Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Deluxe wants their USB sticks back

This is topic Deluxe wants their USB sticks back in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-16-2010, 02:59 PM:

We just got an email from Deluxe asking us to look around our booth and return any Deluxe USB sticks we might have laying around. (Since we've never gotten one from them yet, this was an easy chore for me to do!)

See, this is why Technicolor has the late-return charge for hard drives. People can't be bothered to send stuff back unless there's a "consequence" for not doing it.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-16-2010, 03:26 PM:

It also shows why sending out small files this way way is a bit stupid. Anyone who can get an email to be told to do this likely has internet access, meaning that they could save money by just putting the files on a server. Now there's no need to send out hundreds of thumb drives and no need to worry that they'll never come back.

Heck, they could even send those stupid files in the email (somehow I doubt people are going to pirate random adverts).

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 07-16-2010, 03:34 PM:

From my past experience Deluxe has had a not so good record on their end for tracking this kind of stuff. When sending things back to Deluxe (or any of the digital distributors) ALWAYS write down the tracking numbers when you send stuff back, that way when they call complaining about you not sending stuff back you can give them the tracking numbers to prove you sent it to them.

With USB sticks though typically they just want you to send them back with whatever hard drive is going back that week so its a bit harder to track.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-16-2010, 04:41 PM:

I just throw them back in the Grey HD box when I ship the drive back. Keeps them quiet.

-Monte

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-16-2010, 06:15 PM:

I hope everyone throws away their Corsair/Voyager mini USB sticks in protest for their awful design so they won't be re-used. I am really tired of managers putting the thing in backwards and not being able to read them.

Seriously, what kind of crappy USB stick will fit EITHER WAY???

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 07-16-2010, 06:31 PM:

One of our Doremi servers won't even read the mini sticks. (Of course it's in our largest house.) Reads everything else. I'm guessing it just doesn't make the connection due to some inconsistency in the construction of the USB port.

I hate those crappy little drives. Every time we get one of those and it's something that's important to load, I just have to contact them to send us a real USB drive.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-23-2010, 07:07 PM:

It would probably cost more for the return postage to mail it back than it cost to buy.... Mke Deluxe pay for the return postage! Of course you could send it back cheaply by Media Mail which sometmies take weeks...

Mark

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 07-23-2010, 07:38 PM:

Since there has never been any instructions included with the sticks on what to do with them, I've given quite a few of them to employees and friends. Now that I know that they want them sent back with hard drives, we'll start doing that, but at this point they'll still have to wait a while until we open another Deluxe digital movie since we send our drives back after we upload them.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-26-2010, 05:42 PM:

They wanted the DTS discs back too -- a lot of good that did.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-27-2010, 10:52 AM:

When I started this thread I wondered, "why would they send a USB stick out with a hard drive anyway?" So then when we got our digital machine, I found the answer: The stick contains the "attached" trailer. Well why the hell can't Deluxe put the trailer on the hard drive like Technicolor does?

We've probably played 4 or 5 films so far where the "attached" trailer wasn't included in the box. Luckily none of them were trailers we really needed but it seems they could solve this "problem" pretty easily.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-27-2010, 01:07 PM:

Aren't these projectors connected to the theaters' internal LAN to read the box office times? If so, why is an external drive needed to move the data at all?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-27-2010, 01:28 PM:

What does any of that have to do with USB sticks or attached trailers??

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-27-2010, 02:27 PM:

I'm just curious why "sticks" are required to move data to a machine that's connected to the network. Is the content too big for that?

Posted by Todd McCracken (Member # 4718) on 09-27-2010, 02:36 PM:

Not all digital sites are networked, and even those that are aren't all created equal.

That and the only distributor that has any real access to a network is Cinedigm as we are the only integrator/distributor left standing. (TDC got rid of all their integrated sites a while back)

Generally USB sticks are used for keys and supplemental packages by those without full access to a network.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-27-2010, 04:23 PM:

Ah I see.

Bummer.