Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: RTS verses Retriever

This is topic RTS verses Retriever in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Kevin Wale (Member # 1851) on 07-23-2005, 01:15 PM:

Hey guys. I have bids from both companies. I've used RTS and I like it. Venue has a bit more robust reporting, and is more independant... i.e. you can still sell tickets if the server crashes. Venue also, at first glance, seems to be quite a bit more expensive, however setup and training fees are not known to full extent for both of them, so they might equal out once all that is figured in.

What I'm really hoping to find is someone familiar with both systems. I know RTS' reputation and from first hand experience, it's reliability. Is the server feature, and some of the extra reports worth the extra cost of the Venue system?

Fire away if you have any ideas.

Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 07-23-2005, 05:48 PM:

I have Venue at my theatre. It is a bit expensive (and you have to buy additional modules for credit cards and online ticketing which add to the cost), but, its a very bulletproof system, very easy to use, and no signifigant bugs that I have run across yet. I have never used RTS, so I can't really speak to that one.

Posted by Ramin Hashemi (Member # 2694) on 08-01-2005, 04:56 PM:

we use RTS, and overall are happy. We were deciding between the two as well, but went with RTS because we did not HAVE to use their hardware. By buying IBM SURPOS 500 machines, we saved a lot of $. Also, if we change our mind, we do not have to throw the machines out like we do with Retriever. Both systems seem very good.

Posted by Kevin Wale (Member # 1851) on 08-02-2005, 11:56 PM:

We've finally decided on Retriever. The reports seemed more useful and less spread out, and being a computer guy, I couldn't get past the ability to still sell tickets if the server goes down.

If Retriever runs on Windows, which the demo laptop I have is, hardware is hardware. THe computers shouldn't have any problems switching software packages. The Retriever software has to be loaded on somehow so I can't see why something else couldn't be loaded.

Not saying you are wrong, I was just surprised to read that and can't quite grasp why that would be an issue.

I was quite impressed with both products though and have found RTS to work quite well over the years and certainly have nothing bad to say about them.

Posted by Ramin Hashemi (Member # 2694) on 08-03-2005, 05:46 PM:

Sorry if I did not make it clear. Retriever told us that they would not load their software on our hardware (we found new hardware which we found at a discount). Like you said, hardware is hardware, so it would have worked, but they wanted to make money on the hardware as well.

Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 08-04-2005, 08:54 PM:

The POS terminals that we have are not windows machines, and rather than have hard drives, I believe they use compact flash cards for the POS system.