Tom Baldwin Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 I've recently started looking at hiring video kit, and the thing that struck me was that the relationship between purchase price and hire price for lighting kit and video kit is vastly different. This isn't about any particular hire company, or any particular brand of equipment; it seems to be general. Here's a couple of examples:Control equipment; some buttons, a small screen. No other moving parts:Barco ScreenPro II: purchase for £10,000, weekly rental £1500 (i.e. 15% of purchase price/ wk)Avolites Pearl Expert: purchase for £8,500, weekly rental £250 (i.e. 3% of purchase price/ wk)Lightsource, discharge lamp:Sanyo Sanyo PLC-XM100: purchase for £1,700, weekly rental £450 (i.e. 26% of purchase price/ wk)Clay Paky Sharpy: purchase for £4,000, weekly rental £130 (i.e. 3% of purchase price/ wk) How come video is so much more expensive to hire? I can't imagine a ScreenPro needs more maintenance than a Pearl, or that a projector is that much more fragile than a moving light. Additional lenses for projectors seem to cost extra to hire, so that can't explain it. And whatever differences in complexity between the kit should be accounted for in the retail price.The above are all list prices - unless video is always massively discounted (e.g. 80% discounts), I just don't get it. Anyone care to enlighten me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 video started its life aimed at a more corporate market were theres more money is my guess Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Pearce Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Part of is that video kit gets old quicker, the industry moves faster especially with the current HD revolution, so there is less time to make the money. Another part is that there isn't as much demand for one projector as there is for one moving head. A show might have 30 movers but one projector. Again, less time to make money on the investment. I guess the other part of it is that the market will support those rates and everyone has bills/rent/mortgages to pay! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simschr Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Some thoughts: Could the payback time on video kit be higher? Supply of product - do many rental houses hold the equipment? Market - are budgets greater where high end video kit is used ? Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMitchell Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 In the example of the projector, where the weekly rental is 26% of the purchase price, the demand for hire units will be lessened significantly, as those that need it for just two weeks per year can buy the projector and a nice flightcase to put it in with the year one depreciation charge being less than two weeks hire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GR1 Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Video kit gets obsolete very quickly to such an extent that some of the 'One Stop Shops' ie supplers of sound, video & lx end up never getting the money back from some of their video kit but making up for it by getting profit from the sound/lx which has a much longer shelf life. In some cases they only get the jobs because they can supply everything so it is built in to their business model. It's that simple ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AHYoung Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 There are many reasons for this... Video would generally attract a larger discount, the book pricing being based on a corporate one off one day hire against lighting being longer hires. Its a different market and so is the pricing. look at a 3 month hire and things become more similar.You would hope to get your lighting desk out on every job, but you wont get your screenpro out that much and if you did, the longterm price would tumble. Video kit also has to generally be better maintained and supported. Its also trickier to prep.The lamps are expensive and need replaced after they do a third of their usable life, Sanyo units in particular regularly need cleaning and that costs a lot. Also to hire out a midrange video projector, you need to own 3 times the value again in lenses. The customer just wants the one they need and they wont pay much if anything for it, they also will want a different one if possible just in case. so in reality you are paying 4 times the capital for the same return. There are amny items that are hopelessly underpriced, a fastfold screen kit that costs over 1500.00 goes out for next to nothing and its unlikely they will last long enough undamaged to get a return . If you want return Vs cost Steeldecks where its at, but you need to carry the stuff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobA Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Lamp costs make projectors expensive items for hire stock - typically moving heads cost 2-5p per hour in lamps, plus a couple of pence per strike whereas a large projector can cost over £5 per hour plus £10 plus per strike. Bear in mind the lamp will need to be struck and run for a while when it's tested in and out. Another cost is having spare lamps on the shelves. I say on the shelves, I keep the expensive ones in a safe - price for weight they're the most expensive item I can think of. Accessories cost a lot too - a couple of extra lenses for a projector are not a small investment. Screens are also very damage prone, a tiny hole in a surface will turn into noticeable deformation after another 4 or 5 assemblies and replacing a largish surface costs more than fixing a dropped moving head. Checking a screen properly after a hire is also very time consuming which adds to the cost. Looking at list price vs weekly price can be misleading too, few companies would get more than a couple of Barco ScreenPro IIs at once, whereas buying Clay Paky Sharpys by the dozen is pretty normal - rental houses will get a good discount buying a significant number of luminaires, but little buying 2 scalers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 We stuck a new lamp in our Hire Barcos - and that cost XL a huge amount of money - Four grand for a lamp is a pretty good reason for hire costs being dearer. Quite a lot of video gear have hours counters too, and unlike movers, where they're pretty well only used for determining service life of lamps and other parts, with video - the hours counter clocks up at the same rate the residual value drops down. High hours wipes of value like mad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete McCrea Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 As all the others have pointed out really, it's the ancillary costs that mean **list** prices are higher. And as mentioned, there are some things such as Fadtfolds that it really doesn't make any sense to buy, but then you need them as a rental house. And lamp costs.... Barco charge £114 for a filter kit for a CLM projector. The OEM manufacturer won't make them to order. One use on a heavily hazed job and it's new filters please. New lamp kit: £1200, and good for 500 hours, 750 if your pushing it, and they haven't blown and filled the unit with glass, requiring an hour or two on the bence to clear out. SPII - three years ago they dropped the price by about £6k. So when we bought them, I could have put down a deposit on a reasonable house. And lenses - as others have said, you'll spend £6k on a projector, and same again on the lense suite for it. And cables too - 100m fibre (because DVI doesn't really do well over long copper lengths) will set you back about £2k for 100m of neutrik ethercon As all the others have pointed out really, it's the ancillary costs that mean **list** prices are higher. And as mentioned, there are some things such as Fadtfolds that it really doesn't make any sense to buy, but then you need them as a rental house. Realistically you won't pay list price either... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Baldwin Posted March 5, 2012 Author Share Posted March 5, 2012 Thank you all - lots of interesting points, which I hadn't considered. Glad I'm not trying to run a hire company! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete McCrea Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 It's not the easiest time to be doing it - I can think of less stressful ways to earn a living! And I've just realised how useless my spelling was on that last post :-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerry davies Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 Stress, Pete, stress, take time out and I'll buy you a coffee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_s Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 make mine a double espresso with an extra shot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobA Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 Checking a screen properly after a hire is also very time consuming which adds to the cost. I took the chance to check this by de-preping a couple of 9'x12' screens against the clock yesterday... it was even worse than I had guessed, and that was with a client who knew how to fold and pack screens properly. Thanks for the original post Tom, it made me think. I'm going to put up screen prices, though I'll discount projectors so anyone getting a complete setup pays the same or less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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