trailer discs, or atleast the same disc. So the feature always sounds louder and more clearer than some or all of the previews. Dolby, all the trailers are Dolby encoded, and there's no disc. No Hassel with worrying if this trailer isn't going to play in Digital or not, and the customer experience will be at a high from beginning to end.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-29-2007, 10:55 AM:

quote: Mark J. Marshall
But some of the folks here have claimed to have never heard it in any of their installations.

Yea, I'm one of those people. We've installed alot of 650's over the last two years and never had this problem with either the 702, BACP, or Christie basement readers.

My beef with DTS is that the XD-10's are just not as servicable as are Dolby products. With units still under warranty DTS seems to want to rely on "sending the unit back to them for repair" This is not only rediclous but just plain stupid for good company-customer relations. Dolby's network of "service it though the dealers that sell it" is a great part of what makes Dolby products so saleable. I bet that very few of any Dolby processors out there have ever been down more than a day. But when I'm 400 miles for the shop and DTS says I have to get another XD-10 in and swap it out and then charge the customer for a days extra per deium while I wait for the replacement and then for shipping his dead unit back to them... now thats rediclous!

Mark

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 04-29-2007, 11:48 AM:

Mark,

We were dealers for a top grade digital church organ company. They required all of their dealers to have a factory trained technician. Each dealer had to have a supply of all of the boards and power supply components for all of the organs from the first to the latest. The dealer had to pay for these parts. If you got in a new organ that has a different board or boards, they were shipped inside the new model and billed to the dealer. This was the concept: you never would have an organ out of service for longer than it took the well equipped factory trained technician to get to the church. Of course, all of these circuit boards and parts needed to be carried in the service vehicle. The customer only had to pay for one trip as the boards were returned to the factory for repair and then returned to the dealers inventory along with any out of warranty service charges. In 30 years as both service tech and dealer, we never had an organ out on a Sunday if we were called in a reasonable travel time. (Once fixed an organ between first and second service on Sunday, they called me at home at 8am on Sunday)

I doubt that there are many cinema servicing dealers who could afford this type of parts stocking and technician training program given the large variety of equipment they have to service in the field. It would be great for the theatre owners though.

KEN

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 04-29-2007, 12:22 PM:

Thomas, when you say subrun, do you just play releases off the break or are you playing older titles as in a few years, retrospective or arthouse stuff? Because if it is older titles (more than a year or so), forget about DTS. We put ours in probably about 10yrs ago, mainly driven by economic considerations -- non-profits are always the poor boy in town, and no question, DTS was the cheaper of the systems. BUT, I regret to say, that it was money badly spent.

The number of older titles that actually come with discs I would say is no more than 40% of the time and that is probably a high guess. Then there are the previews that we get, where we play them a week or two before they open, and even there, we only get discs a little better than the older titles, maybe only half of the time -- the excuse always being that the discs aren't ready yet. So just from a practical, pragmatic point of view, DTS, while it works fine when you actually get the discs, is a waste of money unless you are running titles not more than a few months off the break. Even then, it is always a crapshoot if you will get discs. And as has been documented many times in these threads, getting the distributor to cough up discs even when you call, them is a big hassle, hence the very simple solution proposed on F-T about being able to download the soundtracks, but that hasn't happened.

If you run imports foreign titles, forget about DTS. No only will prints never come with discs, but 95% of the time they only have SRD anyway, hardly ever do you see DTS.

And of course, the trailer issue is always problematic with houses that are not first run. With DTS you have to just resign yourself to play the entire trailer reel in analog rather than have your program popping in and out of digital depending on what titles are on the disc that came with the feature.

Posted by Thomas Dieter (Member # 2507) on 04-29-2007, 01:24 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
Thomas, when you say subrun, do you just play releases off the break or are you playing older titles as in a few years, retrospective or arthouse stuff?

We are plaing movie that have just left the frist run theatres, and no longer available at the Regal's and AMC's and any other theatres that play movies on the release date. Some times we get limited films, but not ofter. One of the major limited films that we got was Pride and Prejudice back in January and February of 06. We've gotten a few since then, but they haven't been as popular as the others. Most of our films are Family films, The Last Mimzy, Happy Feet, Night at the Museum, you get the idea. If it's no longer playing at a first run cinema near you, we more than likely are playing it.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-29-2007, 01:36 PM:

quote: Kenneth Wuepper
They required all of their dealers to have a factory trained technician. Each dealer had to have a supply of all of the boards and power supply components for all of the organs from the first to the latest. The dealer had to pay for these parts.

Exactly Ken! While we certainly DON'T stock all Dolby cards we do have a good supply of the ones that fail most often and our customers sometimes only experience single a lost show.

As far as DTS they have said they are willing to train others to repair XD-10's but they only do this once in a while... while in fact they should be contacting all their dealers to get them trained! But... we have to contact them and try to arrange it sometime. And we are certainly willing to stock boards and parts(we already do stock some XD-10 parts). We have enough XD-10's in the field that are comming up on Warranty expiration(ding!). I have no problem with the DTS system of playback at all... its very high quality... but DTS needs to get with it in many other ways.

Mark

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 04-29-2007, 03:14 PM:

Amplifying Mark: Remember when the DA-10 was dropped? Dolby GAVE AWAY new DA-20's for free including warranty and freight!!! I will never forget that. I will also never forget the DTS-6. (DTS won't repair, service or supply any part.) Thank God for Carl Greenberg!

BTW: We keep at least one processor of each Dolby type for repairs only. No one is ever down. Louis

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 04-29-2007, 03:49 PM:

Don't count on used equipment coming from Carmike. As of this moment AFAIK nothing has been sold. Everything is just sitting in storage, either in Carmike's warehouse or at individual theatres. God knows its likely to remain that way for quite a while too.

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 04-29-2007, 04:00 PM:

Dustin,

The old Butterfield chain used to buy out competitors and close them. Taking out the equipment, they rendered the houses useless for the owner to "4 wall" the places. They also stored the equipment from all of their own closed theatres, perhaps for the same reason. I am pretty sure that the sale of depreciated assets equals pure taxable profit so the stuff just rots in storage.

KEN

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 04-29-2007, 04:10 PM:

You're likely right Ken. I do believe Carmike keeps a lot of things in their warehouse as spare parts/extra equipment too.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 04-29-2007, 09:46 PM:

Also check the thread Cleaning Up Prints. There are issues with getting discs and scratched discs. We have had one set of unplayable discs in the past 12 months but we have experienced many more unplayable DD tracks on used prints. Your boss might not be pleased if he invests lots of cash for a system that doesn't work, so pre-warn him that occasional failures are to be expected.

Be sure to accompany the DD investment with a film cleaner and religiously apply FilmGuard. It will slightly increase the reliability factor.

With all that, it is worth it for the times it works. Good Luck.

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 04-30-2007, 03:04 AM:

A well setup A-Chain on the projector will give you tremendous results on Audio playback in Analogue and combined with a decent Reverse Scan Reader like the BACP ones will surely have you puzzling whether the film is playing in Digital or Analogue. In the first theater I worked we had 2 V5 projectors with stereo sollar cells and then installed a DTS unit for changeover operation. The analogue did sound tremendously good even on the stereo sollar cells and when the DTS popped in the only thing you could distinguish is the seperation of the surrounds and of course a more booming sound but the analogue did sound very very good. We did not mind showing the trailers in analogue and the feature in DTS but in our case we always got the DTS discs from the distributor. What I believe you should do is send continues faxes and e-mails reminding your distributor that you do have DTS and ask for a written confirmation from them that the feature they are sending will have the DTS discs included. Its much cost effective to move to a DTS unit rather than a Dolby Digital upgrade for surely you will need the CP650D. Does anyone know if Dolby is to make another Digital Adaptor for playing Dolby Digital on other processors as well?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-30-2007, 06:47 AM:

Dolby scrapped plans for the DA20 replacement years before the DA20 ran out...so no they have zero plans for a DA20 replacement...as it would only serve to cut into CP650 sales.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 04-30-2007, 07:44 AM:

What was the difference between the DA-10 and the DA-20? Are secondhand DA10s available?

Also, Does anybody know where I could obtain a DTS 6 with the original caddy loading drives? Even one with one drive failed would do, as I have a spare drive of the same model in an old computer at home.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-30-2007, 09:03 AM:

Aside from the disk issue, the other disadvantage to DTS is that many titles just aren't available in DTS, whereas pretty much any film with any digital track will have (at least) SRD. DTS is pretty much nonexistent for art-house and small releases.

I agree with the comment above that it might be better to improve the analog system. Does the CP50 have all the options and upgrades, including SR, matrix card, and EQ cards? Are the amps, loudspeakers, and auditorium acoustics all top-notch? Have the projectors been converted to LED readers (probably yes, but some theatres still haven't converted)? If the answer to any one of these is "no," then I would strongly recommend doing all of those things before considering digital sound.

On the topic of service: what are the most failure-prone Dolby cards?

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 04-30-2007, 10:18 AM:

The DA10's were recalled and replaced by DA20's. They are no longer supported and will not play the current revision of software in any case, if you should find the odd one someone did not turn in in excahnge for a DA20.