Optical sound in Europe

[John Bakker]

I'm located in Europe and have a hard time finding projectors that play both magnetic and optical sound. I have a few reels with optical audio which I can't play (well, only silent) and would really like a projector that plays both formats.
I read many people here having Elmo M+O models but I haven't come across one here yet. Was this more common in the US? And was there a huge price difference between M and M+O projectors back then?

[Carl Ingram]

Some of the japanese projectors have this feature as standard, fuji being one such brand, the sh30 certainly does from my research on the web, and eumig i believe .......

[Dominique De Bast]

Some Italian Fumeo projectors and some Austrian Eumig ones have the optical sound play-back facility. The French company "Les grands films classiques " released several (French) features with optical sound.

[John Bakker]

Ah yeah there are probably some European brands that have optical but what I actually meant to say is that none of the Elmo models that have optional optical audio can't be found here. How easy is it, for example, to get an ST-1200D or HD in the US that has M+O?
Is every 1 out of 5 projectors M+O? Or 1 out of 10? Or even less?

[Steve Klare]

Optical sound isn't exactly rare here, but maybe more "unusual". It is/was much more common in Japan. I've never had an optical sound S8 machine, and rarely regretted it. (-once or twice in about 20 years)

As far as I know, every GS-1200 ever made has optical sound including the pretty rare Elmo GS-1200 Xenon(O), which doesn't have magnetic sound!