CRU drives are discontinued by Digistore (CRU/Dataport)

[Steve Guttag]

Though this one might go down with barely a whimper...Digistor, the manufacturer of CRU/Dataport drive cases/frames...is discontinuing the line. Most people are receiving content via some form of E-Delivery but there is still the occasional need for a drive to be sent out. However, if you are putting in a new server or TMS, odds are none of your equipment will have a CRU bay of any sort anymore. The "Move Dock" (aka sleeve) has been the handy means of ingest, in those cases but that too is discontinued and limited to supplies on hand.

I haven't heard anything in the industry about it but this should mean that Deluxe cannot, reliably, send content on a CRU drive anymore and must use a self-contained USB drive, of some sort. Either that, or they will need to revert back to the days of including the move-dock with the drive to ensure an end-to-end solution for all sites.

[Frank Cox]

Deluxe used to include one of those sleeves in every Pelican case. Then at one point they started putting a notice in the cases saying that you should remove and keep the sleeve and power adapter if one was in the case and not send that back to them since they weren't going to be sending one out with every drive in the future so if you need one in the future you'd better set it aside now.

Then everything moved to the Internet and it became kind of moot.

I think the last time I received a CRU drive was the one-hour show with the three episodes of the Smurfs, but that wasn't from Deluxe.

[Stefan Scholz]

Not really news, learnt about discontinuation of the system some time ago.
I just know one DCP creation and content delivery company that still predominantly uses them.
From the last CEO I learnt, it's the guy behind doing the disk copying process, to avoid loss of his employment by ending he CRU process.
Actually an insane argument in an e-delivery era.

[Leo Enticknap]

I would have thought that the sheer number of cartridges in existence is so high that there will be enough to support distribution for however long the tail turns out to be.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of theaters now use e-delivery versus those that still require physical media.

[Skyler Hunt]

Qubewire is picking up contracts with more and more indie distributors and sending CRUs. They do offer their own e-delivery server, though I'm not thrilled at the prospect of racking and networking another piece of hardware for maybe five titles a year. Has anyone here worked with Qube on that?

Also wondering why at this point these services aren't going the DCU route, developing their own lightweight transfer software like DCU Connect. Not that I'd expect the behemoth (Deluxe) to change their approach.

[Leo Enticknap]

That is turning out to be the issue with e-delivery. If you only play Hollywood mainstream stuff, then all you need is the behemoth's box, and you're all set. But if you're an arthouse or crossover venue, you'll need Qubewire, Cinesend, maybe two or three others, plus the ability to download the occasional DCP from web and Aspera Connect links that arrive by email and FTP it into your SMS or TMS.

There is likely an opportunity for a service vendor to offer a service whereby they wrangle all the non-Deluxe content from the various different sources, and give it to the theater via a single online point of entry (if one doesn't exist already).

[Caleb Williams]

Qubewire is picking up contracts with more and more indie distributors and sending CRUs. They do offer their own e-delivery server, though I'm not thrilled at the prospect of racking and networking another piece of hardware for maybe five titles a year. Has anyone here worked with Qube on that?

Also wondering why at this point these services aren't going the DCU route, developing their own lightweight transfer software like DCU Connect. Not that I'd expect the behemoth (Deluxe) to change their approach.

Other than a slight mis-communication on how to configure the network ports, the installation of a Qubewire server was extremely straightforward and hassle-free. The equipment was also free. It does not have RAID redundancy, since it only has one 4TB drive for content, but we still don't receive enough content through them for that to be a concern. The server is compact, only taking up 1U in the rack. They also remotely monitor the box for any issues and will reach out to you in the even that the unit needs power-cycled or some other kind of attention. They remotely manage the storage, making sure that no ingests fail because of lack of space.

That is my only gripe with DCU; We have to manually delete content off of the DCU-Connect devices regulary otherwise the ingest fails quietly and we don't find out about it until a little too close to the showtime. DCU has also promised to deliver KDM's via their Connect platform, but have yet to make good on that. We had an issue with them delivering keys to our regular email domain, and so had to set up a gmail account to receive their keys.

Qubewire also will use Intels' Aspera platform to transfer large files in an emergency if you ask nicely, and that works quite well in a pinch.

[Steve Guttag]

I don't think the issue will be the lack of frames that hold the HDD will be the issue. I think it will be the lack of things that can work with CRU that will be the issue. As we have been changing out TMS systems, that used to use eSATA as the connector, we've moved to, mostly USB3. So, the old frame is discarded with the old TMS. No new server comes with a CRU bay. If GDC still offers their Enterprise Storage PLUS, then they may have some stock on them.

As we swap out DSS200, SX-2001, SX-2000AR and DCP2K4/DCP2000s...so too are CRU bays that are leaving the booth.

As I mentioned. I think it will be incumbent upon those entities that want to continue to use the CRU frame to house the HDD, to include a Move Dock/supply and cable set, just like at the beginning of this whole mess. Alternately, skip the CRU, if you want to send drives and use one of the various SATA to USB adapters and deal with damaged HDDs.

[Mike Blakesley]

Are they still sending out full-sized rusty-disk drives? You can get 3TB thumb drives now. Just put the movie on a thumb drive and FedEx it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

CRU served its purpose, but the technology has moved on and it's now more of a legacy.

We've been using SSD-backed USB thumb drives for the last 5 or so years for anything that's still delivered physically. The advantage of those SSD-backed thumb drives is that they're the same form factor as your average USB stick, but are essentially the same as an external SSD. We haven't had any compatibility issues yet and the transfer from those drives exceeds CRU and rotating rust based solutions. You also don't need an expensive Pelican case around those USB sticks, some good-ol bubble wrap will do fine, so you save quite a bit on shipping. Since they're SSD-backed, they can reliably be reused, almost as many times as you could imagine.

[James Gardiner]

I have about 35x new interneal bay (Like goes into a CD drive bay in computer) CRU units with empty disk holder. Any offer considered. Biggest issue is they are heavy and I am in Australia. Shipping will be $$

[Ryan Gallagher]

100% they still send out CRU drives (Deluxe anyway). Our venue has been a stubborn hold out (for whatever reason)... I've got a pile of about 14 ATM including ingested and to be ingested once the server has space.

We'll probably be without a server having a direct CRU bay within two years though. We have a couple USB2 external docks, and I thankfully own a USB3 myself. But things will get pretty "annoying" if they don't modernize here to the internet distribution methods available.

Our main festival does a lot of brand content and problem solving with CRU drives still too... even though they have SimpleDCP for the bulk of the feature deliveries.

We also have to deal with plenty of random download methods. But a digital distributor or dedicated box is not a bridge they have wanted to cross yet.

[Leo Enticknap]

Last fall I was sent to evaluate a theater that went out of business during covid, had been bought in a foreclosure sale, and had a new owner who wanted to know what it would take to get it open again. Among the various horrific sights I found in the booths was this:

image.png

There were other piles of a similar size. I don't think any drives had been returned in at least the final year of the theater's operation.

This is an extreme case, but it's rare to enter a booth and not find at least a few CRU drives that have been lying around for years. Theater staff forgot to return them, and Deluxe (or whoever) either did not chase them, or billed them for the drive and the bill was just paid without question. The encryption system takes away any concern over content piracy if a drive never comes back from the field, so traditionally, nn-one worries about them too much.

My point is that there must be at least tens of thousands, and likely hundreds of thousands of these things gathering dust in booths across the country. Should Deluxe ever find themselves not having enough left to service the dwindling number of theaters that still actually want them, it would be a simple matter to go through their database and proactively recall some of the drives that never came back from the field.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Last fall I was sent to evaluate a theater that went out of business during covid, had been bought in a foreclosure sale, and had a new owner who wanted to know what it would take to get it open again. Among the various horrific sights I found in the booths was this:

[photo]

There were other piles of a similar size. I don't think any drives had been returned in at least the final year of the theater's operation.

This is an extreme case, but it's rare to enter a booth and not find at least a few CRU drives that have been lying around for years. Theater staff forgot to return them, and Deluxe (or whoever) either did not chase them, or billed them for the drive and the bill was just paid without question. The encryption system takes away any concern over content piracy if a drive never comes back from the field, so traditionally, nn-one worries about them too much.

My point is that there must be at least tens of thousands, and likely hundreds of thousands of these things gathering dust in booths across the country. Should Deluxe ever find themselves not having enough left to service the dwindling number of theaters that still actually want them, it would be a simple matter to go through their database and proactively recall some of the drives that never came back from the field.

Most it that pile appear to be empty boxes. How does that even happen? Where did the drives go? Only scenario I could imagine is maybe a multiplex that is still manually ingesting at each cinema rack... the lowly tech responsible may just walk the halls with the bare drive... so somewhere else in the building there is a pile of bare drives? Or they scavenged the HDDs out of them to use at home once they were past the return mark and charged for them?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

CRU has been discontinued because there are better options today. YUGE USB Drives, and even USB connectable M.2 and NVME , or even a 2.5" SSD drive in small cases have all taken over that old stuff. I doubt any manufacturer even uses 3.5 inch had drives any more.