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At the lowest end was a file encoded with a bitrate of 235 kbps, which would work even on very slow connections, but also only deliver a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels. Somewhere in the middle was a 1750 kbps file for a resolution of 1280 by 720, and the best quality was a 5800 kbps version for a great-looking 1080p experience.

You do realize that's lower than AT&T and FIOS HD bitrates and about equal to TW, none of which are claimed to have even good picture quality? 5800kbps is half of a DVDs bitrate and below most of the audio bitrates I use for my digital library. Then again, you're probably watching this on a phone or tablet in mono. Their "new improved" compression tech not withstanding, the video and sound quality of these streams is noticeably lower than what I generally watch. There's a reason I have OTA DVRs working (better than double that bitrate)

There's actually a proposal to do this, or something quite similar.

http://variety.com/2016/film/n...

And it seems it's inconsequential to them as well. And from that we can extrapolate and say that those users, that were willing to pay but now are probably going to get the content by illegal means, doesn't really matter. It's a win-win-win scenario!

It's the traditional TV networks that care. They're the ones saying "exclusive rights in Kerbeckistan" is no good if the ratings are poor because people see it on Netflix over VPN. Just like the cinema business refuse to show movies that air at the same time, they won't give people cheap watercooler talk. If you want to be "in" on recent movies and not hear spoilers, it's in theaters and only in theaters now.

Of course one alternative is to go all Netflix, but 76% still pay for traditional cable or satellite service. So they're the ones cracking the whip at the content companies who again knocks Netflix on the head and say "ey, we like selling it to both of you so you two behave". Not much doubt on where it's going though, streaming services are in massive growth so maybe in a decade or two it's a different world. But today they can still bully Netflix into blocking VPNs.

Mark Hamill was there promoting the Kingsman movie and did this for them, he should offer to do the same for the big chains: http://variety.com/2015/film/n...

Ask Yahoo how that worked out for them. They purchased rights to Community Season 6 for Yahoo Screen, figuring the enthusiastic fan base would bring in lots of viewers, but they lost a lot of money on the endeavor.

See? This is what happens when moot gets a job at google.

From the web:

Surprising omissions from the actor race this year included Idris Elba for “Beasts of No Nation,” Will Smith for “Concussion,” Michael B. Jordan from “Creed” and the many young actors in “Compton.” link

Will Smith was fantastic in "Concussion." I didn't see Idris Elba in "Beasts of No Nation," but I'm going to rent it just to thumb my nose at the Academy. No interest in "Rocky VI" (ahem) "Creed," but I think Stallone got nominated for his performance in that one. It seems to me he's milked all the Oscars he should get out of "Rocky." Were the leads up to the same level? Don't know. "Straight Outta Compton" is another one I mean to hit in rental. No idea if it was any good, though.

Seems suspect. Insidious, isn't it? Definitely worth talking about. Quotas are probably the wrong way to go, though. Public shaming is fair game.

I just read this article (which I missed back in June): a number of ex Al-Jazeera employees are (were?) suing the company due to sexism, anti-semitism and a pro-Arab agenda.

In many ways, it seems that it wasn't a very healthy journalistic environment.

A canceled HDMI stick named Matchstick (site currently offline) was successfully funded on Kickstarter.

You do realize in 2015 they added a laugh track http://variety.com/2014/tv/awa...

There is nothing in that 2014 article to support that assertion that they started using a laugh track in 2015. Either way, I'm not saying they don't. If you bothered to pay attention to context, I was answering someone who said they wished that they filmed in front of a studio audience. They do. It's indisputable.

You do realize in 2015 they added a laugh track http://variety.com/2014/tv/awa...

Today you can produce a decent quality show with a couple thousand dollars in equipment.

We return now to the real world of digital media.

TV literary agent Peter Micelli was forthcoming about how Netflix --- and other digital media upstarts --- do business with Hollywood during a panel discussion Friday at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium. He went so far as to specify how much was spent to produce some of the series CAA has sold to Netflix.

''The cheapest show is $3.8 million an episode,'' Micelli told a crowd of more than 500 lawyers in the entertainment business. '' 'House of Cards' started at $4.5 million and (executive producer David) Fincher took it way above that.''

''The next series is 'Hemlock Grove' and they're doing that for about $4 million an episode,'' he said. '' 'Orange is the New Black' is just under $4 million as well. They're huge budgets shows, theyâ(TM)re doing things in a huge way.''

{"Netflix will] pay a large percentage of the budget . They control it for four years exclusively and then can turn around to re-sell to a cable channel.''

''Amazon is looking at it on a smaller scale, with comedies, but spending a million dollars per episode.''

Netflix Series Spending Revealed [March 8 2013]

The geek thinks consumer grade video tech and maybe some OS solutions for F/X, audio and editing.

The pro thinks about the time, material resources, talent, imagination and experience that he will need across the board.

Atlas shrugged never had studio funding.

Yes it did.

As for Superheroines consider the concept that making them feminist metaphors ruins them.

Not saying you're wrong, but I'm struggling to think of an example. That isn't what ruined Red Sonja, or Supergirl, or Catwoman, or Aeon Flux.

Can someone please provide some sources/proof for this perhaps with some WireShark caputures, etc.? I haven't seen any yet and am considering upgrading but don't want to if this is the case.

All the spurious net activity is not just windows update which runs and cannot be shut down. In beta I tried boots with no internet connection but a local area to see if the OS is trying to access the internet elsewhere.

What happens is when a local area connection with no outside access to Microsoft is available on boot it quickly stops trying to connect to the net like it should. Essentially they have done it right there is no need for outside continuous connections to Microsoft. It is still up to the user the way it should be. Yes Microsoft is desperate to get into the Google kitchen and convince every user that they need to be connected and use their cloud. But I will give them credit where credit is due the cloud is easy to ignore and you can slim down 10 and use it in any configuration you so desire.

There has been a marked shift away from the Scroogle campaign and a move toward user control of function. The way I see it they are on the right track, if you want Microsoft services and cloud crap apps then they are there but if you want to use the OS as a stand alone workstation off the full internet it is easy to do so and it will not nag the shit out of you because ET cannot phone home all the time.

Now if the real assholes at Microsoft, like the crowd of Ballmer boys that are still desperate to kill google and are still going at it by spreading fud money to characters like this moron are finally reigned in, perhaps I will have some respect for Microsoft.

Put it this way at least my g-mail marks and isolates the scam security hoax guys who work currently out of 355 W. Mesquite Blvd. D30 449 Mesquite, NV.89027 as spamming scamers. They are the worst bunch of super scam scum bags on the net and get past everything but Google filters. Their technique is to use bounced addresses from old hotmail contacts, they are still at it taking peoples money for the imaginary security they sell you. I have no respect for the hotmail crowd and the cloud services are a garbage. 10 is a decent configurable desktop OS and it is very easy to avoid using Microsoft and use Google services and other browsers and search instead! VLC is a must now though especially if you still want to watch anything with dvdcss or have decent internet radio configurations that don't spam the shit out of your web browser. You can easily dump the craptainment tiles after install and just ignore and shut off all the live tiles and the OS does not crap out if you do so. Hell you can even still dump EDGE and IE as a default browser and use Chrome or Firefux but you will get a little nag screen that you have to swat at now and then. So all this fud about 10 here on slashdot is obviously from people who do not know how to take a knife to the OS and castrate it the way you always have to do when you install Windows. 10 is going to be a boon for small computer shops because the people who know how to configure windows for ignorant users will make a killing ;-) The average desktop user will like the system but will sure as hell need help configuring it to work correctly with their dvd drives old media files and the like.

[crystal_balls] My prediction is that sourceforge will suddenly be bought out by Microsoft and VLC and the like will suddenly vanish from the planet withing the year either that or the load on the servers will cause them to go bankrupt. However the load on MS cloud will be so small that they will easily host sourceforge instead of what little they do host now! ;->[/crystal_balls]

Only within the past few months, really:

Q1 2013: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/...

Q1 2015: http://variety.com/2015/tv/fea...

I was wondering how much longer Stewart would stick around after Colbert's departure though. It's not the same without Colbert as the follow-on, and I haven't bothered to watch the replacement.

The Chris Carter show was canceled

http://variety.com/2015/digita...

Who says a channel has to charge? TBS costs cable companies $.63 a month per subscriber, bringing in $731 million a year for 96,700 homes. ESPN is $5.75 a month per subscriber in 94,000 homes.

I'd pay $1 a month for TBS. Some channels wouldn't have to charge. QVC? That's just a big infomercial. Golf? Offer it for free.

It looks like we may get choices soon: Cable Under Fire: Plunge in Ratings Could Spell Trouble for Top Nets

The companies themselves may be fine... they are making a lot of money in other things.

Umm, look at a quarterly earnings report for Discovery Communications sometime. Of their 9 month earnings in the latest report, for example, they had a total revenue of $4.589B, with $2.209B from US networks, and $2.291B from international networks. That is over 98% of their revenue. More than half of their revenue is from advertising. Although they are trying to invest in internet based media, the vast majority of their money still comes from TV shows and their cable networks.

AMC has proven that even a small investment can have huge returns.

And yet Discovery and A&E, each have three times the total viewership in 2014 as AMC networks (e.g. some numbers found here, with more in depth around but not as easy to find online). The top network companies by viewership are: Viacom, TW, NBC, Discovery, and A&E.

The problem faced by Discovery and A&E are the same faced by pretty much all cable networks at the moment, that all of the big ones are losing viewership, between more minor options being available and people going to the internet more. Discovery and A&E channels are some of the more successful ones, and will remain parts of lower level cable tiers for some time, especially considering some of their reality shows are the highest watched ones on cable TV. Some network groups are running into issues with their secondary spin-off channels, but still have a couple solid channels and can reshuffle stuff to keep them going.

The distribution system isn't as much about shipping physical items as much as it is about marketing the films to a certain audience, making sure people know about them and then placing them in media that are appropriate for them to find them, obtaining a price that's attractive and then collecting the money. The territories are defined by these factor and there are barriers to entry between them apart from mere shipping.

Even if this weren't the case, as a practical matter the "new" distribution model just isn't ready for prime time and simply can't offer the same deal that the traditional one does. An independent drama film with a big star that's shot well can cost $30 million, if you go to foreign distributors and offer them the rights they can get $10 million or more up front, before they've even made the film, just for the sale of the rights. Can internet distribution offer a producer $10 million in pre-sales? That's a hell of a Kickstarter.

Even the shows that Netflix produces, they don't pay for everything. They paid a $100 million fee for House of Cards for the first 26 episodes and that STILL wasn't enough to cover the costs, that's part of the reason why MRC still has to sell foreign territories. HoC's episodes easily cost more than $6 million, and that's not out of line for a HBO-level drama; the show easily costs over $50 million per 13 episode season. Orange costs slightly less but still over $40 mil a season.

Netflix doesn't talk much about this because the fact is nobody can figure out if they're actually making money on it, it's a huge bet going forward that they can make it work. The Interview distribution was a freak thing but it really didn't make as much money as that film should have the first week, the producers and distributors aren't going to torch the system they have if the system they have makes them more money, and this situation will probably persist for at least another 5 years.

We know there's definitely some money getting made in new distribution modes, from Netflix to file sharing, Kim Dotcom is fucking rich! But very little of this money seems to find its way back to the people that actually pay to make a product, the people that run aggregating sites and ISPs slurp up all the revenue. Think about it: you pay $20-$40 or more a month for Internet service, and exactly 0% of that goes to pay for the things you actually read or see on the Internet.

Still in talks. Non story, unless you want all news to be final, and that anything not reported will never happen.

https://variety.com/2014/digit...

'It's desperately unfunny': More leaked emails reveal Sony executives thought North Korea movie would flop

'The unanimous point of view here is that this (is) another misfire from the pairing,' said an e-mail purportedly written by Peter Taylor, of Sony Pictures UK.

from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

...should feel like a kind of terror attack to any audience with a limited tolerance for anal penetration jokes. Extreme devotees of stars James Franco and Seth Rogen (who also co-directed with Evan Goldberg) may give this Christmas offering a pass, but all others be advised: An evening of cinematic waterboarding awaits.

from http://variety.com/2014/film/r...

Yes, it sucks for Sony...

Yes, it sucks to be an employee (or ex-employee) of Sony too. Or a member of their families.

From the article in Variety

Many things beyond imagination will happen at many places of the world. Our agents find themselves act in necessary places. Please sign your name to object the false of the company at the email address below if you don’t want to suffer damage. If you don’t, not only you but your family will be in danger.

Perhaps you didn't realize the full implications of the breach? Or maybe it's just creative and funny to be threatened just because you worked for Sony at one time.

I didn't find a copy and this article says it isn't available:
https://variety.com/2014/digit...

Yeah... Although I have not gone to movies in the last 7 years or so (since renovating a house with home theater in it), I was thinking of going to see this one just to stick to those assholes ("Guardians of Peace").

I was just deliberating with myself, whether I am, perhaps, falling for a sneaky marketing ploy, but now Sony officially pulled the movie release making the answer easy and the question moot.

I don't know who actually is behind this attack, but I'm starting to applaud them.

You might want to hold your applause.

I saw the previews months ago for that movie and thought to myself "That looks stupid." but now I'm going to go see it anyway. You should really encourage all of your friends to do the same. Blackmail resulting in self-censorship is not something that needs to be encouraged.

Oh, I don't know... the whole Take down the movie that threatens our beloved leader or we release all your data! threat kind of gave it away for me...

http://variety.com/2014/film/n...

How do fucking morons get mod-points?
http://variety.com/2014/film/n...

Is there any question who did this at all?

I don't mind analytics in general, but don't assume that they will help rescue your favorite show by proving that there is a big following. Managers will just slice and dice the analytics until it "proves" that the show doesn't have a big enough viewership to continue.

Even worse, it doesn't matter if 10,000,000 watch a show.

The Neilson numbers come in several forms. The ones you see daily are called "Live and Same Day" (L+SD), which counts views that watched the show live and within 24 hours of airing. Other numbers you can easily find are Live+3 days (L+3) and Live+7 (L+7).

But none of those numbers are actually used by anyone. That's why Neilson gives them out for free. No one's paying for that information, nor will they ever. And that's not where they make their money.

The real money is in the C3 number, or if you're CBS, you convinced advertisers to take C7 numbers. What are these? They're commercial ratings (for programming watched live to 3 days later). Basically you take the L3/L7 numbers, strip out the numbers while the program is showing, and you're left with just the numbers related to the advertising. And that's the number that makes Neilson money and the number stations pay money for. And yes, you skip ads on your DVR, which pull down those C3 numbers because it lowers the viewers for the advertising.

And that's because the largest source of income is advertising. Sure they get some through cable fees and Hulu and iTunes/Amazon/DVD etc. sales, but that's a tiny fraction of advertising.

CBS managed this season to convince advertisers to pay the C7 rate rather than C3, because well, it more accurately reflects today's lifestyle of people who record a show and watch it later in the week.

And that's all that matters. It doesn't matter if you can find 100,000,000 people to watch a show - if it's not reflected in those 100,000,000 people watching the ads.

It also brings up cord cutters who prefer to download their TV programming from torrents and such - as far as the industry is concerned, they don't care because those people don't add to advertising ratings.

Even under the new system - the new system just means that Neilson can more accurately measure their ratings, but if you're not watching the ads, it means jack squat to the producers.

So that super popular show people pirate? Guess what, the TV industry really doesn't care - you never were a "customer" and it doesn't matter if only 1M people watched it on TV while 100M people watched it off torrents - if those 1M people can't justify the ad rates and production costs, it's getting canned. The 100M other people? Too f'in bad - if it was that good, they should've watched it with ads.

If you ever wondered why worrying over TV piracy has subsided, that's one reason (who cares about pirates - they obviously don't care about their TV show), the other is they've found legal streaming to be even better. Because if they put a stream online to watch programming, they can make it such that you can't skip ads, and that's actually worth something - enough to pay for the effort of putting an online stream up. So you beat both DVR owners and appear as a hero for making a legal source available.

Bonus material - 2014-2015 TV season ad rates (30 second spot). This is what brings in the money.
http://variety.com/2014/tv/new...

Netflix offers 4k for streaming for Breaking bad, Ghostbusters, and Smurfs 2. Who bought their 4K TV to watch SMURFS 2?!?!?!?!
http://variety.com/2014/digita...

Fair enough. Some interesting material I came-up with while searching on this topic:
1) In 2013, Comcast proposed a system where Comcast does the monitoring:
http://variety.com/2013/digita...
2) Comcast actually stood up for it's users against a copyright troll.
https://torrentfreak.com/comca...

From http://variety.com/2014/digita...:

Starting Saturday, July 12, the entire “South Park” library — 244 episodes in all — will be available for free on Hulu, and will continue to be free on SouthPark.cc.com (the address that is replacing SouthParkStudios.com) until Sept. 24. At that point, both Hulu and SouthPark.cc.com will have day-after-air access to new episodes from season 18. In addition, each of the sites will offer a revolving selection of 30 free episodes at any given time.

It sounds like they will not require Hulu plus until Sept 24, after that you will only get a "revolving selection of 30 free episodes" if you are not a member of Hulu Plus.

----

It's a shame really. I refuse to pay for Hulu Plus because of the obnoxious ads. I don't have cable for a reason, and that reason is I have a problem paying monthly for something and still being bombarded by advertisements.

For me I'll probably just stop watching South Park. Not that I would really watch it with any regularity, but it was nice to every once and a while pop over to their site and watch it free (but ad supported).

Well, according to Variety it is:

YouTube is expected to generate about $5.6 billion in gross advertising revenue worldwide this year, according to a report from research firm eMarketer — an estimate considerably higher than previous Wall Street forecasts.

Google doesn’t break out financial results of YouTube, the Internet’s No. 1 video destination by a wide margin. The eMarketer analysis, based on data points gathered from multiple research reports, tops previous projections for 2013 from firms including Jefferies & Co.’s $4.5 billion and Barclays Capital’s $3.6 billion.

YouTube will net $1.96 billion in ad revenue, up 66% from 2012, after paying content and ad partners, according to eMarketer. YouTube’s projected $1.1 billion in U.S. net revenue would represent 6.3% of all of Google’s net ad revenues for the year, the firm estimated.

About 79% of YouTube’s U.S. ad revenue is from video advertising, with an estimated $850 million in for the year. That would give it a 20.5% share of the overall $4.15 billion U.S. video ad market. In 2014, eMarketer estimates YouTube video-ad revenue to hit $1.22 billion taking a 21.1% share.

To analyze YouTube revenue, eMarketer said it developed forecasting models based on third-party research on its ad revenue, ad impressions, rates, usage, partner fees and other figures.

While YouTube's preference is VP9, [YouTube's Francisco ] Varela left open the possibility that the site might use HEVC in the future. ''We are not announcing that we will not support HEVC,'' said Varela, adding that YouTube supports 17 different codecs currently.

According to YouTube, the first partner TVs and other devices that incorporate VP9 will start hitting the market in 2015. In 2014, YouTube will start transcoding HD video into VP9.

YouTube's Ultra HD Strategy Could Spark Battle Over 4K Video-Delivery Tech

I am not convinced that the transcode to YouTube will be enough to derail HEVC.

On May 9, 2013, NHK and Mitsubishi Electric announced that they had jointly developed the first HEVC encoder for 8K Ultra HD TV, which is also called Super Hi-Vision (SHV). The HEVC encoder supports the Main 10 profile at Level 6.1 allowing it to encode 10-bit video with a resolution of 7680x4320 at 60 fps.

On October 16, 2013, the OpenHEVC decoder was added to FFmpeg.

On October 29, 2013, Elemental Technologies announced support for real-time 4K HEVC video processing. Elemental provided live video streaming of the 2013 Osaka Marathon on October 27, 2013, in a workflow designed by K-Opticom, a telecommunications operator in Japan. Live coverage of the race in 4K HEVC was available to viewers at the International Exhibition Center in Osaka. This transmission of 4K HEVC video in real-time was an industry-first.

On November 14, 2013, DivX developers released information on HEVC decoding performance using an Intel i7 CPU at 3.5 GHz which had 4 cores and 8 threads. The DivX 10.1 Beta decoder was capable of 210.9 fps at 720p, 101.5 fps at 1080p, and 29.6 fps at 4K.

High Efficiency Video Coding

An inbuilt HEVC decoder is not entirely new of course, as LG's LA970 series of UHDTVs released last year also offered the same feature. However, the company's latest 4K Ultra HD TVs due to be unveiled at CES 2014 will use a ViXS XCode 6400 SoC (system on chip) that can decode HEVC-based content at 3840x2160 resolution with support for 60p frame rate and 10-bit colour depth, a world's first.

LG's 2014 4K TV Models Gets HDMI 2.0 & 10-Bit HEVC/H.265 Decoder [Jan 3]

"That just means people who don't watch FNC have better things to do with their time."

No, what it means is that more people are watching Fox News than MSNBC, CNN, and HLN combined.

A fun fact for today: the "fiscal cliff" bill passed the other day includes a tax break for Hollywood movies and TV shows, $20 million per episode or per movie. Despite the fact that 2012 was the best ever year for movies

I'm anti-piracy, I'm one of those weirdos who thinks artists deserve to get money for what they produce,

I wouldn't say I'm anti-piracy per se, but I have been known to download cracked things on a trial basis, if I decide to keep I show my support and purchase, if not I delete all relevant files and never look back. I'm also all for artists getting paid, but what you fail to realize is how little artist actually receive.

Citation: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118049716

So by this formula, it would appear that piracy does indeed affect the artist, but more-so affects the label. I've no problem with a label not getting paid.

I am told there will also be a new Metropolis movie. Maybe the'd join their efforts.

It's beating DVD's adoption rate when it was new, and current sales as well...and doing so with Netflix competing, during a recession.

http://n4g.com/news/255491/blu-rays-first-two-years-outpaces-dvds

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118029765

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=6399

That's just the way they roll at Variety. They're famous for having their own slang and abbreviations they use in their headlines and stories. The most commonly cited reference is the headline "Hicks nix stix pics," which means that movie viewers in the mid-west don't go to movies set in the mid-west. They even keep a glossary on their website.

The main factor I'm aware of in the migration away from Final Cut systems is lack of support (they've pretty much stopped updating it) and cost of maintenance/storage.

Compared to the update schedule and cost structures of, say, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut is still pretty formidable, but that's the market they seem to think about now, large production houses, feature films and HD television shops that want RED workflows. I notice that the winner of the Eddie on Saturday, The Social Network was an FCP show, as was True Grit; Fincher and the Coen's have been using the platform for years and it generally takes about a decade of a vendor screwing up before people like this starting looking for a new platform. (I think Avid was on Media Composer 4 for like, what, 8 years?

There really is no problem with FCP workflows at this point, you just have to pay. And as long as Premiere doesn't have Avid's negative matchback or Final Cut's color tools and particular RED workflow features, that's probably where it's going to stay.

Or maybe I'm a gamer that pays attention to the industry:

"The leader in digital sales, according to NPD, is Valve Software's Steam...the service hosts and sells more than 1,100 titles and has more than 25 million active user accounts."

That sounds like a stable company to me (barring any Enron-style scandal, of course.)

Kevin Bacon visited the CIA in 2008!

I'll be in the corner fashioning my tinfoil hat, now.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1

I'm hearing that there are already calls to increase the frame rate to at least 30 fps for digital 3-D because certain camera moves, especially pans, look jumpy in 3-D. I saw that in the Imax 3-D "Beowulf." You've been an advocate for both 3-D and higher frame rates. Have you seen the problem and do you have any thoughts on it?

For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate. When we see the same thing in 3-D, it stands out more, not because it is intrinsically worse, but because all other things have gotten better. Suddenly the image looks so real it's like you're standing there in the room with the characters, but when the camera pans, there is this strange motion artifact. It's like you never saw it before, when in fact it's been hiding in plain sight the whole time. Some people call it judder, others strobing. I call it annoying. It's also easily fixed, because the stereo renaissance is enabled by digital cinema, and digital cinema supplies the answer to the strobing problem.

The DLP chip in our current generation of digital projectors can currently run up to 144 frames per second, and they are still being improved. The maximum data rate currently supports stereo at 24 frames per second or 2-D at 48 frames per second. So right now, today, we could be shooting 2-D movies at 48 frames and running them at that speed. This alone would make 2-D movies look astonishingly clear and sharp, at very little extra cost, with equipment that's already installed or being installed.

Increasing the data-handling capacity of the projectors and servers is not a big deal, if there is demand. I've run tests on 48 frame per second stereo and it is stunning. The cameras can do it, the projectors can (with a small modification) do it. So why aren't we doing it, as an industry?

Because people have been asking the wrong question for years. They have been so focused on resolution, and counting pixels and lines, that they have forgotten about frame rate. Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second ... with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won't. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don't solve them at all.

If every single digital theater was perceived by the audience as being equivalent to Imax or Showscan in image quality, which is readily achievable with off-the-shelf technology now, running at higher frame rates, then isn't that the same kind of marketing hook as 3-D itself? Something you can't get at home. An aspect of the film that you can't pirate.

Other than that, for digital 3-D, would you rather see energy going into moving from 2K to 4K, or into moving from 24 fps to 48 or 72 fps, and why?

4K is a concept born in fear. When the studios were looking at converting to digital cinemas, they were afraid of change, and searched for reasons not to do it. One reason they hit upon was that if people were buying HD monitors for the home, with 1080x1920 resolution, and that was virtually the same as the 2K standard being proposed, then why would people go to the cinema? Which ignores the fact that the social situation is entirely different, and that the cinema screen is 100 times larger in area. So they somehow hit on 4K, which people should remember is not twice the amount of picture data, it is four times the data. Meaning servers need to be four times the capacity, as does the delivery pipe to the theater, etc.

But 4K doesn't solve the curse of 24 frames per second. In fact it tends to stand in the way of the solutions to that more fundamental problem. The NBA e

"According to Variety, Whedon will also rewrite the script for "The Avengers"

Also, Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans were shot in 2D and then post processed to give them the illusion of being in 3d...and the effect is shit.

Yeah, I've been enjoying all the talk about 3D being the future default in which all movies will be filmed. We all saw a $300 million movie implement it very well now I want to see the one hundred $3 million movies implement it at appropriate budget cost before I make my decision. I also learned that my local theater has taken to increased prices for 3D movies ... after inquiring as to why this is they couldn't really produce a good explanation. I offered to bring my own glasses ... I pointed out that it took the same amount of energy for them to display either mode. And Alice was filmed in 2D and just post processed ... so why do I have to pay 60% more for my ticket?

If that's the way things are going, I predict the death of 3D.

When Showscan (which, after a 2002 bankruptcy and acquisition, now just does ride films) was developed, they did blind tests in theaters to find out how fast the frame rate had to be before people couldn't detect any improvement. The threshold turned out to be in the 75-100 FPS range. "Peak emotional involvement" was around 72 FPS. Commercially, Showscan used 60FPS film, which was a compromise between indetectability and projector wear.

James Cameron, the director, talks about FPS in Variety. He knows 24FPS is too slow, and wants to get to at least 48. "Maybe on Avatar 2", he says. He points out that the NBA did the All-Star game at 60FPS (transmitted to theaters) and that was very well received. He points out that doubling theater resolution doesn't do much (only the first few rows are close enough to the screen to see the extra pixels) but increasing the frame rate is noticeable to everyone in the theater. With digital 3D, 24FPS strobing is now the weak point for the quality of the experience.

Cameron: "If every single digital theater was perceived by the audience as being equivalent to Imax or Showscan in image quality, which is readily achievable with off-the-shelf technology now, running at higher frame rates, then isn't that the same kind of marketing hook as 3-D itself? Something you can't get at home. An aspect of the film that you can't pirate."

With Cameron pushing for higher frame rates, it's going to happen. He'll figure out a way to use it, too; with high enough frame rates you can have fast, clean pans without strobing or blurring.

On a slightly related funny note, people really bitch about everything:

"Civilization IV: Colonization Called 'Morally Disturbing'"

I literally exclaimed "holy sh*t" out loud when I was reading an e-mail this morning listing the "Games for Windows" coming out this year and I came across this:

“Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization” (2K Games). In “Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization,” players lead one of four European nations on a quest to conquer and rule the New World."

But goddamit, am I the only one who think it's morally disturbing to make a game that celebrates COLONIZATION? It's ironic, actually, because just a few months ago a friend sent me a link to some information about the original "Colonization" game from 1994 (pictured left) that this one updates. At first, I thought it had to be a joke, but sure enough, it was real. However, I dismissed it as a relic from a time when neither developers nor players took videogames seriously as media with moral implications.

But the idea that 2K and Firaxis and Sid Meier himself would make and release a game in the year 2008 that is not only about colonization, but celebrates it by having the player control the people doing the colonizing is truly mind boggling.

Remember all the debate when Newsweek's N'Gai Croal said of the "Resident Evil 5" trailer with the African zombies that "Even if you are familiar with the franchise, if you are familiar with those images and their historical weight, you look at it and say, 'Man, that’s kind of messed up.'" Well, I agreed with N'Gai on that issue, but in my opinion, a game about colonization is about 100 times more messed up. "Throughout history, colonization regularly involved stealing, killing, abuse, deceit, and the exploitation or decimation of native people," he added. "Anybody with a shred of moral conscience who studies the history will be appalled. Whether it was British rule in India or slavery in Africa or Aboriginal children kidnapped and taken to Christian schools in Australia or the dislocation of Native Americans in the U.S., there were no positive colonization experiences."

Fritz said he's not calling for a ban on the game, emphasizing that 2K has every right to release it for sale. "But I think personally they shouldn't release it, if it's at all what it appears to be based on the early marketing," he continued. "And I'm hoping a lot of people agree with me and will say so publicly."

That's pretty ridiculous. Imagine if he knew there were nuclear weapons and slaves in Civ 4.

Actually, The Stars My Destination (Tiger Tiger) has had the movie rights recently purchased. I'm frightened that it will almost certainly fail to live up to the book... but one can always hope for some goodness from it. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117940125.html?categoryid=13&cs=1(variety.com)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783588/Here's the imdb link but it's locked to Pro only... It used to say 2010... now it says 2012. Guess Jumper sort of messed up the jaunting storyline.

According to the Variety article, it's being produced by http://www.variety.com/profiles/people/main/47298/Lorenzo%20di%20Bonaventura.html?dataSet=1Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Variety) who brought us Doom, Transformers (1 and soon 2), and GI Joe... so it might have enough special effects to look cool at least.

Actually, The Stars My Destination (Tiger Tiger) has had the movie rights recently purchased. I'm frightened that it will almost certainly fail to live up to the book... but one can always hope for some goodness from it. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117940125.html?categoryid=13&cs=1(variety.com)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783588/Here's the imdb link but it's locked to Pro only... It used to say 2010... now it says 2012. Guess Jumper sort of messed up the jaunting storyline.

According to the Variety article, it's being produced by http://www.variety.com/profiles/people/main/47298/Lorenzo%20di%20Bonaventura.html?dataSet=1Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Variety) who brought us Doom, Transformers (1 and soon 2), and GI Joe... so it might have enough special effects to look cool at least.

The incestuous relationship is even weirder than one can imagine. Last year the Chief of the office of the Minister of Culture - the one ran by Christine Albanel no less, the Minister who is passing this hadopi law - was found dead in the appartment of the chief of TF1 international after having consumed a coctail of cocaine and ghb - known as a rape drug according to reports.

• The story in English by Variety.com
• In the French online paper LePost
• In the well known magazine LePoint