New Strong LMS based on NAS storage

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

NAS is nice and convenient, but it seems to me that NAS gear in general gets abandoned for support by it's manufacturers sooner then not. I guess they only sell new if they keep up with the Jonses... Although it may provide a path to a less expensive LMS for the budget conscious theater, the shorter lifespan of NAS in general might actually make it more expensive in the long run if it breaks down after 5 or 6 years and has to be replaced.. Also, Strong's blurb they sent out was not very descriptive as to what OS and what NAS software theirs runs on. Is it running Linux and Free NAS? Or some sort of proprietary software that will vanish if Strong goes out of business? That has almost happened twice in memory.

Anyone else want to chime in???

[Gordon McLeod]

All our CDM TMS systems use a NAS for storage no issues

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Once the NAS hits about 5 years old support stops.

[Gordon McLeod]

My qnap is well over 5 years and still gets updates

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Wait till you need parts....

[Scott Norwood]

Presumably, the idea is that NFS is entirely standard and that it's easy to swap out one NAS for another. The NAS itself needs to be reliable, but it doesn't need the longevity of the server and projector. And pretty much anything can be a NAS: a Raspberry Pi 4 would work fine with fast enough storage.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'd almost be more worried about the longevity of Strong in this market than the NAS. Like indicated, as long as the requirement is vanilla NFSv3, you can switch the underlying hardware to whatever you want, as long as it can provide sufficient throughput. You can roll your own FreeNAS based on Dell hardware (which maxes out at about 7 years support), you can go for your run-of-the-mill NAS supplier (QNAP, etc.), which maxes out somewhere between 3 and 5 years or you can roll in some professional storage, like EMC or NetApp, which looks more like "storage as a service" those days and will give you support as long as you pay their hefty bills.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Here is a pic off their flyer for it. It's obviously an integrated all in one unit. Although I am not at all against using a NAS, I have two of them here. But I am against the short term lifespan they offer. The max Strong will warranty it for is 5 years. And who's NAS is this? Or is it one they produce themselves? In my 42 years in the business, Strong almost vaporized twice... It is uber easy to build a NAS based LMS yourself for way less money and if the NAS or "Booth computer it's tied to goes down then its a throw away and replace type of thing. I just think for 5K dollars starting price that theater owners are going to expect longer life and support for the thing. All of my existing GDC based TMS systems will transfer the same number of features to 6 or 8 houses in about that same about of time.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I'd almost be more worried about the longevity of Strong in this market than the NAS. Like indicated, as long as the requirement is vanilla NFSv3, you can switch the underlying hardware to whatever you want, as long as it can provide sufficient throughput. You can roll your own FreeNAS based on Dell hardware (which maxes out at about 7 years support), you can go for your run-of-the-mill NAS supplier (QNAP, etc.), which maxes out somewhere between 3 and 5 years or you can roll in some professional storage, like EMC or NetApp, which looks more like "storage as a service" those days and will give you support as long as you pay their hefty bills.

What I highlighted above shows the real folly of this whole digital cinema thing... as I said well over a decade ago it is so dumb on many levels to completely abandon a very old (yet still reasonably robust) ANALOG technology that has served for OVER A CENTURY with decent reliability, to switch over to an unproven and EXPENSIVE technology that has proven less than ideal in far too many ways.

Of course, digital HAS improved presentation quality for those cinemas who couldn't do film right (and even they eventually screw up digital by lack of maintenance and upgrades) but seriously, at what costs? Seems that the exhibitors are forced into VERY COSTLY repairs and upgrades every 3-5 years (Light engines, servers, bricked security boards, etc.) And to what end?

Digital was supposed to make our presentations better to bring in more patrons. Did it really? Look at the attendance numbers (NOT BOX OFFICE DOLLARS which are manipulated by ticket prices to make mediocre films seem like box office winners.) Attendance is nowhere near what it was in the heyday of cinema, even pre - BS pandemic, and it will never recover. It will only get worse as the tech to do cinema RIGHT in the comfort of one's own home (and at less cost than loading the fam into the SUV to get to the theatre) continues to cost less.

Digital was supposed to make life easier for exhibs, which it did, and yet didn't. Problems with security keys, server and projectors not wanting to play nice together, media failing to upload properly, etc. have all resulted in unnecessary lost shows. Of course film prints could get lost or damaged, the projector or lamp could fail, ect. but most of the time (with the exception of a lost/missing print) a fix was able to be done quickly, And there were MANY service techs and sometimes even staff members who could easily bandaid a show together to get back on screen. A digtal breakdown is sometimes terminal until a tech can come in and change out a VERY COSTLY part. (Remember when the most expensive part on a film projector was the intermittent? At around $1,000-2,500? Compare that to its digital equivalent a light engine at a minimum of 10 TIMES that cost.) And a good tech or projectionist could swap out that intermittent in 20 minutes or less, AND a lot of theatres had that spare ON HAND. How many of you can afford or even have a spare light engine, server or complete projector sitting around?

Digital was supposed to save EVERYONE in the exhib industry lots of money. Again, yes and no. Sure we as exhibs save on the daily expense of projection staffing (mainly the theatres doing it right, that is. Certain others who shall remain nameless however, who used popcorn kids and "booth ushers" really didn't save much if anything), but again at what REAL cost? Like I mentioned in another thread, companies cut corners to appease the bottom line, but quality of customer service suffers severely. And then that same company whines about declining attendance and competition from online media, etc. The only ones who saved money in the real sense were the studios. See the last part of the above for the expense difference for exhibs which failed miserably.

Digital was supposed to help make variety and quality in filmmaking easier for the indies. I think the past decade's product speaks to that folly without any input from me.

And finally, the real elephant in the room....we traded out a technology that to this day can still be repaired and kept running with some relatively inexpensive parts (even if they had to be remade by a machinist..any of you know of a tech who can locally remanufacture an ICP, IMB, Formatter board, etc.? I didn't think so.) for one that requires a far more specialized level of service and worse, BECOMES OBSOLETE AND/OR NO LONGER SUPPORTED IN LESS THAN 5-10 YEARS.

Yeah we really made great progress....

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Tony, Have to disagree with you on that. The conversion to digital cinema really cleaned up a lot of theaters presentations from what it was with film. It also eliminated an industry full of really nasty chemicals that produced very short lived release prints.. Most of those prints were really crappy looking tje last few years! But film still remains and is more often than.not used to shoot all big features. In fact film origination transfered to digital actually looks better. Out of 334 converstions I did only one location kept a film projector. Most theater owners were more than happy to take their gear to the scrapper. They far preferred the cleanliness and ease of operation of digital. Plus, I think everyone of them said... " no carrying those dam film cans and boxes up or down.any.more". About a third of them now do satellite download of their content which automatically collects on a catch server and where that content can.be remotely moved to the local servers either in person or remotely. Film had a nice long run, but it was the Atlas Rocket of tje industry where as the Falcon 9 is the Digital equivelent? BTW, a Falcon 9 placed 80+ satellites into orbit yesterday. Far as I'm concerned NASA is now obsolete.

[Steve Guttag]

We've been using TMS/LMS systems built by Strong for some time now. I've been quite please with them and the transfer speeds of the current stuff is blazingly fast, even on copper. It's true that one can transfer content to all screens in a plex and all of them are going at full speed (as fast as the server can accept the content). Will York at Strong puts together very well done systems.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

We've been using TMS/LMS systems built by Strong for some time now. I've been quite please with them and the transfer speeds of the current stuff is blazingly fast, even on copper. It's true that one can transfer content to all screens in a plex and all of them are going at full speed (as fast as the server can accept the content). Will York at Strong puts together very well done systems.

They were also quite a bit less expensive than Cinedigm was charging for the gawd awful IBM based systems. I never had systems that took so long to boot up like those IBM based systems did!

[Marcel Birgelen]

@Mark

Those NAS systems are just rebranded QNAPs with a STRONG sticker on them. I don't know if they feature exactly the same hardware, as QNAP has literally an endless number of configurations, but the "desktop unit" seems to be one of these, while the 2U unit looks more like one of these.

And finally, the real elephant in the room....we traded out a technology that to this day can still be repaired and kept running with some relatively inexpensive parts (even if they had to be remade by a machinist..any of you know of a tech who can locally remanufacture an ICP, IMB, Formatter board, etc.? I didn't think so.) for one that requires a far more specialized level of service and worse, BECOMES OBSOLETE AND/OR NO LONGER SUPPORTED IN LESS THAN 5-10 YEARS.

Yeah we really made great progress....

In this day and age of 3D printing and CNC machines, I'd say that even small-scale support for primarily mechanical devices, like most old projectors could be almost supplied endlessly.

While I think that the switch to digital cinema was eventually unavoidable, my biggest grief is that that the primary motivator wasn't to improve presentation quality, but for Hollywood to save costs on movie prints.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

@Mark

Those NAS systems are just rebranded QNAPs with a STRONG sticker on them. I don't know if they feature exactly the same hardware, as QNAP has literally an endless number of configurations, but the "desktop unit" seems to be one of these, while the 2U unit looks more like one of these.



In this day and age of 3D printing and CNC machines, I'd say that even small-scale support for primarily mechanical devices, like most old projectors could be almost supplied endlessly.

While I think that the switch to digital cinema was eventually unavoidable, my biggest grief is that that the primary motivator wasn't to improve presentation quality, but for Hollywood to save costs on movie prints.

Yep, exactly what I was thinking too. Just wanted someone else to confirm that. That's only $1679 from Amazon... This one apparently has two extra slots as well. It would make a nice LMS, but not for 5 grand!

Here is a video about this NAS... https://www.qnap.com/en/product/ts-h886


Qnap.jpg

[Scott Norwood]

Everything from IBM takes a long time to boot. But how often are you rebooting that stuff, anyway? Once it is installed and configured, reboots should be rare events. (I suppose that we should use "IPL" instead of reboot in the context of IBM stuff, but the point still stands.)

I honestly don't have a problem with a limited-lifespan NAS as long as the vendors involved are up front about this. This is commodity IT stuff, and a 5-year lifespan is expected. I'm sure that it could be built to last ten years, but the cost would be more than double. A cheap-but-good-enough NAS box that supports NFS can be bought today and delivered tomorrow (or built today out of commodity hardware from the manager's office). The server and the projector are the expensive, hard-to-repair bits here, and those need to be designed for long lifespans.

That said, I mostly agree with Tony's comments about D-cinema being expensive and not providing significant benefits for exhibitors who were doing a good job with film. Regardless, we're stuck with it now, so we might as well try to make it as good as it can be, while still showing movies on film as much as possible.