Deluxe "eCinema" delivery service is coming in December

[Darin Steffl]

Deluxe emailed me back again and said they spoke with Paramount and are now sending us The Lost City via eCinema. The download started at 2:25pm CST for us.

Definitely not a solid solution yet with some bugs they're figuring out. They said "Most all releases should go E-Delivery."

[Carsten Kurz]

We have been using E-Delivery since 2015, and still today some distributors prefer so send HDDs to us. It is their decision which service to use. Some use E-Delivery only during the first weeks, and turn to HDD on the break or for repertoire later. Universal still has most titles send to us as HDDs. Most other studios/distributors in Germany have chosen one of the two major E-Delivery services here by now. Sony was pretty late to choose E-Delivery.

[Jon Dent]

They just started uploading Lost City to us so it is available for eDelivery. Guess there are still some bugs to work out.

[Darin Steffl]

I received a response back about why The Lost City is showing HDD instead of eCinema. Not sure why the studios can dictate how DCP's are delivered to us. Deluxe is the distributor and keys still exist to unlock so they should be able to deliver to us any method that they want.

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Looks like this title has not been set up to go E-Delivery as of yet. We’ll reach out to the Paramount team to see what the plans are for that title.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I am going to put it on a UPS. I was thinking it was plugged into the same circuitry as our regular server is, but I must have hit the wrong hole, so to speak.

We get a lot of little 1 or 2 second power failures here. Especially during thunderstorms, but can happen anytime really. This one was so brief, it didn't disturb any of our computers or our sound -- but it was enough to make our projection system think we wanted to power it down, and shut off the QNAP.

A couple of times a year we might get a two or three hour outage which of course no UPS is going to help with. Recovering from power failures is just a fact of life around here. With what's going on in parts of the world I'm thankful our power is as reliable as it is. With everything shifting to wind or solar power in the future, we might be seeing more short or long outages -- I guess we'll see.

Get a big and a good power conversion type UPS, say 2 kva or so. It should run that stuff 20 to 30 min unless its some sort of powerhouse computer or server. You got...

[Jon Dent]

Do you see the film in the deluxe dashboard yet? If it's not there, the download isn't scheduled yet. I just checked and Lost City is in our dashboard but it's showing a HDD instead of eCinema so I'll email them back and see what's up. We received Dog yesterday with eCinema.

The dashboard is one.bydeluxe.com

Same, although we received Dog on HDD as well.

EDIT: Just got off the phone with Deluxe and the tech was surprised that we weren't receiving content on our server.

[Darin Steffl]

Do you see the film in the deluxe dashboard yet? If it's not there, the download isn't scheduled yet. I just checked and Lost City is in our dashboard but it's showing a HDD instead of eCinema so I'll email them back and see what's up. We received Dog yesterday with eCinema.

The dashboard is one.bydeluxe.com

[Mike Blakesley]

Well....every year we have two or three scheduled multi-hour power outages "to allow work to be done to improve our electrical infrastructure" but still, every time we have even a tiny hint of a thunderstorm, you can almost count on a two-second power outage. I don't understand all of the terminology, but it involves one power source switching to another for whatever reason -- lightning strike, tree falls on a powerline, dog kicks a plug out of the wall, I dunno. The baseline power source is never to blame for any of this, it's all the vulnerable pinch points between our wall outlets and the utility company. So no matter how green and bulletproof everything gets, we're probably going to have these irritating little glitches until long after I'm pushing up daisies.

Back on topic, our download still hasn't started... maybe the "non powered" unit triggered an automatic hard drive shipment, but hopefully they will try it again. I just want to make sure the dang thing works!

[Darin Steffl]

Wind and solar alone are supplements to stable power like coal, natural gas, nuclear, or hydro. Introducing green energy doesn't make the grid less stable, it makes it more stable. On the hottest days of the year when AC is running, solar helps prevent brownouts. On cold, windy days the wind farms help provide power to the grid when electric heat is being used in many homes.

As battery storage like Tesla megapacks become cheaper, we'll be able to store green energy to be released when it's needed most. A new nuclear plant is being built in Wyoming over the next 5 years that is safer and cheaper than current plants. I predict many more being built after successful results.

My point is there will always be a baseline power source that doesn't depend on wind or solar to be active in order to prevent outages. Coal will continue to be retired and eventually, natural gas. The cleanest power will be next gen nuclear, solar, wind, and battery storage. These things will provide a bulletproof power grid with energy independence. The sooner we can get away from foreign oil for transportation, the better. It'll take 20+ years but we're off to a start.

[Mike Blakesley]

I am going to put it on a UPS. I was thinking it was plugged into the same circuitry as our regular server is, but I must have hit the wrong hole, so to speak.

We get a lot of little 1 or 2 second power failures here. Especially during thunderstorms, but can happen anytime really. This one was so brief, it didn't disturb any of our computers or our sound -- but it was enough to make our projection system think we wanted to power it down, and shut off the QNAP.

A couple of times a year we might get a two or three hour outage which of course no UPS is going to help with. Recovering from power failures is just a fact of life around here. With what's going on in parts of the world I'm thankful our power is as reliable as it is. With everything shifting to wind or solar power in the future, we might be seeing more short or long outages -- I guess we'll see.

[James Gardiner]

In regional areas, there is a lot of issues with poor quality power. Or poorly implemented earthing. (i.e. can move around).
For example, during evening times when everyone gets home and turns on air conditioners, or heating, it can strain the grid and voltage levels can spike or go lower then what is needed or equipment is rated for.
A lot of equipment does not care. like a heater etc. but some computer kit can loose its nut or potentially blow a part when voltages are all over the place.
I always get online (more expensive) UPS as the power is produced by the batteries all the time, its not a fast-switch over on fail type cheaper implementation.

But Earth issues can be a real pain. (Even if using online UPS) I partnered with this integrator once who was in change of electrical. We kept loosing equipment every two month POP. Servers resetting by themselves every week... He said it was nothing on his side.. took years until some one decided to bypass the integrator and measure the earth voltage. floating super high..

What got me is this guy was suppose to be the best in the region. (Maybe in the film days.. But when it came to IT infrastructure.. please no)

[Darin Steffl]

Putting it on a UPS won't help anything but short outages. Might as well put the isp modem, your router and switches on there too then. But the question is why? If the power is out, you're going to be closed because you can't show any movies or make popcorn.

Our QNAP powers up automatically after power is restored to it. It's a setting deluxe needs to set properly.

[Frank Cox]

Why wouldn't you put that box on a ups? The small power glitches won't be a problem; larger power failures are something you're definitely going to notice.

Cinesend used to email a notice when each download started, and another notice when it was finished. Now Deluxe just sends an email when it's done.

[James Gardiner]

Wow, you guys are lucky. Batman was minimum 4 week policy or Subrun. And yes Uncharted doing much better. Batman must be doing well in the metros, as regionals not so much.
In Australia, there is now a race by two companies trying to get eDelivery boxes out asap. Free install, free dedicated Internet-connection to go with it. A few small fries dropping out of the market.
Nothing is free. I really dislike this free dedicated link. (I already have really fast links, I don't need another one) Your paying for it indirectly and is a form of lockin.
Personally I don't care how I download the DCP. Their box, mybox with an app. Its all the same to me.
Due to the numerous boxes cinemas install, I created a AUTO-Ingest feature in the cinema-catcher-app. It scans the "BOX" from each supplier 1-2 times per day, ingests it onto a computer of your choice (i.e. something with proper disk IO etc), does a clairmeta QC check, sends the operator a report of it arriving and the QC status. Auto deletes content as required. Set and Forget. And is also a FTP ingest source for all the content it captures (hence the name cinema-catcher-app). Also allows you to ftp query any IP address, and scan for a DCP, and ingest it. Good for moving DCPs around between sites (If permissible).

[Darin Steffl]

Mike, have them turn on the setting to power on when power is restored. Or in other words, restore last known boot status. So if it was in before the power went out, it should turn back on and if it was off, it should stay off.

They had ours programmed to turn off every weekend to automate a reboot but it never turned back on. It took them 3 tried to disable the timed shutdown before they figured it out.

It definitely feels like they don't know how it works yet. Lots of little bugs on their end like which ethernet port to use, the power up and power down settings, etc.

I'm sure it will get better as they learn more. Once Dog finished downloading last night, I got an automated email notifying me it's ready for us to ingest. I thought that was nice so we didn't need to check manually if it was done.