GDC SR1000 Jnior and Christie automation help

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I am the customer, in this equation. I have many flavors of GDC, Barco, and Doremi/Dolby servers across our 5 locations (and fortunately no longer, Christie IMB-S2!). I use them on a daily basis. I fix their issues, I create automation cues, I walk my staff through how to do this or that over the phone. The IMS series is far and away the easiest for any of my staff to operate.

Steve nails exactly the difference between the SR1000 and the IMS interface: one is designed by engineers for technicians, the other is designed by designers for end users.

But, you bought it from Christie, not GDC.

[Andrew Thomas]

But, you bought it from Christie, not GDC.

I literally said that.

But that is irrelevant to the post you quoted. My reference to being the customer is your insistence that your customers prefer the GDC to the IMS.

I’m not a tech, I’m an end user. And I would never buy an SR1000 even though it is literally thousands less than an IMS unit. User experience is worth the price difference and more.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I was actually refrencing what Andrew Thomas said... You buy it from Chtristie, they get to repair it. They were the original customer for that unit. No manufacturer is going to cover a broken 3rd party unit. What did it say in the fine print on the sales documentation?

[Andrew Thomas]

I was actually refrencing what Andrew Thomas said... You buy it from Chtristie, they get to repair it. They were the original customer for that unit. No manufacturer is going to cover a broken 3rd party unit. What did it say in the fine print on the sales documentation?

The unit came directly from GDC’s factory to the theater. The refusal by Christie to replace it is directly due to GDC saying they can’t find anything wrong with it in the logs, even though I’ve sent them both videos of the malfunction.

GDC is a trashy company, even if you like their products as a technician.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I guarantee you that calling any company "trashy" on this site is going to set you behind. But keep up the good work. The Companies products I've consistantly had the best luck with are NEC, USL, GDC, QSC, Kelmar and Eprad, Strong made some good stuff back during film. On 330+ installations of NEC and GDC the total number of actual off the screen problems still stands at about 9. Many are ten years old, a few are even older. Many servers recently had their certs updated.

[Andrew Thomas]

I guarantee you that calling any company "trashy" on this site is going to set you behind. But keep up the good work. The Companies products I've consistantly had the best luck with are NEC, USL, GDC, QSC, Kelmar and Eprad, Strong made some good stuff back during film. On 330+ installations of NEC and GDC the total number of actual off the screen problems still stands at about 9. Many are ten years old, a few are even older. Many servers recently had their certs updated.

Nobody cares for your shilling, Mark.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Well, let's try to be respectful against each other... life is to short to waste with silly quibbles about who's right about something, especially if it's about something that's based on personal experiences.

I may not always agree with Mark and Mark not always with me, but that doesn't mean I don't care for what he's to say.

As for GDC: I'm not a fan of all of their products, but neither am I a fan of all products by their competition. I'm also not a fan of some of their policies, but some of the policies of e.g. Barco or Christie suck equally if not even harder. One of the things that suck, for example, is that they're pretty hard to get around here, compared to Dolby and Barco products...

As someone with a technical background, I'd say that Christie is the biggest sucker in the room... Their version of an IMS was a downright catastrophe and of all the projectors that came out of mothballs with issues after the pandemic-related closures, Christie by far did the worst around here.

[Steve Guttag]

Unfortunately, it's not if you like it or not. It's the customers decision weather he / she likes it or not. Customers hated the 1000 and 2000. They don't complain about the SR-1000.

Yeah Mark, and NOBODY here will think you have your thumb on that scale. Or, perhaps, some statistical anomaly has paired you with the exact people that prefer the GDC interface. There are people that like and dislike both UIs...heck I'm one of those people for BOTH. Without a doubt, Dolby's DSS UI, "Show Manager" is, by FAR, the best UI done for digital cinema. But it is no more.

Steve nails exactly the difference between the SR1000 and the IMS interface: one is designed by engineers for technicians, the other is designed by designers for end users.

Note, I was only referring to the Dashboard as having a distinct user-level preference. Cinelister is an abomination. Let's say you are in the "playback" screen. The right column shows the Top Gun SPL. When you hit play, what show plays? The correct answer is, you do not know!!! You have to bounce back to the "Edit" screen. What fool designed that? Why hasn't it been fixed by now? It should, at least, show what is next to play or always play what is on the SPL of the playback screen. That is intuitive. The Scheduler can, like with GDC, select the next show, at show time though I liked Show Manager's plan of selecting the next show at the conclusion of the previous show...so manual starts are always at the ready too. Plus, TMS' show what is going to play next, not what just played. I'd give GDC the edge on the playback screen for its history window. It will show what content and cues have fired (and which failed). The IMS has a shorthand with the colored dots as to what is playing, what played and what has yet to play. The DSS progress bar was great but it did not tell you what actually executed.

I prefer to build my shows left-to-right...not top-down. Interestingly, GDC's classic interface gave you both. The current interface is only top-down and their TMS is only left-to-right.

Trying to figure out what you really have on the Doremi/IMS interface, in terms of CPLs (and variations between versions) and what KDMs you have and what they go to can be a struggle and their Ingest Monitor does not shed light on much (too much UUID based, not enough human readable). The DSS is clear and obvious with GDC being a bit middle of the road with too many steps to get to the "Status" screen on a classic interface but that goes back to the pass-through "Control Panel."

The realities are, particularly if you are young, you are going to adapt and get faster with any of the UIs. If you are older and are used to a particular look and feel, you are going to dislike "different." I've used Microsoft Word since 1987. It's UI hit its peak, for me around 1993 or so (on the MAC...World for Windows never had a "good version). Each successive iteration of World (on either platform) has been a collection of annoyances of having to figure out where they moved the features that I, in particular, use a lot and wished they just left alone. The same is going to be true for screen servers for people.

I have no particular problem with putting in either IMS3000 or SR-1000s, from a showing the movie and getting the client up to speed standpoint (now). Both take 3-4 times longer to train customers on than the Dolby DSS (Show Manager). I don't think either are clear-cut winners. Nobody has hit anything out of the park. GDC has moved towards the IMS UI so there is less of a distinction for most user functions (it is still different on the technician side, but not horribly so).

GDC locks their logs so one is beholden to them for fault analysis. To me, this ia a major offense. It isn't their server, once they sell it and the user/support staff should be able to look at their own logs. Furthermore, it is shady as they could be collecting data that could be used for non-troubleshooting purposes. There is no other reasons to lock the logs. Their tech support is great but, you HAVE to use them for fault analysis and it comes with a cost. I have also found GDC to be non-helpful on sharing their API for integration with other systems, like Q-SYS. With Dolby/Doremi, the response is quite the opposite...they're ready to help. One of the things we are starting to do with our Q-SYS systems is monitor the server to see if it is ingesting and if so, to not shut down until the ingests are complete. With the IMS, the WSDL files are available, with GDC, not so much. That is clearly a special case but one can see, as the world gets more automated, there is no good reason for being so close-fisted with such information...it isn't like sharing source-code.

[Steve Guttag]

No manufacturer is going to cover a broken 3rd party unit.

How do you define 3rd party? It is a GDC SR-1000. I've gone to Dolby directly for NEC branded IMS1000s and they NEVER refused service...NEVER. That is more 3rd party than GDC selling the SR-1000 through Christie. The SR-1000 is GDC branded and is a production unit. Why on earth would not they support if, regardless of who sold it? You make no sense. You expose yourself to be a shill with these sorts of explanations.

Marcel, I've noted that what is supported around the globe (across the plane, for some) really varies by region. Some brands are much better supported than others, regardless of internal support policies. A benefit to being in the USA is that most anything sold here is supported reasonably well as there is normally a US presence to that company. So, NEC, Barco and Christie will be supported to the level those companies can obtain parts (though NEC has chosen to use "Super Dealers" as their distributors). Now, some definitely do better than others with stocking quantities. Likewise on servers or sound equipment. Now, parts warranties, those are internal company decisions and vary by company. I don't think anyone can defend Barco's 90-day parts warranty (regardless of part value). It basically just covers DOA and infant mortality. Do they really think a part should only need to last 90-days?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

How do you define 3rd party? It is a GDC SR-1000. I've gone to Dolby directly for NEC branded IMS1000s and they NEVER refused service...NEVER. That is more 3rd party than GDC selling the SR-1000 through Christie. The SR-1000 is GDC branded and is a production unit. Why on earth would not they support if, regardless of who sold it? You make no sense. You expose yourself to be a shill with these sorts of explanations.

Marcel, I've noted that what is supported around the globe (across the plane, for some) really varies by region. Some brands are much better supported than others, regardless of internal support policies. A benefit to being in the USA is that most anything sold here is supported reasonably well as there is normally a US presence to that company. So, NEC, Barco and Christie will be supported to the level those companies can obtain parts (though NEC has chosen to use "Super Dealers" as their distributors). Now, some definitely do better than others with stocking quantities. Likewise on servers or sound equipment. Now, parts warranties, those are internal company decisions and vary by company. I don't think anyone can defend Barco's 90-day parts warranty (regardless of part value). It basically just covers DOA and infant mortality. Do they really think a part should only need to last 90-days?

First you'd have to see the sales agreement between GDC and Christie before you could say. It could very well be that the end user needs to go back through Christie He also could have bought it right through a GDC dealer, since they sold the same stuff.

[Steve Guttag]

I have no doubt that GDC wants Christie to be the primary contact for servers sold through them. To a degree, that is what a dealer does for all things they sell. We are the primary contact for our customers for any equipment issue. Looking back at the NEC branded Doremi IMS1000s, NEC is absolutely the primary contact point. It has their name on it (albeit by a sticker, however the UI even has the NEC logo, not Doremi (or Dolby). None-the-less, Doremi/Dolby has always provided support for them as well. You HAVE to get the drms through NEC. That is about the only place where one's hands are tied.

[Alan Gouger]

For user-friendliness, the USL was nice and simple. Too bad QSC deopped it. I can't speak on if it had all the features to compete with the bigger brands. I miss USL.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Nope, no thumb on the scale Steve. What sold 95% of my customers way back when was GDC's much more liberal VPF program. When I compared VPF program costs vs Cinedigm, they all chose GDC. They had the choice clearly presented. They all got the same VPF payments the Cinedigm customers got and there was way less initial and almost no ongoing expense involved except a few random switch failures and cleaning the dust out of the servers every year. The racks I built had the same features as the Cinedigm/Strong racks sans the lockable switches, and all but one is still running as that theater closed. A few racks were upgraded with newer, faster servers. Do I have my thumb on.the scale today? Of course I do, after the tremendous luck I have had with both them and NEC. But would I force anyone to buy GDC? Of course not! I have installed all brands over the years. All server brands as well as all brands of projectors.

[Bruce Cloutier]

We support product and don't care how you came by it. It is too much of an effort to track and confirm ownership, the age of the product, or even status of any kind of support agreement with payment or not. Plus, 90% of the issues are configuration related and quick to resolve. We like to use support as a teaching moment too. That may help customers more successfully avoid issues in the future and further reduce the cost to us.

[James Gardiner]

Interesting sharing of experience here guys. Appreciate it.
My input is that a lot of this kit is now EOL. No support. Vendors can make it hard to keep this kit going or not. This should be a big issue for independents who sweat every drop out of their equipment.
I would also support any vendor that is more open to making EOL kit have easily accessible support info and API information as it allows much of the equipment to live longer and reduce landfill. Allow small independents to service smaller communities etc.

I like Dolby IMS myself, but yes the going to edit to select the show and back to play is completely brain dead. They should have a "show select" on the playback page.. And show the user exactly what show would start if they hit play. (I have made a bug report on this to Dolby in the past, it would not be hard for them to implement it.. so storage as to why not.) Otherwise, I like IMS web control. Barco looks similar in ease of use but I have not had too much real-life experience.
Having access to OLD GDC and VLC being the only way to control them. is a headache. I wonder why they did not add the HTML interface to the older units?? would be better to have a unified control.
GDC sometimes make some unusual moves.