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I read the posts in Cinema Design about the red light readers and am curious how many of us have and have not changed over. I ordered/received my Component Engineering ASR-40 last week, but as yet don't have the expertise to install it. I recently bought an oscilloscope and am trying to acquire an RTA, test films, and a few other goodies so we can perform our own sound maintenance/adjustments in the future.

Did any of you do your own installations?

I really applaud a small theatre purchasing test films and equipment, but something like installing a new reader and doing an A-chain calibration might still be best done by a theatre service engineer. When you own a few DOZEN screens, having a trained service engineer on staff begins to make sense for these kind of things.

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We had ours installed a little over two months ago. Had our service technician do all the work. Didn't trust doing it ourselves.

Just this week we had Scott Hicks of American Cinema Supply come down and install Component Engineering reverse scan kits in 4 out of 5 of our houses. We left #4 the traditional white light in case we ever need to present a variable density track. We had 7 of them the first year and non the next two years.

I have been to Dolby Class and understand how the installation is done. I watched Scott install two of the units. I still don't want to tackle the installation myself. The first room took Scott at least two hours to do. He had to run new wires to the cell. He had to run new wire to the CP65. At least that was in the console. He had to wire up a power supply for the lamp. While making the adjustments for focus, azimuth and position of the light, he discovered that the high frequency had been miss adjusted in the past. It takes a trained technician to recognize that something is wrong and to correct it.

No, I would definitely leave this job to a professional.

If you don't mind me asking, what did it cost to have your service tech do the work?

It's not the hourly charge that will hurt. He probably charges $80 per hour labor for a couple of hours labor. It's the travel, and hotel that will sting. I haven't gotten a bill yet.

Installed our Kelmar reader in August 1998. We have had the assistance of a sound technician who moonlights tinkering with our sound systems. So both our Kelmar reader and our Dolby Digital system were a collaborative effort with him.

Many of the theaters in my area are still using exciter lamps in all the auditoriums. A few theaters in Seattle either have all auditoriums equipped with reverse scan readers or have some houses with exciter lamps and some with reverse scan.

Our drive-in theater (the Skyline) still runs exciter lamps with our vintage 1940 RCA exciter lamp power supply!

In Canada I charge $48.00 per hour (can) and a min of 4 hrs and usually do a reader and also redo the B chain at the same time in that period
A lot of indis usually get togather to have me go out to an area and split the plane and hotel to save money

I like Gordon's idea.

I'm an independent 2 screener in Madison, Indiana ( 1/2 way between Cincinnati and Louisville).
Any other indepedents near me that haven't converted yet?

I've been putting it off as long as possible because of the cost of installation more than the cost of the readers.
But obviously I really need to get this done within the next 6 months.

Tony Ratcliff
Ohio Theatre

I did most of my maint and installation when I was in Houston becuase I had to. Our "booth technician" was telling us he was at the other theatre working on the install and told them he was at ours working on the install when he was at the bar working on his next jack daniels. So I was put into the position of "Get it installed!" So I did with little problems.
Mainly had to wait on the screen masking to be put up before I could cut the plates.