LTI Introducing Xenon Lamp Recycling Program

[Leo Enticknap]

I doubt the proposed end of production does really harm many theatres. Most projector types using these lamps, Sony, small NEC or Barco have reached End Of Life status, and start displaying other kinds of defects these days in increasing numbers, which makes long term operation difficult. A lot of these among our customers were replaced last and this year, others are scheduled to be replaced in the forseeable future. At least at the independents we serve.

I installed a new NC1000 last year, and my understanding is that they still have a few left in stock. Given that the intended design life of most DCI projectors is in the ballpark of a decade, there are owners of these things that will expect to have them in service at least into the early '30s. Agreed that the 900s in service are now rapidly biting the dust, plus mercury lamp Sonys. My impression is that the Barco E series never sold in massive numbers (not in the USA, at any rate - it was not price competitive with the small NECs and was only bought when the need for low projector fan noise was so important that a customer was willing to pay significantly more). A significant number of theaters here will be in trouble if lamp availability for the NC1000 in particular ends before the next 5-6 years are up, IMHO.

[Steve Guttag]

Projectors were supposed to be 10-15 year items and servers 5-7 years. I'm finding that servers are dropping significantly faster after the 10-year mark...there are exceptions to every rule but that is what I'm finding, regardless of brand. Projectors are more all over the place. The Christie CP2000S/SBs...those will probably outlive all of us...give or take a cheeseball DBOX switch. We have most xenon projectors over the 10-year mark with no signs of them dropping. The rates of things wearing out is increasing, of course. But not outright failure.

We did put in a DP2K-6E and it does live "in-the-theatre" so it was chosen for its quietness. NEC was disqualified because the NC900/NC1000 can't hit its lens settings repeatedly. The theatre has a constant height screen with movable side masking...it is in an art type house so it runs from 4x3 on out formats. It has been doing well and they only use one lamp at a time.

All of our work on NC900s were on the front end of their lives due to the lamp debacle that would cause failures of both the lamps and the ballasts (always the bottom one too!). I'd say that when they drop, we'll either do a proper upgrade (move away from the low-contrast projector) or go with the equivalent of the NC-1202L as a replacement (same lens and nominally the same size. We do not have many NC900s and no NC1000s.

I would hope that one consumables for a projector would be supported at least 10-years after the end of production of the projector. I believe that was a DCI requirement.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Projectors were supposed to be 10-15 year items and servers 5-7 years. I'm finding that servers are dropping significantly faster after the 10-year mark...there are exceptions to every rule but that is what I'm finding, regardless of brand. Projectors are more all over the place. The Christie CP2000S/SBs...those will probably outlive all of us...give or take a cheeseball DBOX switch. We have most xenon projectors over the 10-year mark with no signs of them dropping. The rates of things wearing out is increasing, of course. But not outright failure.

We did put in a DP2K-6E and it does live "in-the-theatre" so it was chosen for its quietness. NEC was disqualified because the NC900/NC1000 can't hit its lens settings repeatedly. The theatre has a constant height screen with movable side masking...it is in an art type house so it runs from 4x3 on out formats. It has been doing well and they only use one lamp at a time.

All of our work on NC900s were on the front end of their lives due to the lamp debacle that would cause failures of both the lamps and the ballasts (always the bottom one too!). I'd say that when they drop, we'll either do a proper upgrade (move away from the low-contrast projector) or go with the equivalent of the NC-1202L as a replacement (same lens and nominally the same size. We do not have many NC900s and no NC1000s.

I would hope that one consumables for a projector would be supported at least 10-years after the end of production of the projector. I believe that was a DCI requirement.

Steve... Did any of your 900's suffer damage to the light input optics? I had that happen to two of them and had to replace those parts. Both sites had multiple lamp explosions. It sure took Ushio a long time to rectify that issue.

[Steve Guttag]

We have not.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Projectors were supposed to be 10-15 year items and servers 5-7 years. I'm finding that servers are dropping significantly faster after the 10-year mark...there are exceptions to every rule but that is what I'm finding, regardless of brand. Projectors are more all over the place. The Christie CP2000S/SBs...those will probably outlive all of us...give or take a cheeseball DBOX switch. We have most xenon projectors over the 10-year mark with no signs of them dropping. The rates of things wearing out is increasing, of course. But not outright failure.

We still have a few places around chugging along with a bunch of Barco DP100s, now getting to the ripe old age (for a DCI projector) of 15... Sure, they all had their liquid cooling systems reworked at one time and don't push 16 hour shifts each day anymore. Some major ticket item could blow up right now and they'd be "total loss", but they ARE still going. The problem with those digital projectors though is, that none of the possible big-item repairs are easy. It's usually not something that can be easily fixed in a workshop, so you'll end up hunting for spare parts...

As for servers: most of those DP100s have seen a bunch of them over the years come and go. Since most of the first-gen servers were essentially off-the-shelf server components, it was clear most of them wouldn't make it past 10 years. Looking at the "integrated server" developments, I'd say that many of them will probably also see a replacement before the projector itself gets tossed out. In our case, we replaced a Barco ICMP with a Dolby IMS3000 just last year.