Announcement about mpc2000/xl LCD Screens (Envision Electron

Envision Electronics Design, LLC
October 31 at 2:29pm ·

I've been getting calls for the MPC2000 and 2000XL LCD Displays. Long story short - we don't make them anymore and we don't have spare parts. Everything is gone.
The long story:
We manufactured a few hundred replacements a couple years ago for an MPC parts distributor. The displays worked pretty well, but they had some issues where they were "glitchy" and would sometimes freeze up. The MPC would continue working, but the display would quit. We had a lot of software trickery going on which was hard for the processor to keep up. The software itself wasn't buggy - the MPC is quite an electrically noisy piece of gear. Just not a great design, internally...
Because of this, we wanted to upgrade the displays to a new design. Long story short, the engineer we hired virtually disappeared off the face of the earth leaving us with no product. So we were forced to stop work on it. We don't have any more of them and I won't return calls for them. It's not that I'm being a jerk - I just don't have answers for you. I'm truly sorry that we couldn't make it work.
The design is for sale if someone wants to take up the charge. You would receive all the source code and schematics as well as technical support to get started.

From Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=824151197605904&id=173058082715222

And the quest for the screen continues.....

i always knew that company was full of shit,. they always had soooooo many excuses….good **** job failing envision!! now you want to sell your failure designs…lol

I'm really confused since MPC-Stuff had mentioned that they were gonna make the screens recently. But I guess it's safe to say they won't be using their design.

distortedtekno wrote:I'm really confused since MPC-Stuff had mentioned that they were gonna make the screens recently. But I guess it's safe to say they won't be using their design.

I thought that they were waiting for Envision to redesign them, and were going to sell those?...

http://www.mpcstuff.com/mpc2000-lcd-sc.html

Akai MPC 2000 / MPC 2000XL LCD Screen - New Replacement

Your Price:
Email us at [email protected] to get on the waiting list.

***PLEASE NOTE: THESE SCREENS ARE CURRENTLY IN RE-DEVELOPMENT AND WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON, THE SITE WILL BE UPDATED WHEN WE HAVE MORE INFO***

The release of the new screens is taking a little longer than expected because we're starting with a clean sheet and redesigning the hardware to be flawless in its execution. We're taking all the lessons we learned in the first production and improving the hardware to expand the capabilities of the display including a VGA driver for an external monitor connection. You can be assured that it will be out finest effort and these will be available as soon as we possibly can.

To get on the pre-order list (no purchase necessary) email us by CLICKING HERE at [email protected] we will contact when these are available for order.

I thought they ditched Envision and are going with an entirely different design which may also include VGA out. Maybe they should just only make a vga out.

doughnutSpaghetti wrote:I thought they ditched Envision and are going with an entirely different design which may also include VGA out. Maybe they should just only make a vga out.

Envision were going to make the VGA out, no one else is/was making them.

mpcstuff.com, on Nov 28 2012, wrote:This is all true. Already available for pre-order on our site. They will be a V2 updated screen from the original version and offer external VGA upgrade support.

envisionelec, on Feb 6 2013, wrote: Hi guys,

Yes, I disappeared for a while. We hired a different engineer for the new design, but it turned out that he was extremely busy all the time. So, it took some time for him to fit us in since we're a small-time company. But it is definitely worth the wait.

The first screens did have some disappointing lags due to the way the LCD data was transposed. This was something we didn't know much about when we did the original software, and by the time they were released, we had already bought hundreds of customized screens.

The new screens use a Xilinx FPGA. It has enough horsepower to immediately translate the data from the MPC to the LCD and spit data out to the VGA monitor in real time. This translates to ZERO lag for you.

The VGA connector itself will be supplied with its own panel that can be placed in the 2000's SMPTE jack opening. For those that have the SMPTE slot filled or have an XL you can punch a standard "XLR" hole that fits a Switchcraft EHHD15FFB. I'll also investigate a "dongle" where the VGA connector/cable is installed with a much smaller connector.

Damn. Someone's gotta figure out how to design something proper. The question is who.

Simon, have you made any progress with dissecting and repairing any worn out displays yet?

Nah, have not got hold of a bad display to mess with as yet.

Would just be trying to clamp the connection where the flex cable is glued to the glass, and reheat it, at a suitible pressure and temperature for the specs of that sort of glue, without damaging anything.

If that didn't work, then maybe seeing if it was possible to remove the existing glue, and use new glue in it's place, again with the correct pressure and temperature for the glue.

I have been wondering though, if it might be possible to use an existing display PCB, and hack some sort of output signal from it somewhere in the circuit, between where it decodes the incoming signal from the MPC and where it sends it to the glass itself, to feed into a more readily available display.

Pity that Envision sees it as a commercial project, and wants a dollar return on the work they have put into it, which is fair enough, but would be great if someone had worked it out as a non-commercial project, and made the specs available to us all.

I'll keep my eyes open for anything to send to you. I got nothing right now. Luckily I got a good replacement for myself the other day. But theres no telling when my luck will run out.

I'm wondering if your hack would work. I'm glad you have more of an open-source approach to things as opposed to the commercialization because theres more potential to make progress.

Yeah, open source is a really really good idea. We all pool our data and come up with a solution. I mean really, buying a screen that cost almost as much as an MPC is not really the best option. Might as well just buy another MPC or even get a 2500.

Interesting out re-gluing it. Pretty clever really. It would make all the broken screens new again and eliminate the need to have to purchase them. If all that's bad is the connection, then yeah, why not just get it to connect again. Or maybe there is a company that has the means to do this for a fee.

I feel lucky to have a clear screen and a back up at this point. I was going to wait on getting a backup screen in hope the new ones would have been release, but I found a deal on a DPS12 and nabbed it. Just better err on the side of caution at this point. Not worth needing one and having no options. Plus I get to learn how to use a DPS12.

Damn.. I can't wrap my head around the idea that it would be so difficult to make these screens! Especially in 2014, after developing LED,LCD,TFT, curved/full HD screens for mobiles and tv's etc. for so many years.

I wonder what the price would be for the design at this point?!

Maybe we could do some type of crowdfunding to raise the money. And eventually make the design open-source.. Just an idea though.

sjeff wrote:Damn.. I can't wrap my head around the idea that it would be so difficult to make these screens! Especially in 2014, after developing LED,LCD,TFT, curved/full HD screens for mobiles and tv's etc. for so many years.

As far as I understand it, the problem is not the screen itself. Its the controller and the way the MPC communicate with it.

peace

Is it possible to just reuse the original controller on a new screen?

Between all the various people who've been involved at one point or another, I think they've tried every possible option and the only one that has gone anywhere is building the whole thing from new.

Have faith, I'm sure it will eventually come good, although people hoping for some kind of budget solution may be disappointed.

TBH I 100% fully support the idea of passionate people getting together to resurrect old gear so the idea of trying to get some kind of open source project going is very appealing.

But from a business POV this XL screen seems a bit of a non-starter - while it may appear that there are plenty of people 'needing' a new screen for their 2000/XL, the reality is often very different and typically the people screaming loudest for these things to be produced are the first to complain about the niche pricing they inevitably attract.