CINEMA ENGINEERING SPECIALIST Omnex recently commissioned its first boothless cinema installation at the new Ashford Picturehouse, a six-screen cinema, bar and restaurant due to open this month in the centre of the Kent town. The boothless lift unit, manufactured by DPS Lifts in the US, is a new product and was selected for installation in the Picturehouse’s Barco Laser-equipped Screen 6 auditorium. “This was our first true boothless cinema installation,” noted Omnex’s managing director, Simon Tandy, adding, “True in the sense that the projector — in this case a Barco unit — is in a readily accessible lift mounted to the auditorium’s back wall. All automation and audio technologies required are housed at the front of the screen, underneath the bottom masking apron.”
DPS mechanical lifts are designed and manufactured in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Omnex is licensed to distribute and install the products throughout EMEA. As Simon explained, “Omnex has spent the past 12 months evaluating boothless concepts and the DPS system, in our opinion, outweighs others in a range of criteria, notably safety and security. From a technical perspective, the projector doesn’t need to be realigned after accessing it — the lifting mechanism is sufficiently accurate and capable of supporting units up to 330kgs.” DPS’s Roberto Guerrero was in Ashford to support the installation. “Whilst we are seeing our lifts installed in new builds, we have a number being prepared for retro-fit cinemas,” he explained. “Our background is in providing bespoke lifting solutions for highly demanding areas such as the maritime sector, so we were confident we could create a product for cinemas that was reliable, cost-effective and built to last.”
