Lack of Digital Screens for Attack of the Clones

spt writes: "CNN Entertainment has an article describing Lucas Arts' disappointment at the lack of digital screens available for Attack of the Clones. When the Phantom Menace was released, they were hoping that, by May 2002, there would be 2000 digital screens. That estimate dropped to 'several hundred', but the reality is that now there are only 20 digital screen in the U.S. Who has been lucky enough to see a digitally produced film in one of these 20? Is there enough of a benefit to think that more screens will be converted to digital projection?"

Comments

20 theaters?

[frankmu]

is there a list of these theaters? I know there won't be one near me anytime soon.

Re:20 theaters?

[ocelotbob]

This has nothing to do with the MPAA and everything to do with poorly run theater chains. First off, it's illegal for a film company to own their own theater chain. Second off, the theater chains are in trouble because, like many companies in the dot com boom, they expanded way too fast and profits failed to expand as rapidly. As a result, many of these chains filed for the various bankruptcy protections/liquidations and are struggling. Thus, they can't afford the expensive digital projection equipment. IMax, on the other hand, is expanding slowly, and only when they're fairly certain they can make a profit. Thus, they've got good quality and a good bank account.

Re:20 theaters?

[adpowers]

I am not sure, but I have heard the Cinerama in Seattle has a digital projector. It was remodeled a few years ago by Paul Allen (of Microsoft) and has awesome sound and video systems. It supports Cinerama format, possibly digital, and possibly 70 mm. It also has a huge Cinerama screen, but I have never seen it.
Andrew

Re:20 theaters?

[spongman]

it's easily the best theatre (in terms of audio/visual quality) that I've been to. well worth checking out if you get the chance.

i happen to like front-row center on the upper level.

Re:20 theaters?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pity they can't just clone the digital screens :)

Re:20 theaters?

[ErikTheRed]

I know that the AMC Mission Valley 20 Theater in San Diego has a Texas Instruments-based DLP projector. They've most recent shown Monsters, Inc. and Ocean's Eleven in digital format.

Re:20 theaters?

[mcfiddish]

It's a pity they can't just clone the digital screens :)

Wouldn't that violate the DMCA?

Re:20 theaters?

[lumpenprole]

This is mostly true, but as somebody who was on the ass-end of this crap as a projector monkey, I feel like I have to point some things out.

It may be illegal for production companies to own theater chains, but it happens all the time. I spent 2 years of hell managing a Sony theater, who owned 3 production companies at the time.(though they've sold 2 since then, I think). And everything bad you could think of happening in a monoply situation happens in chain theatres. We commonly held over movies that did no box office at all for ridiculous amounts of time, so they could shrink their losses on the production end.

I was also friends with the people who owned the 2 independant theatres in my little town (both gone now, I'm sad to say) and they were squeezed out of getting any big films as a matter of course. One theater owner (actually 2 sisters) had won a court case against a big Hollywood distributer over it in the 80's. But after about 5 years it went back to business as usual, and who the hell has the time and money to be in court all the time when you're trying to save a small business.

And let me also mention that theater chains were going out of business regularly well before the dot-boom. Some geniuses figured out that they could buy in, squeeze like a sonofabitch and sell out really quick. Usually it was about 2 of these executive switchovers before the company would claim chapter 11. These guys laid the groundwork for modern executive practice (Enron, anybody?)

Okay, enough ranting.

Re:20 theaters?

[mshomphe]

First off, it's illegal for a film company to own their own theater chain.

What about Sony? Or Universal?

Digital?

[killa-b(a was taken)]

i dont understand what this digital screen is, but when it comes down to it unless its a full lcd there will always been a dac somewhere, i mean let face it in the theater, the biggest problem is the loss of quality whehn the light hits the air, full of dust, and popcorn. perhaps im wrong, any ideas?

Re:Digital?

[Jethro]

I think it's more the projector is digital, using digital media, rather than good ol' film. Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were filmed in full digital.

Re:Digital?

[p7]

I seem to remember that it is a digital projector. While it would be cool to have a digital video wall, I bet it would get damaged quickly by flying toast and wet gummy bears thrown at the screen.

Re:Digital?

[gamgee5273]

Nope - TPM wasn't fully digital. For the digital screens out there Lucas provided a digital copy. I believe the first fully digital flick was Spike Lee's Bamboozled.

What's the advantage?

[-tji]

I know there are advantages for the film producer in doing all digital. Editing, and special effects are easier in an all digital medium.

Digital may also (theoretically) solve distribution problems, allowing them to download the films to the theaters, rather than shipping the physical films around.

But, what is the benefit to the theater or the viewer?

I believe that Lucas is doing Star Wars in 1080p24 (1080 lines, progressive scanned at 24 frames per second). A good 35mm film will offer much better resolution than that.

Wouldn't a better option for quality be 70mm, like Imax uses. Or, even cranking up the frame rate.. how about a 60fps film. The motion blur at 24fps is horrible.

Re:What's the advantage?

[jman sr]

here is some information about the digital projection the force.net
josh

Re:What's the advantage?

[Chris_Pugrud]

I left theatres about 10 years ago, and at that point, "projectionists" were just overworked "managers". I really enjoyed seeing most movies before poeple were awake, but I was just a sucker...

Chris

Re:What's the advantage?

[steveha]

what is the benefit to the theater or the viewer?

The main benefit to the viewer is that you will see the same movie on opening night, and four weeks later. Currently, film prints can get scratched; they can break and get (possibly poorly) patched; and you can often see a visual glitch when one reel of film finishes and another reel starts up. The problems with film can get worse, much worse, if you have an idiot or a klutz as a projectionist, or if the movie house is really cheap and doesn't take proper care of the film and/or the projection equipment.

The number one fear I have about digital is that a projector might get one or more stuck pixels, and then there will be wrong pixels in the same places for the whole movie. So we are getting rid of all the little annoying errors that accrete over time with film, but possibly gaining annoying errors that last all movie (not changing until the projector is repaired!).

Another thing: this is the wild-and-wooly early days of digital projection. We will no doubt go through several rounds of standards changes and upgrades. (I haven't seen 1920x1200 on a big screen--maybe it's really gorgous--but it is hard for me to imagine that this level of quality will still be in use 20 years from now.) So the theater owners may invest in expensive projectors, and then find that they have to buy newer and even more expensive projectors to keep up.

One benefit to theater owners, however: they won't have to pay as much for the actual distribution media the film comes on. If they have multiple theaters that want to show the film, currently they need multiple prints. With digital, I don't know for sure how they will do it, but I imagine they will ship out the movie on magnetic tape, and load up one or more RAID arrays at the theater to drive the projectors. (Anyone who knows for sure, please speak up.)

steveha

Re:What's the advantage?

[davros74]

I never thought film quality was much of an issue in a theater, or projector condition for that matter, until I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on opening night. 1 hour into the movie, the film slipped its track, went out of focus, made some bad noises, then stuck to the hot lens and melted in front of all our eyes (yellow-orange-blach spots, then nothing but white screen). They spliced the movie back together and in 15 minutes we were watching it again.

Weeks later a friend of mine went to same theater, and noticed the 30 second gap in the movie from the splice. That was their only copy, forever ruined since opening night. Ugh. I'll stick with DVD on my own setup if that's what $8 a ticket gets me.

Re:What's the advantage?

[Paul Komarek]

In a way, you're pretty lucky. I don't think many of us get to see that sort of thing. It's probably a rare event!

-Paul Komarek

Re:What's the advantage?

[Gumshoe]

The idea of having 60fps instead of the usual 24fps already has a solution - although it settles for 48 rather than 60.

I won't go into too much detail as there's a perfectly good explanation here.

Re:What's the advantage?

[Yelskwah]

I am a projectionist.

A 35mm print will offer much greater resolution than 1080 lines, although it is still projected at 24fps. I believe the figure is something of the order of approximately 4000x3000 grains per frame; although that depends on the print stock.

You have to look after prints very carefully if they are to remain pristine. Guidelines from Eastman/Kodak and Agfa call for positive pressure in the projection gallery to minimize dust, as well as gloves etc. Prints have been arriving on a new film stock which, although sturdier than original stock, develops a high static charge (I get zapped 3-ish times a night) and attracts dust like you _would_not_believe_. The new stock cannot be spliced with film glue because it does not 'take' - you must use tape or splicing film. This means the reel changes (every 20-odd minutes as a rule) are less smooth; you'll see a jump as the splice goes through the gate, and the dolby digital reader might switch out of digital and you'll get a second or so of analogue fall-back. The DTS reader is much better, and will free-wheel for a few seconds before falling back to analogue (it's only reading timecode from the print, not the whole digital frame, like SRD).

If the cinema is using a platter system, the reels of film lie flat, and can be projected a second time without rewinding. Rewinding places a high stress on the film. Starting a rewind must be done delicately because the 'pull' from the take-up reel can stretch the film and produce green burn marks.

If, like us, you have a horizontal reel system, apart from the strain on the projectionist (having to lift huge reels of 2.5 miles of film to eye level ;-), then the films have to be rewound. Given the extreme turnaround times (often 10 minutes between films) and the average rewinding time (8-12 minutes) you can see that there is a lot of pressure to get the show started. Often we're showing you the advert reel while the feature is still rewinding; then doing a quick threading between adverts and film. Multiply this by the number of theaters and you quickly have organised mayhem. It's easy to make a threading error, which can lead to scratches on the print, burn marks, the print can jump out of the film path, or become skew in the gate (nice row of dots down the print).

It's not uncommon to have three or for un-rewound films around the gallery when the system descends into chaos :-)

If you have a new 35mm print, good sound and good masking, the quality can be absolutely superb. Of course, digital projection will remove a lot of the variables involved in projection, so you should at least get a concistent experience.

Re:What's the advantage?

[thing12]

Are you really sure about Fight Club? There are many points in the movie where the film is spliced or made to look like the film is offtrack. I guess what I'm asking is have you since then seen the dvd and seen all the same splices you saw in the theater?

Re:What's the advantage?

[duffbeer703]

I remember reading a couple of years back that the theatres were going to use ISDN lines to initiate transfer movies from the studio. (A process that would take some time)

I also recall the author of the article that any cost advantage of digital over film was eliminated by the massive fees the studios were charging.

Re:What's the advantage?

[Hard_Code]

Wow seems like a huge waste of time and complexity. This stuff is just crying for broadband streaming (or hell, even local "streaming" which I suppose is what the new digital format is all about).

By the way, do you get to splice pornographic images into cartoons? <quagmire>Ooooh yeah!</quagmire>

Re:What's the advantage?

[thing12]

Nope, there's at least 1 time near the end where the film 'melts'.

Re:What's the advantage?

[mpe]

I never thought film quality was much of an issue in a theater, or projector condition for that matter, until I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on opening night. 1 hour into the movie, the film slipped its track, went out of focus, made some bad noises, then stuck to the hot lens and melted in front of all our eyes (yellow-orange-blach spots, then nothing but white screen). They spliced the movie back together and in 15 minutes we were watching it again.

Since it was the first run they quite possibly messed up the splicing in the first place. The best I have seen is where one piece of film was spliced in backwards.

Re:What's the advantage?

[mpe]

Excuse my cynicism, but I find it difficult to believe that the distributors would take this opportunity to lower prices. Whilst their costs will drop, they will sell this in terms of it requiring less skills for the projectionist, and offering better quality to the audience through lack of degradation.

Either they will keep prices the same and make more profit. Or even push the new technology as being somehow "better" and thus rake in more money.

Re:What's the advantage?

[/dev/niall]

It happened to me once when I was a teenager. My friends and I were seeing "Air America". When it melted on-screen there was applause from the audience.

Re:What's the advantage?

[ChrisCampbell47]

This is the wild-and-wooly early days of digital projection. We will no doubt go through several rounds of standards changes and upgrades. I haven't seen 1920x1200 on a big screen--maybe it's really gorgous--but it is hard for me to imagine that this level of quality will still be in use 20 years from now.

I have three numbers for you, my friend:

• 44.1 kHz
• 16 bit
• 12 cm

All part of the CD digital audio standard defined in March 1980, 22 years ago. Audiophiles have been cringing ever since.

I'm just pointing out that standards often become very well entrenched and do not evolve. So whatever technology the market gathers around this year may define what we have to look at for many years (if not decades) to come.

Re:What's the advantage?

[abischof]

And that's where SACD comes into play, eh? (For those not aware, SACD uses a 4.7 GB disc -- but for standard-length albums -- yielding much higher audio quality than ordinary CDs)

Re:What's the advantage?

[guinsu]

A few weeks ago I went to see "In the Bedroom" (oh god, but I won't go into that). The film broke like 4 times and near the left top of the image was a shimmering area that was visible for the whole film where it looked like the film was getting really hot. I remember also seeing a print of "Sling Blade" melt and break so bad they canceled the movie.

Re:What's the advantage?

[denzo]

This reminds me of when I went to see Dungeons & Dragons. About midway through the movie (maybe it was more towards the end), all of a sudden things flip around. Took me a couple of seconds to figure out what happened, but then I realized that the film was upside down and playing backwards! Oops, someone messed up on the splice. ;) The characters were sitting upside-down on dragons that sucked in balls of flame, with people shouting "neaodfnorf... herodohorderf!".

It actually made the ticket worthwhile, since the movie (played correctly) sucked so bad.

Re:What's the advantage?

[zhensel]

"The motion blur at 24 fps is horrible."

I suppose that might be the case if you really want to get a single frame from a fast-moving scene and use it for something, but if you're watching the movie you won't notice it. 24fps in a movie does not equal 24fps in a video game BECAUSE of that motion blur, not despite it.

As for the resolution of 35mm film, I've heard kodak research that says it's equivilent to a few million pixels - easily reachable by today's standards. Digital technology easily equals film today (look at the use of digital cameras for star wars 2) and will far surpass it in the near future. There is the complaint that the loss of film grain hardens the image, but like any analog effect, it can be added in the digital process if you so desire (just as solid-state amplifiers could technically sound like tube amps with the right signal processing).

There are also way more advantages beyond the physical distribution aspect. First, as has been mentioned, no film decay. Second, far fewer mechanical errors, film catching on fire in the reel, etc. Third, the reels no longer have to be spliced together and broken down every time a film arrives or has to be shipped back to the distributor. Fourth, though this could be viewed with some controversy, it gives studios more control over the material shown before the film, since the digital tape (or whatever storage format they use) won't be easily modified. Presentation houses could stick their own material up front, but they'd probably be stuck with whatever the studio chooses between the end of that material and the beginning of the feature. Lastly (though there are benefits beyond those I've listed), it does open the possibility for online distribution, but this really isn't much of a concern and would carry quite a bit of cost. The traditional physical distribution system already exists... just replace the canisters with digital tapes for now and forget about upgrading to online distribution for awhile.

There are disadvantages - mainly the expense of converting to the process. These are, however, outweighed (from a business standpoint anyway) by the cost savings of using the digital process. You no longer have to pay employees to pull all nighters on Thursday when the new films arrive and the old ones go out. Hell, you probably don't even have to test screen the new films before showing them (with the low cost of digital media, distributors could send 'back-up' tapes in case of a shoddy copy).

So essentially, the benefit to all involved is infinite. The only problem for me as a movie watcher is that I might get an even higher influx of ads before the film, but unlike most of the wide-eyed folks in the theater today I don't pay attention to them anyway and just go on conversing with my friends. Somehow it seems that the trend of advertisements before films wouldn't have been stemmed any by sticking with the analog process either.

I would agree that digital processing is probably a bigger boon for the effects houses and editing professionals than the distributors and theaters, but it is an amazingly good choice for them. Oh, and I guess I left out the studios - don't think they'd want to miss out on this either with the dirt-simple conversion to DVD it would offer. No more storing old films and periodically restoring them, etc. Of course, most modern films are being stored in a high-definition digital format already, so this wouldn't change things much for them as it is.

The only thing I really fear from the digital revolution in cinema is the loss of the meticulous work of people like Joel and Ethan Coen who still are known to hand-edit their work. Luckily, you can convert celluloid to digital fairly easily. Not to mention that even they have been embracing digital technology (the coloring effects in 'O Brother, color filming -> black/white presentation in The Man Who Wasn't There - wait, scratch that, that was a chemical process).

Suffice to say though, there are far more benefits than eliminating the "horrible" motion blur (which really isn't even a problem at all).

Re:What's the advantage?

[Rogerborg]

• digital projection will remove a lot of the variables involved in projection,

Thanks for the superb and informative post. It's always fascinating to hear a skilled craftsman explain some of the hard work behind the magic.

I have to ask... aren't you a little concerned that one of the variables that might be removed is the projectionist? A little investment in a LAN and some remote control and viewing hardware and software, and one person could handle several screens at once, right? Or at least, it might look that way to a theatre chain looking for cost savings.

Re:What's the advantage?

[MadMorf]

...the film was upside down and playing backwards!

This hapened to me many years ago at the first screening of "Alien" in the Republic of Korea...

Somehow, the last reel was wound backwards...

When the third reel started (I think it was third..),
Ripley climbed out of a sleep pod, a huge
explosion coalessed into the Nostromo, and an
escape vehicle flew in reverse and docked...

Naturally, this made no sense, since the last
thing we had seen was Ripley starting to
initiate the self-destruct sequence...!

Re:What's the advantage?

[KelsoLundeen]

The "film projectionist" might be removed -- but I would think that he or she would be replaced by a "digital network specialist" (or whatever you want to call it).

And I'd bet (I don't know -- I'm just guessing) that ad-hoc servicing of the digital projectors is *much* more complex and time-intensive than whatever projectors currently exists in theaters.

So my question, I guess, is this: you remove the projectionist, but in his or her place, wouldn't have to bring a *team* of network people? Or digital projection people? Or both? And would this actually save any money?

I understand the allure of digital, and I'm curious about it: I'd love to see a digital film in a theater someday. But I guess I'm very unsure about how any of this new technology would appeal to movie theater owners -- all of whom are already under the gun and barely able to survive.

Didn't Lucas pull some sort of massive blackmail with the Phantom Menace -- all film receipts (concession sales, too?) for the first six months of the film go exclusively to Lucas? I remember something like that -- and I remember it being unprecedented -- mostly because (a) it seemed that Lucas was being venomously greedy and (b) it was predicated on the premise that the Phantom Menace would -- over six months -- continue, week after week, to show to sell-out audiences.

On a somewhat unrelated note: I just finished a book of interviews with John Cassavetes, the 60's and 70's "maverick" filmmaker who -- more or less - started the "indie" movement single-handedly. When he finally released 'A Woman Under the Influence' (arguably his best film) in 1975, he was forced to distribute it *himself* -- literally. No studio would touch it. Cassavetes (having made films like 'Faces' and 'Husbands') was (according to the studios) box-office poison.

So Cassavetes -- single-handedly -- arranged for prints to be struck of his film, publicity posters to be made, and theaters to be booked -- all on his own dime.

And he -- with a small crew -- sent the reels to the theaters. Now, if you've seen 'A Woman Under the Influence' you know that it's a difficult film -- difficult (for some) to watch, difficult (for some) to understand.

Oddly enough, this worked. Cassavetes managed to drum up enough word of mouth to (finally) get 'Woman' seen by the public. The public didn't much like it, but that's another story.

Anyway, my point with this way off-topic digression is this: I wonder if Lucas -- 30 years after Cassavetes -- needs to pull a Cassavetes to get his film shown the way he wants it to be shown. I wonder if Lucas needs to foot much of the bill himself and say damn-the-torpedoes to the studio-naysayers. But is he willing to do this? Is it even possible?

An interesting aside to the Cassavetes story: Cassavetes and one of his friends had a small apartment across from Mann's Theater. They used sit out on the fire escape and watch the crowds come and go from showing of 'A Woman Under the Influence.' And occasionally Cassavetes would climb down, cross the street, and ask being coming out of the film for their opinions.

I can't see Lucas being this hands-on. Can you imagine it? You leave your sticky-floor theater and are on the way out past the concession stands and there's Lucas. "Say, did you like it? Did you like my film?"

BTW -- if anyone is interested -- the book on Cassavetes is called 'Cassavetes on Cassavetes' by Ray Carney. Excellent book.

Re:What's the advantage?

[abischof]

Yes, that is correct.

Re:What's the advantage?

[Dirtside]

I saw it happen once. Last fall at the NuArt in Los Angeles, they were showing Blood Simple (the Coen Brothers' first film). About 2/3 of the way through, the film slipped off the guides and a big ol' hole melted through a few frames. It was kinda neat :) Took about 5 minutes and they had it up and running.

In 1996 I was working at the Mann Bruin theater in Westwood (near UCLA). We had "A Time To Kill" showing; the Saturday night it opened, I wasn't working, and I'm glad I wasn't: It slipped and burned about ten minutes before the end of the movie, and for some reason they couldn't splice it back together, so they had to give a free movie pass to every. Single. Person. In the theater. Suck.

Re:What's the advantage?

[n6mod]

Advantages are clear:

Satellite distribution to the theaters. Prints are expensive ($5k), heavy (had to be 100lbs including the cans, maybe more) and fragile. (ever notice how badly beat up a print gets after a while.

A good 35mm film may offer more resolution than 1920x1080, but not much. And 35mm movie stock is not what I'd call "good." look, a 35mm film frame is 24mm by 18mm. I just looked up the specs for 5399, which is a common print film. It's rated at 80 lines/mm at 1.6:1, or 200 lines/mm at 1000:1. So for low-contrast scenes, 35mm is 1920*1440, at maximum contrast, it's more like 4800x3600.

Now, that's the print film. This is the highest quality the studio could hope to distribute on 35mm film. But what about the camera film? Looking at 7239, it's only 40 lines/mm at 1.6:1 and 100 lines/mm at 1000:1. So now we're talking about between 960x720 (720p, anyone?) and 2400x1800. And even if you print from the original camera negative (which nobody ever does) you still lose some resolution in the optics.

So...1080p24 is "as good as" 35mm.

Yes, if you want higher quality, you have to go to 70mm or Imax (which are not the same thing, BTW). At IBC in '00, I remember seeing 1920x1080 at really high (72p?) frame rates being discussed as the new "uber-format" since it could be downsampled to both HD and film easily.

Re:What's the advantage?

[Sax Maniac]

Ah, good memories. I used to be a theater manager/projectionist while in college.

Folks, you have to complain to the theater management when this happens. Yes, management, not the kid who is scraping cardboard-flavored popcorn out of the bin.

If it's slightly out of frame, complain. If there are scratches on the film, complain. If it's out of focus, complain. If there's fuzz in the projector, complain. A real manager will gladly take the cue and go fix the problem. The last thing they want to do is watch every playing of every movie to check for flaws.

For example, if the picture seems slightly out of frame, it might be slipping the rollers a bit. It's a lot easier to tap the film back into track, then wait until it slips fully and breaks. Then it spews about 1000 feet of film on the floor in a big pile of black spaghetti. You have to stop the system, pick up the film off the floor, splice it, put it back on the platter, rethread the projector, and start up again. Guess which the projectionist would rather do?

Even worse, sometimes it will slip a roller and not break. That typically causes the entire film to get scratched- a giant veritcal slice from top to bottom. It's expensive to return the film and get a new one, but they'll never do it if they think you don't notice. I bet if you did notice one and alerted them, you'd at least get a free pass. I know I gave out lots.

When the theater gets a film from the distributor, it comes in five or six cannisters. Most modern projection facilities have a platter-based system, so the projectionist has to splice all the pieces together before showing it. The film sits on a giant six-foot platter which it is spooled off from. Of course, that means they should really "proof" their splices by watching the movie before opening night. (You quickly learn that you'll get burned if you don't. It's no fun to write out free passes to a packed theater.)

Compare with the older setups where you'd alternate between two different reels. In that case, you just mount the second reel on the second projector while the first is running. At the right time, you throw a switch to change projectors. That's what those little black/white dots in the corner of the screen are- a cue to the projectionist to get ready to change reels. (That's why the music never crosses through such a break.) Unfortunately, since each reel is about 1/2 hours long, it means you have to babysit the projectors a lot more.

Re:What's the advantage?

[ChrisCampbell47]

And that's where SACD comes into play

Along with 3 or 4 other attempts to extend the capabilities of the CD audio format, none of which have succeeded, or ever will, because the old 1980 standard is perceived as Good Enough for 99% of the population.

Re:What's the advantage?

[mosch]

Yes, I own a copy of both of the albums currently released on SACD, and they sound great!

Re:What's the advantage?

[Teancom]

Nice (and long!) post, short response: yes, the motion blur is horrible. Esp. if you sit anywhere close than the middle rows, the blur almost makes me sick. This is in reference mainly to action films (which, oddly enough, are the main ones I go see). Watching LOTR in the second row, it was a bad thing. Note that this isn't subject to debate: as "horrible" is subjective. Maybe for you it isn't, but when I can watch a movie and have it look as good as it does on my 32" tv w/dvd, I'll shout for joy. Literally. The only reason I go to the theatre is for the scope, and when I just can't wait 6 months for the dvd (like LOTR, for example). Oh, and sometimes the sound is decent, too.

Re:What's the advantage?

[zhensel]

That isn't blur induced by the film image. When you sit two feet away from the screen (I had the displeasure of seeing LOTR from rows 2 and 3 in my two screenings... ugh) you notice the fluttering of the film a lot more. Other people have posted about this in this discussion, so I won't go in to much depth. Basically each frame goes by in a slightly different place, different distance away from the lens, etc. This, in addition to film defects can have a seemingly insignificant effect, but from a close distance, you'll definitely notice it. Movies on DVD still show the same 24 frames per second, but they upscale it to 29.97 fps for NTSC presentation by repeating frames in a certain pattern (I'm too lazy to do the math). I guess I was thrown off when you said "motion blur" ... there is a true motion blur given by the exposure of the film (all movement in the exposed interval is captured on the frame... your brain does all the work and makes it look like a moving image instead of a bunch of frames).

Prayer

[bonzoesc]

Do I want Lucas to delay the release, or get it over with quickly so he can hurry up and put the series out of its' misery?

Re:The advantage

[bonzoesc]

Well, digital stuff doesn't degrade - watch a movie opening night, and compare the quality with a movie in the dollar theater. You'll notice it degrades over time, just like an LP would. Digital stuff might not fit your bizarre audiophile definition of quality when it first comes out, but until you lose 50% of the signal strength, it will always be at that quality.

Re:The advantage

[neurojab]

digital film?

What do you mean digital film? All you need are bits. The bits from a high-res high-motion camera are simply transferred via a high speed interface to hard drive, digital tape, or other bit storage medium. In fact, this can be done much more cheaply than using celluloid film. In a lower-budget movie, the most expensive part of the production is the film to shoot it on.

You're right about celluloid being higher quality...it definately has higher resolution, but lower contrast than lucasfilm's digital projectors. The problem is that celluloid degrades over multiple viewings, and produces a slightly jerky picture on all but the most finely tuned projectors.

l offers nothing

[cheinonen]

If you compare DLP (which they use for projection) to 35mm, the 35mm print will have greater fine detail, better shadow detail, and look far better overall. The only real advantage digital offers is that the print won't get worse over time, but how long are prints in the theater for now anyway? A month?

The advantage of digital for the studios is that it's cheaper. Films open far wider now than they ever used to, and play for shorter periods of time, and all those prints cost more money for the studio and eat into their profits. It doesn't matter that DLP projectors only have 1280x1024 resolution (at least the ones that theaters use), they save them money in the long run, so the studios love them.

Roger Ebert has written about this and has a great column about a new film technology that shoots at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, makes all motion look much more fluid, prevents annoying film artifacts you'll see, and is acually an improvement over current 35mm film, instead of a downgrade like digital is.

For people wondering, Lucas shot Episode II using special new Sony HD Cameras that shoot at 1080p, 24 fps, and use Panavision lenses. They are incredibly nice, the best DV cameras out there, but don't have the resolution that film does no matter how advanced they are. The DVD transfers should look totally incredible, though. However, does anyone care if the movie sucks as bad as Episode 1, and so far the trailers don't give me much hope.

Re:l offers nothing

[Jeffrey Baker]

I saw Toy Story 2 in a DLP theater here in San Francisco and also at a film theater in Phoenix. The difference was that DLP has a tremendous, gorgeous, absent black that no film could possibly hope to match. It's hard to say what the shadow detail might have been on a live action movie, but I'd be inclined to believe DLP would have superior shadow detail ... it certainly has serious dynamic range. And of course, the DLP version lacked visual artifacts altogether and produced no sound.

The visual quality of Episode II will most likely be limited by the source equipment Lucas used rather than the projection system.

Re:l offers nothing

[XNormal]

DLP has quality advantages other than just not getting scratched. While the resolution is currently limited it has a better signal to noise ratio than 35mm. Look closely at a uniformly colored area of the screen and you will see the snow, even in brand-new prints. DLP can reach a blacker black and has a better contrast ratio. The brightness linearity is perfect because it uses pulse-width modulation. The colors of DLP are more saturated because it uses a rotating wheel of high-quality optical filters rather than some chemical concoctation on film.

DLP is already better in some areas and over time should probably match the quality of film. Even if it never reaches the resolution of film it can probably reach a resolution that is more than good enough. Improvements like 48 fps can easily be implemented in digital projectors, too.

Studios like digital projection, among other reasons, because the digital print can be encrypted. Projectors can be built as a tamper-resistant fortress that will be much more difficult to crack than a consumer product like DVD. This will save the studios from worrying about stolen prints used to create illegal videos. I can't say I'm against that - it has nothing to do with free speech or fair use issues and I have no sympathy for people who rob film distribution trucks at gunpoint or copy videos for a profit.

Re:l offers nothing

[Apotsy]

Those things are wrong.

Modern print stocks have a contrast ratio of 10,000:1. Most video projectors are only able to get a ratio of 1,000:1, sometimes 1,100:1. That's not as big a difference as it sounds, since we perceive light logarithmically, but it is still a visible difference.

Film wins when it comes to contrast. It won't always, but it does for the moment.

Re:l offers nothing

[OnanTheBarbarian]

cheinonen is quite correct. The only way digital is going to look better is when it's showcasing stuff that was originally done digitally; the fact that there's not much in the way of conversion means that you can do a very good job of rendering scenes digitally targetting a digital projector.

However, for those of us who watch movies that contain predominately filmed content, these digital projectors are third-rate. I'm glad to see the whole thing flop, and I'm sure Ebert is too.

Re:l offers nothing

[walt-sjc]

Film loses when we all we get to see is a 4th / 5th gen crappy copy in a theater. After a week of showings it's already scratched and patched. That's the real issue, and anyone that's seen a digital film and gone back and seen it on normal film will invariably prefer the digital version.

Re:l offers nothing

[Apotsy]

Generational loss reduces but does not eliminate the greater contrast range of film. Today's contact printing methods can produce excellent results when done properly. I've seen film and DLP versions of the same movie and come away 100% convinced that the film print had much better contrast, and that was with an ordinary 4th-gen release print.

Scratches are not a normal part of film projection. A film can have hundreds or even thousands of showings, and with a good projectionist and good equipment, it will still look brand new afterwards. If your're worried about dirt build up, wet-gate projection can be used to help prevent that (yes, there are theatres that use wet-gate on a regular basis).

Virtually every problem that people point to in film presentation has a solution that does not require replacing it with digital video projection.

Re:l offers nothing

[rbeattie]

It seems to me that with digital technology, the systems will be easier to upgrade in the future to whatever speed and resolution is possible by the latest tech.

So this first retrofit to digital is just the first big, difficult step - from there, each step in quality will be easier and easier because it'll be just like throwing a new board in your computer.

-Russ

Re:l offers nothing

[Lumpy]

Studios like digital projection, among other reasons, because the digital print can be encrypted. Projectors can be built as a tamper-resistant fortress that will be much more difficult to crack than a consumer product like DVD. This will save the studios from worrying about stolen prints used to create illegal videos. I can't say I'm against that - it has nothing to do with free speech or fair use issues and I have no sympathy for people who rob film distribution trucks at gunpoint or copy videos for a profit.

Sorry, but with my buddy that will never stop him.
A nice high quality HD camcorder, a nice beam splitting pane and his setup, we have a DV copy of most every movie that premirers at his establishment. Granted they never EVER leave his home, but until they encrypt our eyeballs or put starved pitbulls in the projector rooms they will NEVER stop it. All it takes is one person like my friend without scruples to blow Episode-II onto the internet in Divix on opening night.

it's just like the music industry, a bunch of greed-mongers trying to pinch every dime as hard as they can.

Yes, what a great idea...

[dachshund]

Let's convert every movie theatre into the rough equivalent of what I can buy for my living room (or at worst, will be able to buy in a couple of years.) And while we're at it, let's toss in 5-10 minutes of unimaginative Pepsi and Toyota ads, just because we can. That way we can truly destroy the few unique properties that drag millions of Americans out of their homes to toss down $8-10/ticket + snacks.

Assuming crap like AotC doesn't destroy the industry first...

Re:Yes, what a great idea...

[Dr. Spork]

Well said! The only advantage that will remain for movie theaters is that they will get movies a few months sooner than the video store. Not a terribly big advantage, as far as I'm concerned.

I, for one, wouldn't mind destroying the industry. We need a change of culture. My vision is like this: I set up a kick ass screen and sound system in my living room, and we set aside "movies" nights. Price of admission for my friends is a 6 of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (cheaper than a movie ticket), or a nice bottle of wine, depending on the movie.

What we need before we get there is a little technology (HD-DVDs and better screens) and a big attitude adjustment. I for one will do my part to make this happen. To make the revolution complete: don't rent your DVD from Blockbuster; chances are they have it in your public library. I'm not kidding. I connected to my library's catalog started doing searches for movies that I'm interested in seeing, and found that about 80% are available on DVD, and that number grows every month. Week-long loan periods, no fees ... Ah, but I digress....

The point is, the MPAA are little pricks, and we should use their new technology to screw them. They deserve it! Next time you're thinking about going to a movie, think to yourself: will this be more fun than throwing a party?

Thought processes

[doorbot.com]

LUCAS: Digital is cool. I'm cool. I'm old, but I can still set a trend.

STAR WARS FANS: Speak to us your words of wisdom, oh wise one!

Lucas: Um, okay, I guess I don't do anything else. Hmmm...
Lucas: <Intense thinking>

Lucas: I have it! I will produce AOTC digitally and it will be shown on digital screens around the country... I am a visionary; I will be worshipped like a god!

Star Wars Fans: <Proceed to worship Lucas like a god>

Lucas: Muhahah! My plan is complete!

BYSTANDER: But don't digital screens cost money? Who's going to pay for it?

Lucas: If I produce it, they will pay.

Star Wars Fans: If he produces it, we will pay.

Bystander: No, I meant who will pay for the digital projection equipment and the like...

Lucas: <Shock flashes across his face>
Lucas: They shall not have AOTC without installing a digital projection system! I command it.

Bystander: Say, how many more days until the next installment of LOTR?

I've seen and used them...

[headchimp]

I actually was lucky enough to work on installations of digital projectors here in Dallas (Cinemark Legacy-Plano, a suburb). The difference is incredible. We ran Monsters on the digital projector and analog film projector on 2 screens at the same time. There is a vast superior difference on the digital as to be expected.

They are not that hard to work with or install; and in many cases, plug right into the existing setups. It's a linux based computer running movies from fibre based harddrives. The movies are loaded from a highly encrypted (sic!) dvd disk. The image is then sent via the same projector lens (with a modification) out to the same silver screen we are all used to.

The only drawback is the cost of the setup which is one of the reasons there are not more screens.

Re:I've seen and used them...

[Sabalon]

This must be the ultimate /. contradiction - the future of the MPAA's profits is Linux.

Re:I've seen and used them...

[Junta]

I think this comment is pretty obviously a fabrication. The single DVD is a dead giveaway, it couldn't possibly store a feature-length film at the resolutions required for good use of digital screens.

And the comment even contradicts itself, first the moovies are running from fibre hrd drives then from DVDs, which is it?

Re:Apple Computer's Movie Theatre Plans

[The Cat]

I can see it now:

A 200-ton AppleMEGACINEMAPLEXOTRON display with a retail price of [error: overflow] and mounted on a giant chrome hydraulic adjustable arm so it can be swiveled and tilted for three theaters.

Don't forget the transparent speakers... :)

Not Surprising...

[Waffle Iron]

...Considering that most major theater chains are currently in or on the verge of bankrupcy. It's not the time to be out buying super-expensive new projectors, especially when they just got done on a huge overbuilding spree.

Anyway, this situation will be a money-making bonanza for Lucas. They can re-release the film to theaters after a few years, this time in "full digital glory" and with 3 more minutes of previously cut scenes. All of the usual geeks will show up and shell their money out once again (OTOH, if it sucks as much as episode 1, maybe not).

You mean...

[Alternity]

...the reason why Phantom Menace sucked so much was because I didn't see it on a digital screen??

Silly me... I thought it was because of that Jar Jar thing! I should have known better.

Seen a few flicks this way.

[transiit]

The Edward's Theatre at the Irvine Rectum^H^H^H^H^H^HSpectrum (rumored to be the largest grossing theatre in the US, even though Edward's is currently attempting to claw their way out of Chapter 11) has at least one digital projector. Saw Atlantis and Final Fantasy there....so I do know they exist.

The good: Clear picture.

The bad: I saw one animated movie and one all-cgi movie. Without seeing them on a traditional projector, how would I know the difference? There was still the dust problem (air or lens), although it did look to be a lot cleaner overall.

A few points worth noting: I saw part of the phantom menace on one of those wide-screen hdtv's. Picture was so clear that it made the film's effects look even less realistic. Anyone who's gone out to see Beauty & The Beast at any of the IMAX theatres may have noticed that thanks to it being increased to "Dear god, look at the size of that nutcracker!" size made it much more apparent that the people coloring the cells didn't get quite as close to the outlines as you might expect. Thus, technology increases typically work best when everything is aiming at the same target.

Additionally, I'm not a believer that FPS needs to be increased much more than it is. Yes, you could make conventional projectors churn out film faster, although you'd need to increase the size of the platters, adjust the timing of the reels, etc. You'd probably not have a lot of reason just to convert an existing projector, you'd want to get a new one...and if you're getting a new projector, you might as well get a digital one if you get the benefits of the [easier, more durable] distribution medium, clearer picture, etc. Besides, there comes a physiological limit to the amount of information the eye can process at once. 30fps is plenty for me, and I can't really distinguish a difference between 30 and 60. Same reason why I think 96khz cd's are ridiculous. I can't hear outside of a certain range, who cares if it can faithfully record it?

I think digital projection will catch on, not because of features the audience would notice, but because of things that will make distribution easier. People seem to go to the movies no matter how badly they're made, how uncomfortable the seats, how high the ticket prices...so getting stuff done for the sake of the audience doesn't really seem like a big motivating factor for the industry.

-transiit

Re:Seen a few flicks this way.

[blair1q]

Real acoustics.

You won't be able to hear a sinusoidal tone at 48 kHz (the highest frequency recordable at the Nyquist rate of 96=2x48 kHz), but you might detect its effect on non-sinusoidal sounds.

And some of us can hear above 22 kHz, so 44 kHz recordings aren't even adequate theoretically.

Not as though I own the audio equipment to take advantage of these things, but I've been looking, and looking, and looking, and now I figure I'm just confused enough by the ridiculous number of choices in the $5k home-theater system range to buy a $9 pair of earbuds and a used Walkman and go back to my Ian Dury and the Blockheads cassettes.

--Blair

Re:Seen a few flicks this way.

[kreyg]

and I can't really distinguish a difference between 30 and 60.

Film is at 24. You can't tell because motion blur due to the filming process makes everything looks smooth. Computer games don't blur at all (in general) so things look really jerky when the camera is panning quickly. Increasing the framerate doesn't eliminate this, but it helps quite a bit. It still depends on how fast the camera is panning.

As a side note to this, the rate of film is more obvious when you start seeing pans during fully CG scenes - the motion blur isn't as good as actualy photography. I noticed some really nasty jerking motion during some of the pans in LOTR.

Re:Seen a few flicks this way.

[Paul Komarek]

(what follows is unabashedly off-topic)

"but I've been looking, and looking, and looking,"

Good luck. I've been through the quality audio search myself, but thankfully I was limited by budget to low-end NAD stuff.

A friend picked up some awfully good sounding Musical Fidelity equipment. Until he can afford good-enough speakers, though, we won't know how good it can sound. He was actually looking at some horn speakers from Avantegarde, but decided he should keep some padding in his bank account instead. He's a classical pianist, and jobs aren't that easy to come by.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Seen a few flicks this way.

[FastT]

...but you might detect its effect on non-sinusoidal sounds.

No, you won't. Sadly, this is exactly what all those audiophile magazines want you to believe so they can sell you "better" gear. There is no such effect. You simply can't hear any frequency components above your range of hearing, and no one's range of hearing goes anywhere near 48 kHz.

Don't be so glum...

[Kibo]

Episode II looks like it will have one redeming quality. Laughs, lots and lots of unintentional laughs. The impression I got from the trailers was that it was going to where no star *wars* movie had gone before. Lucas may as well call it Return of the Alien From L.A. Now if only there was a Kathy Ireland cameo, it might just be perfect.

Re:The advantage

[IronChef]

Are you saying that this all-digital production smashes the 24 fps barrier?

I think the movie will stink, but it migh be worth seeing for the novelty of the system.

Then again, I don't think there is a digital screen in Seattle.

Episode 1 TPM Digital Theaters

[Gadgetfreak]

I was lucky enough to live within driving distance (2 hours was worth it) of 2 of the 4 theaters that showed Episode 1 in digital. This was the first movie ever to be publicly shown on a digital projector. I wasn't sure what to expect, since it was fairly new technology, and I knew it was just a digital version of a movie shot on film. The projector I saw it on was made by Texas Instuments. I have to say, the image quality was SUPERB. The theater was also a much larger screen than normal, but clarity was still markedly better. Two things that instantly stood out to me after watching:

- MUCH better clarity for CG stuff (ideal in this movie) Lightsaber motion was so much more impressive, as well as all the moving CG objects

-Unlimited showings... film wears out and gets spotty. There were no spots or smudges anywhere, and it won't deteriorate like movie reels.

-A movie shot in digital and shown in digital could display a higher frame rate than normal film.

Now, I can only imagine how good a movie shot in digital would look on a digital projector. I know if it's within 2 hours driving distance, I'll definitely make a trip, and I suggest that anyone who has any interest at all do so as well.

Dare I Dream it?

[gnovos]

George Lucas presents Attack of the Clones, direct to video?

Re:Well...

[boopus]

It'll be released on DVD? That's a shock. George isn't going to release the VHS first to make sure everyone buys the movie twice? (Well, that's assuming anyone would want to buy it twice)

Re:The advantage

[jilles]

There is no quality advantage when displaying it. Conventional film has evolved too and is very competitive with digital projectors these days. However when you shoot digital, edit digital and distribute digital, you can avoid several conversions between digital and analog. Editing on most films is digital anyway so that's at least two conversions in the analog situation.

The real reason to convert to digital would be that production and distribution of the films would be cheaper since each copy of film costs some money and needs to be shipped to cinemas worldwide and degrades over time. However the money saved on distribution of digital copies is pretty much eliminated by the cost of digital equipment.

The only way to bring the price down is mass production and standardization. That however requires that some cinemas install the early, more expensive machines (this also applies to the newer analog systems). The public doesn't really care and therefore nothing happens.

For the same reason we still have analog tvs, analog radio, analog vcrs, etc. People don't care about the quality and the equipment is too expensive to make them care.

Re:The advantage

[trumpetplayer]

Well, CDs actually degrade more than LPs (for example they are significantly affected by normal daylight), and they last several times less. Obviously, the big advantage is the possibility of making exact copies of the original information each 5 years if you like.

The interesting point is that, due to the much more dynamic range and cutoff freq of the LP, if you take care over your LPs, their playing quality after 50 years of playing it will still be much better than with a CD. So you could always obtain a CD from a LP over the years and still get the highest quality a CD can give (providing you have the neccessary, expensive hardware to do the copy).

I think this observation could apply to many if not all the storage systems which are comparable: Photo CD vs film, DVD vs film, etc, although my experience is only for audio.

Benefit?!?!

[Crispin Cowan]

Benefit? Benefit?! There was no "benefit"; digital projection in a theatre sucked ass. It was very similar in quality to what you get when you hook up a DVD to an InFocus projector, i.e. visible grain, far, far worse than 35mm.

When I read two years ago that Lucas was going all digital for Clones, I thought he should put down the crack pipe. I'm now more convinced than ever.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

I've seen DLP - no jitter

[SilentJ_PDX]

I've been living in London for the past year and just Monsters, Inc (which just came out here) on a DLP projector at Odeon's Leicester Square theatre.

The main difference is that the picture doesn't jump around. If you watch a normal film with something like a still title on the screen, you'll easily notice a little 'jitter'. With the DLP there was no jitter.

For those saying DLP sucks because it's only 1280x1024 or 1080p (which I'm not sure of...), you really should watch a film with DLP. I didn't notice any jaggies and this was on a *huge* screen. The picture definitely looks very crisp and bright. There weren't any side-effects of DLP that distracted me from the film and, I'd say, the lack of jitter is an improvement.

Keep in mind that the Odeon Leicester Sq is advertised as Europe's biggest cinema and it seems like nearly all the European openings (the star-studded events) are held there.... so they may have a higher-res DLP than most.

Needs more resolution first!

[Apotsy]

Current DLP systems max out at 1280x1024. Think about that for a minute.

1280x1024 on a movie sized screen! I've seen it on several occasions, and let me tell you, the pixels are huge. It's ugly. If you've seen digital projection, you're not "lucky".

The resolution of digital projection must be improved if it is to be taken seriously. 1280x1024 doesn't cut it. There are rumors that TI might finally inch their way up to full HDTV resolution (1920x1080) by the time Ep. II premeires, but even that isn't good enough.

Movie special effects are always done at at least 2K resolution, sometimes 4K. There was an article linked from here not too long ago which quoted some people who were working on FX for LOTR that some of their shots were done at 4K resolution. What good is that if movies are going to be projected at a puny resolution of 1280x1024?

Fortunately, there are more technologies on the horizon besides DLP. JVC's D-ILA is already at 2K resolution, and may reach 4K before too long. Sony is working on laser projection which should also be able to reach 4K.

The bottom line is -- don't be in a hurry! They should take the time to do things right, and make sure theaters are not stuck with equipment that is obsolete overnight. It's a good thing that there are currently only 20 digital screens in the US. The technology needs more time to mature first!

Why Digital?

[crucini]

The article doesn't try to explain the benefits, if any, of digital projection. Are they claiming to achieve higher resolution than 35mm film? 70mm film has already been tried, and mostly abandoned. It provides too much resolution. I had the pleasure of seeing one of the '2001' films in a small screening room equipped with 70mm. You could see the brushstrokes on the cabinetwork of all the "futuristic plastic" spaceship interiors. 35mm is a better match for standard sets, costumes and makeup.

When the CD came out, it offered much better audio quality than the average analog media. But since then, there's more focus on compression and squeezing maximum efficiency out of digital media (since consumers don't seem to notice quality.) Hence, DVDs which don't even look as good as 1/4" videotape from the 80's, small-dish satellite TV which has horrible motion artifacts and digital cell phones. I'm not sure how many people are still gullible enough to think that "digital" is automatically better than "analog". It's entirely a question of resource allocation. Given adequate bandwidth or storage, and therefore the luxury of high-bitrate, high-dynamic range linear encoding, digital can generally outperform analog. But more typically today digital media are used to fine tune the level of crap which consumers will accept. Of course the popularity of MP3's is sending a clear message to the music industry that CD's are much too high quality for our taste.

Anyway, the main driver I can see for digital movie theaters is the ability to fire the projectionists, get rid of some moving parts, and exert much tighter central control over playback. I don't think they have much interest in offering higher performance. Ultimately you would pay $12 to watch an enlarged version of the HDTV in your house playing material that's not yet cleared for home viewing.

digital projectors?

[Hadlock]

i thought this technology was pretty standardized....then again, i live in the rich suburb of dallas, home of TI, maker of the DLP. we've had a DLP projector at the major megaplex, aka cinemark @ legacy. nifty place, 7 bucks for the standard adult ticket, 5.50 for student/senior.

so far i've seen star wars:TPM, monsters inc., final fantasy, 13 ghosts (scary as fuck, man), and probably a bunch of others. if you're looking for a movie that's digital, it's playing in theater 12.

more handy info can be found (including locations) @ fandango.com

i, for one, will be one of the first geeks to see star wars:AOTC in it's full digital beauty first showing on opening day.

Depriving your cat!

[fw3]

Same reason why I think 96khz cd's are ridiculous. I can't hear outside of a certain range, who cares if it can faithfully record it?

Great you can hear it fine, your cat (or dog) however has been putting up with the 44khz for years and any day now they're going to get even.

Send me a copy!

[Ogerman]

I've got a digital screen.. it's a modified overhead projector using an LCD projection panel. Parts from Ebay. Good stuff. Does 1024x768 and it cost $300 total and no expensive bulbs to replace every 2000 hours. Of course it only works well in a darkened room, but hey.. that's what movie watching's all about. (..or getting sick playing Descent3) (-:

Digital moviemaking

[aibrahim]

I have seen a lot of misinformation regarding digital moviemaking here on /.

Being a film maker of no repute, I shall attempt to address this. I can't answer EVERYTHING, but I can address some of the biggies.

First off the cameras Lucas is using shoot with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames progressive. The format they use is Sony's own HDCAM. This is a compressed digital format. It is not however DV, which refers to a particular codec used most often for standard definition production at 25Mbps. Panasonic has a format called DVCPRO HD which uses the same codec at a 100Mbps profile. HDCAM is about 145Mbps.

Confusingly, many people for some reason think DV also means "Digital Video." This is probably because it does. Mostly video people say digital video and save DV for the codec. I tend to say DV25 or whatever when I am talking codecs, or say MiniDV when talking format...damnable words.

SO, back to HD...There is a huge lossy compression that happens before we can even examine the image. If the image is captured directly to a D-5HD recorder (not to be confused with D-5 which is an SD video format.) from the camera without going to tape, you get a much better product. Lucas has done this for at least some scenes.

What about the notion that 35mm offers more resolution ? It depends. Are you talking about acquisition or projection ? You'll be surprised that while 35mm has a resoltuion advantage, it is not the primary thing that you'll notice when looking at the projected images. Mostly I feel that color generated by these cameras as recorde on tape isn't smooth enough.

For projection HD video projectors using DLP at 1920x1080 are available, and they produce a STUNNING image. I saw one Jan 2001 at NIST's Digital Cinema conference. I couldn't bear watching 35mm projection with my friends later on after the conference. Why ?

Well, first off there is not gate weave or jitter. Images are very solid and clear when they are supposed to be. Better than even the best theatres with union projectionists. (not a lot of those left..Mann's in LA, Uptown in DC, I dunno any more.) What I am talking about is the way film moves. Being a mechanical system there are limits to its operational precision. You get inaccuracies in vertical and horizontal positioning, as well as movement towards or away from the lens, and the lamp. Then there are the subtle deformations of the film itself. This is all well controlled actually, especially when you consider that a 35mm picture is being made into a 70 foot or more picture on projection.

Well, none of that exists for the digital projector.

The color gamut available surpasses that of 35mm film. Most of what I saw was film acquired, which was stunning enough. The digitally generated stuff, Toy Story 2, well...it NEVER looked that good before. Colors literally leap off the screen. It is a cinematographers dream. ( I know cause I dream about having my images projected on that thing...drool drool)

Make no mistake, digital projection is THE future of theatrical exhibition. Even Vittorio Storaro has come out in favor of it. (Storaro is a very highly regarded cinematographer, perhaps the best ever. Check out an interview with him about digital cinema.)

Now, on acquisition 35mm is certainly superior. Not because of format limits...Uncompressed HD is very nice and can compete with 35mm, but rather because of the limitations of current camera design, mostly the CCD's. Still they provide a very good image.

Frankly I am amazed that the film look as good as it does after seeing the previews. A quick look at the previews shows that while the image has flaws, it is quite frankly very very good.

Now when evaluating the technology you have to consider HOW the image reaches the final consumer. For a movie like Star Wars, or FoTR the 35mm camera image is scanned into the systems at ILM or wherever using a laser film scanner, then digital effects, manipulation and elements are all added. Then it is ouput to film, pre composited, via a laser film "printer."

What this means is that the limiting image resolution is set at digitization. This hardly affects most films, but for a Star Wars film, where virtually every scene, if not every frame, contains digital composites, the entire film is produced digitally even if you shoot with film!

For more discussion, argument and general confusion check out the archives of discussions on alt.movies.cinematography, search for "HD film" and you should be overwhelmed.

I hope that has been entertaining if not useful.

Re:Digital moviemaking

[Apotsy]

The color gamut available surpasses that of 35mm film.

Do you have any measurements to back that up? That is something that I've tried to get real, hard data on, but I cannot. The data is available for resolution & contrast ratios, but not color gamut.

By the way, you talk about jitter and weave, but have you ever seen a Kinoton "E" series projector? Instead of a mechanical intermittent, they use electronic stepper motors to do the film pulldown. They produce very steady images with jitter & weave well below that of standard projectors. Many people have only seen cheap, belt-driven projectors from Cristie, and incorrectly assume that that is the best film has to offer. It can actually be much better.

Re:Digital moviemaking

[aibrahim]

You want me to back it up ?

How about this ? It is a Powerpoint (SORRY!!) presentation given by the Texas Instruments people at the 2001 Dcinema conference at NIST. Unfortunately it was out of date even back then, and is asssuredly more so now. For example, the 1920x1080 DLP Cinema was brand spanking new then. I was told that TI had the demo unit at only one location (other than the TI lab) before the NIST conference.

About the projector you mention, the Kiniton E, I don't know projectors by make and model (I should...) In any case, I have seen some projectors with a feature like the one you mention, it may have been the same. (Did I mention I MAKE films, seen a lot of projectors...) The thing is though that you still have to mechanically move the film. You can't eliminate jitter and weave in a mechanical system. Remember my yammering about how much the frame gets magnified ? Even small errors get magnified dramatically.

Jitter in a DLP system comes from external sources, i.e. the table shaking etc. (Should I point out that a film projector is more likely to make a table shake...Uh, guess I just did.)

There is a huge difference between litte jitter and NO jitter. There is no weave either. When you spend an hour or two watching DLP and then watch even well maintained quality projectors with trained projectionists...there is a difference. You really don't want to go back. That is just my opinion.

Re:Digital moviemaking

[Apotsy]

You want me to back it up ?

Does that surprise you? Your response has a very defensive tone.

I can't just take someone's word for it. I've seen 35mm dye transfer prints, and I've seen DLP several presentations, and going purely by eye, I'm in doubt as to which has a bigger color gamut. Actual measurements are neecessary.

Anyway, thanks for the link -- that's the sort of thing I was looking for. I see that they can approach the color gamut of film, even beat it in some areas, but they are only comparing themselves to an ordinary film print. There is no mention of dye-transfer. That's too bad. But at least it's a start.

By the way, there is no mention of 1920x1080 in that presentation. Are you certain they have finally achieved that resolution?

Re:Digital moviemaking

[NeMon'ess]

According to Roger Ebert and MaxiView, the Texas Instuments projector is 1280x1024 and uses anamorphic lenses to stretch the image as desired. Even if Lucas can record at 1900x1280, he can't get it presented that way, not yet anyhow. Having waded through MaxiVision's PDF, I'm a firm convert in their favor. While I don't like grain anymore than any of us, their system will run at 48fps, progressive of course, and will remove the analog sound track, allowing for a image %33 bigger on the print. If their resolution for film of 4850x4850 per square inch is reliable (though on the high end I'm sure) then I just can't back digital projection until it can approach these qualities. Maybe if I sat in the back of a theater I couldn't tell the difference with the current digital technology, but I sit in the fifth row to be close so the screen fills my field of vision. I see the grain clearly at times. I know I can tell the difference in resolution, because Lord of the Rings had so many effects shots that it appears many were scanned at 2000x2000 instead of 4000x4000. The projected image actually jumps back to the clairity of the film when the effect shot ends. That was distressing when I noticed it.

Re:24fps

[pacc]

Or, even cranking up the frame rate.. how about a 60fps film. The motion blur at 24fps is horrible.

People have come to enjoy the soothing clunkiness of 24fps,

Well, what if the motion blur disappears when using a digital projector - then 24 fps will look pretty bleak and 60 fps will definitely be needed. Comparing to the state of televisions the 100 Hz TV's (europe) requires special circuitry to interpolate a decent picture. And while as long as the interpolation technique introduces artifacts I prefer the builtin smoothing of a 50 Hz set. To go back to movies, if the digital projectors are too good they will only magnify the limitations of the original film. So both are right, but once the step is taken to digital there's no going back - framerate must go up eventually.

Is Digital a Benefit?

[harlows_monkeys]

Many people don't find digital better for movies. Keep in mind that movies are trying to provide the illusion of motion. Their success depends on taking advantage of certain properties of the human visual system. At least some people feel that the analog projectors are better at this.

Biggest Loss: Internegatives - Release Prints

[silentbozo]

Filmakers' have traditionally lamented that the film that they finish cutting is NEVER the film that the audience gets to see. The reason? Multiple layers of copies that need to be struck before you get to the release prints.

The quality of one wet-gate interpositve to internegative is quite good, but you do that a couple of times at high speed, and there is significant quality loss (no lenses used when copying folks.) By the time you get to the release print, which is struck from the final internegative, you're lucky to get 2k of the original 4-8k worth of information. Think of it as photocopying a photocopy - several times.

Add that grainy, blurry, off-color print, to the crap that it will go through during the first couple of days of release (burn, splice, scratch, dust), and by the time that you and I go to watch it, it's nowhere near what the editor handed off to the director. Of course, if you go to a crappy theatre, with a crappy projector, with a dirty projector window and a crappy screen... jeez, you might as well wait for the DVD.

As a rule I prefer 70mm prints to 35mm, just cause there's less degradation, I prefer better theatres to crappy multiplexes, because they usually get the better prints.

Now, you ask, what's so hot about digital? I mean, even with a bad print you get better resolution than the current tech, right? Not quite. Even though the max resolution of the current projectors can't match the theoretical resolution of 35mm film, the digital stuff is either cine-scanned or telecined from an early inter-positive, and cleaned up (dust removal, etc.) As a result, even if the final resolution is less, you get pretty much what you'd see what the director sees, and that's what Lucas and a whole lot of other filmmakers are so hot about.

And yes, the projections they use are LCD or DLP, so the projections are digital.

However, I must warn you. It's weird going to a theatre looking at a bright picture that seems like it's playing straight off a HD DVD. No scratches or blotches. No jitter. Very little grain (for daylight shots). It's like sitting in your living room watching a super-big TV. Eerie.

Re:Biggest Loss: Internegatives - Release Prints

[walt-sjc]

That's like saying a good driver doesn't allow their tires to wear, or a good pr0n star that doesn't allow her body to age. The nature of film running through the system will cause scratches over time no matter what you do or don't do. Mishandling of course will cause this degredation to happen sooner, but it WILL happen.

Sheesh.

Re:Biggest Loss: Internegatives - Release Prints

[PhotoGuy]

And yes, the projections they use are LCD or DLP, so the projections are digital.

I know most graphic designers will turf a sexy, pixel-perfect (alignment-wise) LCD display, for a clunky, blury (to me) CRT, because there's more depth to the colour, blacker blacks than LCD can provide, and so on. It seems well established that LCD can't provide the contrast and colour range that CRT's can.

Does this mean that LCD/DLP projectors would suffer from same of the colour and contrast problems as well? Or do the theatre-quality digital projectors blow away commercial LCD's when it comes to these issues???

-me

Re:Biggest Loss: Internegatives - Release Prints

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not responding directly to you, just adding some information for others.

It was only in the last couple years that DLPs had good blacks. Four years ago they had 300:1 contrast ratio, pretty much the same as an LCD, but now they can be had at 700:1 without modifications, but LCD projectors have improved as well, to nearly 600:1 in many cases, but for business presentation projectors, expect to spend at least $3000 for an XGA LCD that is this good, used.

Note that theaters use extremely high light output projectors that run several tens of thousands of dollars so they have units that are in the thousands of lumens.

In a similar manner as the overclocker crowd, individual projector modifiers tweak some parts of the optics to get better "contrast ratio", some claim 1200:1 on an NEC LT150 DLP (a stock one rates at 800:1), which is better than you can get on commercially sold digital projectors at nearly any price.

There is a competing technology called D-ILA or LCOS (don't know what that means) where with good parameter tweaking is reported to go to 1600:1.

I can't say much about the color range, I just don't know.

I think it is all very interesting, I personally bought a nice XGA resolution video projector for about the price of the cheaper rear projection HDTVs in retail, and the picture is IMO better and cabable of being quite a bit larger. And it takes 720p HDTV videosignals as well, something a major share of real HDTVs cannot unless you spend a lot more.

Re:Biggest Loss: Internegatives - Release Prints

[colmore]

either you have a crappy CRT or you need to adjust your brightness/contrst.

Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.

It's been 15 seconds since you hit 'reply'!

You are wrong. Video is the future...

[VValdo]

If you compare DLP (which they use for projection) to 35mm, the 35mm print will have greater fine detail, better shadow detail, and look far better overall.

I have seen quite a few digitally projected films with both major projection systems over the years at the local AMC including Toy Story 2, Tarzan, Star Wars I, Monsters Inc, and others.

The absence of scratches are immediately apparent from the second the films begins. They are so jarringly clean that it takes a couple seconds to get used to it. Tarzan in particular was amazing, like looking into an animated window.

In fact, the most distracting thing about the digital experience has been the annoying FILM GRAIN in Star Wars. Well, of course, there was the crappiness of the movie itself, which was worse, but anyway...

Yes, you can make out the regularly-shaped square pixels in digital projection, but only if you look for it, and only when there is a high-contrast between bright and dark areas, such as when titles are superimposed over a black background. These pixels at least are regularly spaced and steady, as opposed to the jittery "dance" of film grain, which is omnipresent in film. Once I went from a clean screening of Toy Story 2 to another viewing of it on film, the grain really bothered me.

Aside from that, I found the colors to be brighter and more vivid than film with deep blacks and bright whites and shades of orange and blue that I just hadn't seen projected before. And there is no distracting 24 fps flicker-- it's hard to explain, but it's something like the difference between watching a flickering CRT vs. the steady image of an LCD.

The only real advantage digital offers is that the print won't get worse over time, but how long are prints in the theater for now anyway? A month?

Well first off, in major cities that may be true. However, from what I understand, the 2nd run cities and smaller towns get the prints after they've run through the projector dozens of times.

Face it, film breaks, film is scratched. Film must be spliced together when it breaks. Film goes out of sync...

Resolution-wise it's difficult to measure film grain count vs. pixel count because video offers anti-aliasing and other tricks to improve the image.

The advantage of digital for the studios is that it's cheaper. Films open far wider now than they ever used to, and play for shorter periods of time, and all those prints cost more money for the studio and eat into their profits. It doesn't matter that DLP projectors only have 1280x1024 resolution (at least the ones that theaters use), they save them money in the long run, so the studios love them.

It's not just the prints-- movies shot on high-end (Lucas-level) video are (in theory) much cheaper than film. Every bad shot in film is wasted negative. Tape stock is relatively cheap in comparison.

You save money on raw film stock. You save money on processing. You save money on creating workprint and answer prints when color-balancing (timing) the film. Then, yeah, you save money on the final prints, you save money on postage having to to distribute heavy cases of film to all your exhibitors. You don't have to worry about film jamming in the gate of your camera or breaking in the lab...

Editing-wise, digital video is far simpler. No keycode to link to timecode (if you've ever had to deal with 3-2 pulldown or audio sync issues when editing film on video or a non-linear editor, you'll know what I'm talking about) No 24/30 fps conversions. Color correction and effects can be easily added in the original medium without losing quality. No need to worry about costly optical effects or negative duping if you wanna use a shot more than once.

And of course, the quality of the original image is the same quality of what you see on the screen, no matter how many times the image is composited, manipulated, copied, re-edited, etc. With film, you are guaranteed to be seeing at least a third generation copy of the negative. (it goes from the negative to an internegative to a print... and that's without any optical effects added, which may require more losses in generations)

For an independent filmmaker, the costs of shooting on film can be prohibitive. As video gets cheaper and better, there's no denying its appeal to lower budget projects.

Roger Ebert has written about this and has a great column about a new film technology that shoots at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, makes all motion look much more fluid, prevents annoying film artifacts you'll see, and is acually an improvement over current 35mm film, instead of a downgrade like digital is.

Ebert's been pushing that 48 fps film for years now. 48 fps means the film is running through the camera/projector twice as fast. If the image size is the same, that means you're burning film twice as fast, which means your film costs are twice as high.

I've heard that it's cool, but because of the expense (and the fact that it's still a physical, mechanical technology) I just don't see that ever being anything more than a novelty.

For people wondering, Lucas shot Episode II using special new Sony HD Cameras that shoot at 1080p, 24 fps, and use Panavision lenses. They are incredibly nice, the best DV cameras out there, but don't have the resolution that film does no matter how advanced they are.

Like I said, it's sort of comparing apples and oranges. From my totally subjective point of view, the digitally projected Toy Story 2 was VASTLY superior in terms of color, clarity, and overall image quality to the film version.

I think stuff like CGI films that went straight from the computer to digital projection have been the best of what I've seen so far. Because, yeah, I'll admit it-- film does have a certain quality that as yet digital projection hasn't really captured. Kind of a surreal, magical, hard-to-describe look. And you can do a lot of cool shit chemically with film.

But DV has its own qualities that are waiting to be explored. And I really think thatit's not gonna be too much long before they get the video to look and act like film. Most of the video we see looks crappy because it's shot like it's on video. But I think that cinematographers have a whole new world to explore because believe it or not, you can actually light a DV project WELL if you want to.

For those of you interested in checking out a "film" shot on 24P DV, USA Films released a movie not too long ago called Session 9 with David Caruso (yeah, yeah. I know). I haven't seen it on DVD yet (saw a 35mm transfer), but it's among the very first films out using super-high end video acquisition. If you can't wait until Star Wars and wanna see some 24p stuff, check it out. You may change your mind about what's around the corner.

W

1280x1024 aspect ratio?

[Gorimek]

1280x1024 doesn't sound at all like the aspect ratio of wide screen theatre movies.

Are the pixels not square, or are this not the right numbers?

Re:1280x1024 aspect ratio?

[Apotsy]

The pixels are square within the projector, but are non-square by the time they hit the screen. There is an anamorphic lens on the front of the projector which optically stretches the image to the correct proportions.

Current DLP projectors have a set of 1280x1024 chips in them, which have a native aspect ratio of 1.25:1. The projector also comes with two anamorphic lenses, a 1.5X lens to stretch the image out for 1.85:1 movies, and a 1.9X lens to stretch the image out for 2.39:1 movies. The lenses must be changed whenever the theatre is getting ready to show a feature in a different aspect ratio than the previous one.

Re:The advantage

[Wavicle]

Was the whole movie shot with digital film? I think that would be overwhelmingly expensive.

I think that one of the arguments for digital is just the opposite... Conventional film is shoot once, develop and never use again. It is very expensive to develop those hundreds of thousands of feet of footage. (24 frames / sec is like 3ft/sec of 35mm film... and they almost never shoot that slow, that's just what the print ends up with)

The argument goes that with digital you take what you like, copy it without loss in quality to a master and then you can reuse that tape / drive / whatever.

The argument against digital has always been that it is inferior in quality to conventional film. Lucas believes that the state of the art in digital has progressed to the point that digital is equal in quality as far as 35mm is concerned to film. He has even said it was a enormous boon because of the lowered cost of production. You can go from the set to the cutting room in minutes, not days.

Check out this site if you're curious. It's a broadcast quality digital camcorder that costs to buy about what a 35mm motion picture camera costs to rent for one day. Canon is so happy with this camera they produced a commercial for a lower end digital camcorder using this one.

The list is here...

[Anonymous Coward]

two clicks away...

Why no screens ?

[aibrahim]

Well, two big reasons.

First off most NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) members will admit if pressed that they are not in the movie business at all, it is incidental.

They are in the concessions business. They sell sugared water with carbonation, and exploded corn kernels with butter flavored oil.

Nonetheless there are very strong economic reasons to use digital projection. For one it allows a theatre owner to be far more flexible in what they show and how many screens they show a film on. They can dynamically allocate theaters to meet demand in a digital world.

The DLP projectors are designed to be more reliable than film projectors, and to have fewer operator adjustments. They look better for longer without intervention. There are no prints to manage logistics for and to deal with shipping. etc etc.

OH, yeah, they LOOK BETTER to boot. Once you see one, that may be the end of your film projection days.

NATO members are very eager to get these advantages.

However as you can imagine the candy and soda business can't afford to bear wasted overhead. They can't invest in a DLP system on a fiber network to a, exabyte server room and have it be supplanted quickly.

What NATO members are waiting for is two things:

The technology to settle down

Standards to emerge and stabilize

Once these things are in place, there will be a RACE to get DLP projectors out to your local multiplex.

When it happens, remember you saw this one coming.

[blair1q]

As soon as digital theaters get big, home digital theaters using the same technology will get big, and pirated perfect digital movie-theater resolution copies of these flicks will be pressed and distributed like Thin Mints.

--Blair

Why should exhibitors pay to upgrade to digital?

[Artifice_Eternity]

The economic benefits of digital projection go almost totally to the studios -- no prints to distribute. But the theater chains are expected to bear the cost of new equipment. Given that they are hurting right now, due to a glut of screens, this is not likely.

Anyway, film is still better than digital -- in resolution, and more importantly, in color and contrast ranges. Its response to light is not just greater, it's totally different (logarithmic rather than linear; there is no clipping). Digital may catch up eventually, but not soon. Unfortunately, if the industry can shaft us with inferior imaging technology, they will.

Consumer Digital Video != Digital Film

[EnglishTim]

Digital Film has a much higher resolution than Digital Video. Digital Film tends to be projected at 1280 x 1024 - digital video has a much lower resolution.

Actually, I saw my first digitally projected film on Wednesday night - Monsters Inc at the Liecester Square Odeon, and I was very impressed by the quality - it was much crisper than I've ever seen with film projection. Whether this is to do with being able to project more sharply or some inherent blurriness in the film copy I'm not sure.

At the beginning when they showed the BBFC classification notice I could just about see the pixels - but then it was white non-antialiased pixels on a black background. When the film proper started I was very impressed by the crispness and clarity and I didn't notice any pixellation artifacts.

A single DVD?

[Dr. Spork]

I always assumed that the source would be a whole set of DVDs, not a single disk. Wow! Obviously, it was compressed. Do you remember whether it was MPEG-2, or what? Also, what was the resolution?

As far as piracy goes, I know that for music, whatever is playable on a computer is rippable (at worst by using the digital out on the sound card). Now I assume that the link between the Linux machine's graphics card and the projector is digital; it would hardly make sense to do D/A and A/D conversion. But if that's so, couldn't we run this raw video signal into an "in" on a different computer, say a laptop, and save it on the hard drive? Then we'd be free to re-compress it as we saw fit. All the sudden, a pimply movie usher could become haxor supreme.

There's something to be said for *grain*

[Artifice_Eternity]

It's part of the analog richness of film.

I will always love the random scattering of those silver molecules, dancing over the image flickering in the darkness.

It's like the warmth that comes from a vinyl record, as opposed to the cold clarity of a CD.

Re:There's something to be said for *grain*

[llamalicious]

Well, you can keep your grainy interneg copies and your scratchy lps...
...as for me, I'll take a full on digital audio and video assault with open arms. Provided just watching a film doesn't violate the DMCA :)

Re:There's something to be said for *grain*

[Geek In Training]

It's like the warmth that comes from a vinyl record, as opposed to the cold clarity of a CD.

An interesting opinion, but I find the opposite to be true. I still own a giant stack of vinyl records, which I haven't listened to since my turntable died about five years ago. I keep them for the cover art... and really, that's why I bought them. I listened to them on turntables of various sorts, and even the BEST one sounded flat, scratchy, and "vacant." (FWIW, I prefer to listen to what many refer to as EuroTrash Pop. Roxette, specifically.)

To me, there is nothing quite like putting in a good CD player and set of speakers in my car (I have an hour commute into the city for work), popping in a CD, and then cranking the volume to the brink of distortion. At that perfect volume, right before semi-permanent hearing loss, you get the full depth and breadth of the music as it was recorded. OK, yes, it's not coming out the way it sounded in the studio exactly, but you get a certain amount of "blur" at that volume that lets you get lost in the sound completely. You can almost see the notes being stamped on the clef if you focus hard enough.

At least that's my experience. YMMV. :)

Re:There's something to be said for *grain*

[zzyzx]

Among traders of live music, there's a similar debate about soundboards vs audience tapes. Audiences are said to be warmer and boards are sterile. Personally, when I listen to a cd, all I want to hear is music. When I watch a movie, all I want to see is the movie. I think the warmth argument is mainly associations. People who grew up on vinyl, associate clicks and pops with hearing music. People who grew up on film, associate "random scattering of those silver molecules" with movies. If you don't have those associations, the whole thing seems silly.

Re:There's something to be said for *grain*

[foobar104]

There's something to be said for *grain*. It's part of the analog richness of film.

I know you were trying to be sarcastic, but in point of fact, you're right.

The presence of film grain adds a completely different feel. The same scene shot of HD video and on Super-35 will look dramatically different when projected on a DLP projector.

While opinions vary, many creative types (including myself) prefer 24 FPS film for movies and other entertainment programs, even while 30 FPS (or higher) video is better for things like news. Movies shot on film at 24 FPS have a certain softness, a certain surreality, that makes the moviegoing experience much more enjoyable. Without the softness and grain, the movie is too harsh and jarring.

There's a great mailing list discussion on this subject archived at this site.

Two benefits.

[minghe]

1. Digital media is not as likely do lose quality with each play. Dust marks and scratches on a movie roll is a pain in the arse for both projectionists and cinema goers.

2. Digital film is, and this is important, cheaper. A digital projection good enough for a small to medium sized cinema screen is much more affordable than a set of projetors. The media, be it DVD for the smaller salons or a better and uncompressed formats för the larger ones.

This means that they are cheaper to copy, easier to distribute and therefore can get spread to backwater cinemas that would normally have to wait for months to get hold of a copy of the latest box office hits

This also means that it will cost much less to distribute smaller, independent films. That might be the vitamin injection that the movie industry needs.

Also, sending events live to big screens all over the world might opens up for some real interresting opportunity. Pay 10 bux to see Super Bowl on a Big F***n Screen, instead of on your vimpy little tv at home.

Digital cinema is very impressive

[shermozle]

I saw the digital film thing shown at the National Film Theatre here in London. It's actually really really impressive. Previously I'd thought this technology had a long way to go but it's actually ready right now.

I couldn't pick the difference between the projector and film. The only discernible difference was the lack of scratches on the film. Quite amazing.

For those interested, it was a Barco D-Film projector.

Minor correction

[ChristianBaekkelund]

LucasFilm not LucasArts...

Went out of my way and it was well worth it.

[yroJJory]

I don't like cities. In fact, I hate the hustle and bustle of San Francsico, but 4 times already I have gone out of my way to see a digital screening at the AMC 1000 on Van Ness.

After seeing a private digital screening of Episode I at Skywalker Ranch's Stag Theatre, I was sufficiently impressed enough to go to the City to see Pixar's "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc." twice each.

Let me just say this: WOW!

Having only seen one live action film in digital, I can only say that DLP is exceedingly good at reproducing a film and capturing the look and feel of actual film.

And, when it comes to the purely digital domain, it is even better. Pixar's films couldn't have looked better. Keep in mind that all prints go through extensive color timing to make sure the proper balance is achieved. With DLP, we are seeing (assuming calibration is performed properly) exactly what the original designers, animators, art directors, texturers, shaders, and renderers saw and intended when they first created the work.

It is so nice to be able to see a film weeks after release and not be distracted by a marred print that has been playing 5 times a day for however many weeks. Even better still, there aren't any jumps from places where the celluloid broke and had to be spliced back together!

Of course, there is a downside to this technology, too.

Remember when some politically-correct advocate groups complained about a scene in Disney's "Aladdin"? Disney couldn't do anything about it while it was still in the theatre because prints are extremely expensive, but with DLP, playback can be from WVHS tapes, satellite (via WVHS or other downloaded formats), or directly from a hard disk. So, the cost to redistribute an editted, censored version of a film is negligible in comparison.

Do I think they'll use it that way? Undoubtedly.

Is the format going to replace film? Absolutely. It looks amazing! It really IS more like film than film! I really just wish more films were being made available in the format. After "Monsters, Inc." closed in the digital screening, the AMC 1000 was not showing another film in DLP. How disappointing!

Re:The advantage

[SemtexIZfun]

Actualy... I was a projection booth manager for many years of a 24 screen theatre and I would like to let everyine in on something. I have been to a show that demonstrated the digital systems and was realy let down. First off the reason that there are so few screens is 2 reasons. First being cost. A DLP / Christie system (the most known and comon) costs about 2 million dollars to get. Then the cost of keeping it is terrible also. It takes twice the light for a digital system to light a screen of the same size as it does for a regular film system. So the cost of regular running and Maint. is high. Second is the support. How many films have you heard of in this format? Exactly, few or none until now. And here is one more. It doesnt look nearly as good as people say. Compare it to a good quality 70 mm film and you may be suprised that the 70 will look better if the projectionists have any idea of what they are doing. I would sugest going to a theatre with a 70mm print with good digital sound and save the extra cash and probably the longer trip. Dont buy into the hype if you get close you can see the grain.

In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[enkidu]

Let me first say that I've seen four movies on the "digital screen" (AMC Van Ness in SF): SW:TPM, Final Fantasy: TSW, Akira (2001), and Monsters Inc. All four were projected with Texas Instruments' DLP technology. Of those four movies, I've seen two with digital projection and with normal film, Monster's and Akira. In both cases, the digital experience was much much better.

I saw Akira twice while it was in theatres (great movie BTW), the first time with digital projection, the second a week later (when I thought it would still be digital) on film. The DLP screen was much sharper with more consistent and saturated color. The opening motorcycle chase (with the incredibly detailed backgrounds) was simply amazing on the DLP but looked muddy and washed out in comparison on film. The colors were way more saturated and the DLP (I swear to God) had more dynamic range than any film I've seen in a theatre. Nothing I've seen on film has come close. I could say the same thing about Monster's Inc on DLP vs. film.

I'm sure that film can theoretically match the clarity and sharpness that I've seen but it never has. The print you watch in the movie theatre is at least a 3rd gen print and too often a 4th or 5th (or god forbid higher) generation print. And it's been run through the projector 4 times a day gathering dust and scratches. The film batches are different, the chemistry is slightly different and the printing process can't be repeated exactly everytime. And even if it could control all of that, you're making 3rd, 4th and 5th+ generation prints! Yes, a 70mm print can do better than 1080p24, but can a 5th generation print do the same? Can it match the original's color? Can it match the original's 1080 lines of resolution? From what I've seen, the answer is a big, huge NO!

I'd pay an extra 2-3 bucks per showing if I could get all digital, that's how much better I think it is.

Re:In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[squaretorus]

I'd pay an extra 2-3 bucks per showing if I could get all digital, that's how much better I think it is.

NOOOO - never OFFER to pay more!!!
I don't pay mare for my next car or computer - but it will be better. My last car had handle wind windows, my current car has electric windows and Air Conditioning, my next car will likely have a navigation system.

They all cost the same new.

Cinemas relying on old technology have no right to charge the same as those with new - and those with new have no right to charge me a premium to watch the film just because they bought a new projector.

Even if it IS that much better.

Re:In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[duffbeer703]

The real problem with film is that the projectors aren't turned up to their maxmimum brightness level. Theatres keep the projector brightness down to save money and avoid incidents where the film gets melted.

The only places where you see a movie the way it was intended are private screenings and a few theatres in Manhattan and Los Angeles.

Re:In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[bigdavex]

Let me first say that I've seen four movies on the "digital screen" (AMC Van Ness in SF): SW:TPM, Final Fantasy: TSW, Akira (2001), and Monsters Inc. All four were projected with Texas Instruments' DLP [dlp.com] technology. Of those four movies, I've seen two with digital projection and with normal film, Monster's and Akira. In both cases, the digital experience was much much better.

First, I'm very pleased to see a comment from someone who's done an actual comparison. But . ..

Is is really giving film a fair shot if the source material is originally (relatively low resolution) digital? There's no chance for film to show its higher resolution. Right?

Re:In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[enkidu]

First, I'm very pleased to see a comment from someone who's done an actual comparison. But . ..

Is is really giving film a fair shot if the source material is originally (relatively low resolution) digital? There's no chance for film to show its higher resolution. Right?

Thanks. Film resolution, IMO, isn't all that its cracked up to be because of limitations imposed by processing and economy. I'd like to point out that film isn't really analogue. It's still "digital" in the sense that density (of color and brightness) is determined by granules of primary colored "bits", not continuous mixtures that you get with mixtures of paint (although at a molecular level, these types of mixtures are also imperfect).

The problem with film occurs because the interpositives and internegatives used during duplication all have similar grain resolution. Think of scanning and printing the same picture over and over using a scanner of the same resolution as your printer. Even if you have perfect color matching/balancing (which you don't BTW), tiny imperfections are amplified. Film duplication is a similar problem, except that the film grain is scattered randomly instead of on a geometric grid.

Personally, I'd like to see a real non-subjective comparison using a resolution/color chart between multi-generation film copying and digitization. My gut says that after the 2nd generation copy, digital projection will kick film's ass.

BTW, Technicolor makes a lot of money because of their expertise is maintaining good quality color starting with shooting and continuing across multiple generations of copying film. AFAIK, every major film set has a Technicolor technician/advisor on set to make sure that colors get captured correctly. Taking picutres on positive (slide/movie) film under different lighting conditions is an incredible pain in the ass when you want consistent color.

Re:In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[Golias]

Of those four movies, I've seen two with digital projection and with normal film, Monster's and Akira. In both cases, the digital experience was much much better.

Telling me that digital was better for watching two cartoons does not do much to inform me.

How about making your A-B comparison with photographic images (where color contrasts matter a lot more) and then come back and tell us what you thought?

Re:In theory film is better-in practice, it ain't

[squaretorus]

Dunno about the US - but in the UK cars have been getting cheaper for years. Or rather, the cars at a given price point - £18,000 for example - have been getting a higher and higher spec.

And if you seriously think the cost of your car is an indicator of your quality of life your a seriously sad man!

Mission to Mars in Digital.

[Fantastic Lad]

They installed one of the new digital projection systems on one of the screens at a new theater in my home town.

Fascinated, I went to the giant flagship theater to watch, "Mission to Mars", which was being presented on the new digital system.

Anyway, I stood there with my friend in the expansive, pulsating lobby, and we were dirty and damp from the smog and rain outdoors, and we'd just eaten some bad fast food. The city was winning. I turned to him. . .

"You know, I just realized. I don't care enough about digital technology to go through with this. I really don't want to watch this movie. Everything I've seen regarding it looks absolutely awful."

"Yeah. I thought I could do it, but now I just don't feel so good. This place makes me feel like I'm in the middle of the "Terminator" future waste land. Why are there so many lasers and ultra violet lamps? Why is the floor black?"

"Well, this is the new, cool thing! You're supposed to feel naked without a BMFG-2000. --You know what they say; "The theater is the new social gathering place." --And how better to enrich the social fabric than to make people worry about being fragged?"

"BMFG?"

"Don't worry about it. Let's get the hell out of here."

And that was my experience with the new digital projection system! All in all, I'd have to say that it has some front-end and content problems to overcome before it becomes popular with cynical bastards who pine for the good old days when theaters had red carpets, soft lighting, and ornate wooden banister railings rich and dark from years of use.

-Fantastic Lad

96 kHz CDs.

[XNormal]

You can't hear *pure tones* above 20kHz, but many people can hear other effects up to 24 kHz or higher. The same goes for the brickwall antialiasing and reconstruction filters that tries to go from 0 to -80db in less than 3kHz: it creates ringing that does not affect pure tones but distorts the transients of percussion instruments. Sure, 96kHz is an overkill, but it lets you built a reconstruction filter with barely two cycles of the sin(x)/x function - no ringing.

50-60kHz would probably be enough, but just doubling from the standard processing rate of 48kHz was the simplest option. With the non-lossy compression of the DVD-audio standard it barely takes more storage capacity than 48kHz.

96kHz audio is not ridiculous. Sony's SACD is totally ridiculous. There is no way to perform any kind of processing on the Direct Digital Stream without destroying its alleged superior properties. I wonder how many of those SACDs were actually mixed on a digital console at 48 or 96 kHz...

Re:None of you seem to know what your talking abou

[Alex Belits]

I have a "digital projector" with a modest 1024x768 resolution projected on a 112x84" (2.8x2.1M) wall, and since I used old LCD panel from ebay, it has rather limited contrast and color. Still the whole thing (Proxima Ovation 944+ panel and 3M 9700 overhead projector) was less than $1000.

Modern projectors have little excuse for being expensive -- separate red, green and blue panels are easier in production, and less prone to "fallen out pixels".

Randomized blinded study needed!!

[spineboy]

Instead of opinions and having a bunch of "experts" tell us which one looks better, we need a randomized study to see which method people really prefer!
Otherwise we're just like the guys around the water fountain debating which football team will win

DLP is worth the effort to see

[mvea]

I've seen the Pixar movies, Phantom Menace, and Final Fantasy on the DLP screen in Plano, TX. Just for shits and giggles, I saw them again on the regular screens. There is a significant difference with regard to how much brighter and sharper the picture appears (especially with the computer generated movies) that makes the effort of going to DLP screens well worth it. I hadn't realized how many visual artifacts regular film introduced into the movie (most of the time the eye is distracted anyway) until I saw a picture as clean as DLP produced.

Re:When it happens, remember you saw this one comi

[aibrahim]

Along with the server rooms for the movies no doubt...

You need 36GB an hour for D-Cinema level quality. You'd need 4 double sided dual layer DVD's (DVD-18) just to play a single movie. How you planning to pass them around ? Oh yeah, that is the wavelet compressed version.

Maybe you want to invest in the D5HD VTR's being used by the TI demo team ? That gets you uncompressed quality, for about $130 a tape, that runs about 20 minutes.

This is the wave of the future, in that you are right, but the future is a bit further off than you might think. The storage will arrive sooner or later, but Hollywood is already pressing for a higher res version of HD for Dcinema...something with 4000x2000 resolution or thereabouts.

Hollywood is happy to deliver the best images possible to your home, but they want to make sure you have a reason to go to the theatre too.

Re:The advantage

[walt-sjc]

Um, first of all, it's all in how you handle / store media. It's VERY difficult to keep an LP from getting scratched / warped over a many year period. You also have imperfections from the pressing process causing pops / skips / etc. The "Original Master Disks" were better, but still had flaws.

While I don't have numbers on life of original pressed CD's, recordable CD's have varying life spans ranging over 100 years (depends on the dyes.) You can generally find this info on the manufacturers' web sites. Considering that CD's are basically plastic wrapped aluminium foil (gross simplification here) with holes punched in it, I have a hard time beliving the 50 year number (if properly stored of course.)

You probably will want your music on a different media in 10 years anyway. CD's are near end of life for various reasons, such as size, fragility, etc. At least when you start with a digital version you can shift to a different format (1G smart media cards maybe?) and not lose anything.

With film, it gets brittle with age. In as little as 20 years it becomes Very fragile (again depending on how it's stored.) You also have color fade which cannot be stopped. While current technology digital film doesn't have the resolution as real film, this will change over time and surpass it (for movie uses. Large format film photography will beat digital photography for Many Many years to come. I remember hearing about a massive camera that used 8 FOOT tall film. It may have gone directly to a positive paper instead of film negative, but still.)

Re:You are wrong. Video is the future...

[Gumshoe]

Ebert's been pushing that 48 fps film for years now. 48 fps means the film is running through the camera/projector twice as fast. If the image size is the same, that means you're burning film twice as fast, which means your film costs are twice as high.

Not quite true. More film is used, but not twice as much.

Regular 35mm film wastes a lot of film anyway, simply because of having to crop the academy ratio to 2.35:1. MaxiVision48, which is the "new" medium we're talking about, theoriseses that nobody uses academy format anymore and "squeezes" the 2.35:1 frames as closely as possible. As a result, MaxiVision uses less space per frame and more frames per second, but vanilla 35mm uses more film per frame - which almost evens out.

MaxiVision24 definately uses less film and has many advantages depsite being only 24fps.

I've not explained that very well, I'm sure, so I'll point to this page for a better explanation.

Does my monitor count ?

[Lord Sauron]

If my monitor counts as a "digital screen", then I've always watched DivX:-) movies on one.

But I still don't have Attack of the Clones. Maybe if George Lucas provided the link for download, he wouldn't be bitching about the lack of digital screens.

projection frequency/flicker

[green pizza]

If I recall correctly, film being projected (theatre) moves at 48fps. It shows every frame twice before moving to the next one. Though, I'm not too sure if that's the same way it gets shot. (Exposing each frame twice.)

A typical modern film projector (such as the Christies in your local multiplex) displays each frame three times before advancing to the next frame. Put it this way, there are two frequencies at play, the 24Hz film advance and the 72Hz lamp shutter. Each frame is projected three times, then advanced to the next frame (durring a shutter pass, so you don't actually see the frame zip off the screen... that'd be bizzare).

Straight 48 Hz shutter would be hard on the eyes and straight 24 Hz would be maddening. With current film shot at 24 Hz, the 24/72 mix is perfect. When cinema goes 48 Hz film (a nice easy upgrade), I imagine the projectors will run the shutter at 96 Hz... exposing each frame twice before advancing.

BTW, it's the mix of the 24 Hz frame advance and the 72 Hz shutter that makes the neat "ticka-ticka-ticka" projector sound you hear up in the projection booth. That and the (usually squeeky) film platters.

Re:projection frequency/flicker

[NeMon'ess]

Could you please elaborate on this more? Why is each frame shown three times? Does the film move at a constant speed and if the shutter stayed open the image would appear more blurry? How does this happen, on a mechanical level? It's obvious when I watch credits in particular, that if the screen is 24 feet tall, then in each frame the letters are jumping a good inch or three because there's only 24 frames to show.

Re:Why should exhibitors pay to upgrade to digital

[chill]

There is one notable exception: scratches.

I've been to midnight-showing, opening night of some movies and see scratches on the film.

The one DLP film I saw (Emperor's New Groove @ AMC Buena Vista in LBV, FL) was flawless.

Re:Does anyone know anyone who cares?

[gamgee5273]

HELL YES! I've been chomping at the bit for months to see this thing, and I'm already anticipating Episode III. Spider-man is already shsping up to be overblown (I personally think Green Goblin is too big a villian to put in the first movie - it all goes downhill from here). I think the vast majority of you are going to be surprised...

It would help if you weren't all cynics and could actually enjoy fare made for children. I personally think it is rather sad that people expect Lucas to push out things stronger than he did 20 years ago. Our tastes may have changed, but Lucas is almost 60 - his tastes were pretty well set in stone back then...

Lack of money

[acoustix]

Having worked in the theatre business I can tell you that money is the main problem. Right now there are many companies having finacial problems and some are filing for bankrupcy.

Why are they going broke when they charge so much for tickets you ask?
Because almost ALL of the box money goes to the movie studio. You can thank George Lucas for that one. For Episode 1 he wanted 80% of the box for himself and on top of that he wanted some of the consession sales, which is unheard of.

Consession sales are where the theatres make their money for operations, payroll, and so on...
So with the snack bar being the only real source of income for the theatre, they're not exactly swimming in the money once you figure in the cost of keeping all of the current equipment working.

Projectors aren't cheap either. You'll be lucky to find a USED one in okay shape for $20,000.

So, George, it looks like you have shot yourself in the foot on this one. You are the only person to request 80% of the box revenue. Want to know where the digital projectors are? LOOK IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS MORON!

There, I feel better now.

Re:Why should exhibitors pay to upgrade to digital

[nomadic]

Given that they are hurting right now, due to a glut of screens, this is not likely.

Of course, a digital screen could help them edge out the competition.
br. One sign that they're really desperate for customers is how a lot of theaters in my area replaced their economy class seating with some truly luxurious captain's chairs.

Wrong target market?

[wowbagger]

Considering where I plan on spending my weeking, a thought occurs to me.

They say there are about 20 theaters with digital projection equipment in the US. Theaters are having problems getting enough money to buy the gear. Perhaps the digital movement it targeting the wrong forum?

What if IMAX/Omnimax theaters were to go digital? Granted, I'd want at least a 4x improvement in spatial resolution before throwing it up on a big screen like that, but consider the cost of Imax films WRT normal theatrical releases. Perhaps that would be the place to start?

Now, what I'd really like to see is a standard by which a film could be set up for ether Imax or Omnimax - that way you'd avoid the distortion of the Imax to Omnimax lens Omnimax theaters have to use.

Also, I too would like to see an increase from 24 fps to about 60.

Yes, you'd need BIG HONKING harddrives to store all that information (looks down at his computer, with 210G of local storage). Check.

Locate DLP Theatres

[LinuxHam]

Don't have time to read every post right now, so while I'm thinking about it..

Locate a DLP theatre near you. And for the very early poster, there are 23 theatres in the US. Its not a typo.

Theater Upgrades

[Picass0]

Money is still a reality for theater owners, and many of them cannot convert over to a digital system for that reason.

I live in Omaha, Nebraska where less than a year ago they tore down one of the last three Cinerama theaters. The Indian Hills Theater was owned by Carmike cinema, who filed chapter 11 last year, they had expanded too quickly and got into trouble. Several interested parties steped forward to take over the theater, but there were problems with asbestos, local traffic, and the bottom line: the new owners would have to pony up $10,000 in rent every month. The local art house movie owner couldn't make that happen.

The Indian Hills had the same problem alot of other independant or small chain theaters have - there are 24 screen Uberplexes that are kicking there asses. People didn't care that the Indian Hills had the world's largest wrapparound Cinerama screen. A Cinerama film projected from three projectors looks a bajillion times more beautiful that George's shitty digital standard.

The theater business makes it's money at the concession stand. For all of the money Studios make from a film, the screen showing it does not get to keep much of the profit. Upgrades do not put more money in the pockets of the theater owner, who is in many cases doing his/her best just to keep the doors open.

about the screens.

[bigfnb]

I happen to work for a projection equipment manufacturer, up until 2000. We had the chance to see the first installation of a digital screen(playing the first Star Wars) in NY. And actually started on a networking project(for the theatre's to be able to swap movies, and data).

The biggest problem with them, and why they didn't take off wasn't mainly the quality of the movie, but the huge ammount of space needed for a single movie. Also the expense that was required by a major moviehouse to aquire one of these.

If I remember correctly, every movie was roughly 8-16gigs, thus requiring for some of these larger movie houses 128-256 gigs of information. But your not done yet. You need a way to back it up, a way to transfer it quickly, and a way to make sure the computer doesn't BSOD during the movie. (Yes, they were played on Windows NT machines).

The company I worked for Neumade Products actually had a bid in to try and get rights to create a projector for this medium, but eventually didn't see the large investment as being worth it.

The way the technology works, is by shooting light through a microchip that has thousands(if not millions) of mirrors, and reflectors. As the movies image changed, the mirrors, and reflectors rotated, or shifted to get the right ammount of light, and color onto the screen.

The technology wasn't then, and still isn't ready for the real world. It wasn't perfect, and could'nt be installed on different size screens(specifically the bigger ones). Thus making it unusable for a majority of the theatre chains out there.

Just what I remember, nothing more, nothing less,
Brian...

Re:The advantage

[LinuxHam]

CD's are near end of life for various reasons

That's interesting that you say that. At work, when seeing a demo of a new wireless webpad, I saw a technology demo for 1GB ROMs in CompactFlash format, pressable for 10c each. I never considered the possibility that music may one day be released in that format, but it seems reasonable. The main problem I can see with that is dropping one under your seat while driving.

And of course DRM is still impossible. I doubt they'll change the media format until they have a grip on DRM.

Here is a list of all the theaters.

[red_gnom]

Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing

Good!

[nedron]

I saw a demo screening of a digital-to-digital production early last year in Chicago and was not impressed.

Color fringing was substantial (note that company engineers were there to calibrate the projection system, so it was set up properly) on horizontal motion and you could actually see the pixel rows when sitting in seats near the screen. Contrast was a problem.

I'm not sure why people are on this bandwagon. I have a degree in cinema production and can say without hesitation that digital projection is a long way off in quality when compared to film.

Also, before anyone starts with the "scratches, dust, blah, blah, blah" I have this to say: with the exception of the film element, digital projection suffers from 90% of the problems film does. Dust in the mechanics and lenses (don't forget there is also a giant Xenon bulb housing back there), stained, gouged, and otherwise abused screens, broken seats, etc. Digital projection is going to make little difference in the quality of the viewing experience because the venue owner must take resposibility for providing a well maintained facility. If this hasn't happened already, it's not going to happen with digital projection. I can already tell you that instead of the occasional flash of dust or scratch, you'll have the constant presence of dead array elements showing up on the screen like black Legos. Think the theatre owner will rush out to buy a new DLP array? Not likely. He already doesn't have employees clean the screen once a month.

In fact, modern projection equipment is so good that we should rarely see significant film wear. Anything we do see is generally caused by poorly trained projection staff and cheap owners. Any lontime projectionist becomes as familiar with the equipment as a mechanic with a favorite car. You can tell by the sound of the projector whether something is ailing or not. At the first sign of trouble, the projector should be immediately checked. Unfortunately, most theatre chains wait until the unit is in the obvious throws of breakdown before calling repair. These are the same people who will own the digital projectors. Does anyone think it will be any different? I don't.

IMax is not a theatre chain...

[Svartalf]

They're a company making one of the more awesome theatre systems in existence. Also, arguably, the most expensive. The reason why IMax theatres are doing well is because most of them are museums of one sort or another or they are ran by private interests running them, not chains. (Cinemark is one notable exception, setting up at least several IMax theatres.)

One thought

[sharkey]

Discounts. If the theater doesn't show AOTC as it is meant to be shown, (digital screen), are they going to charge less for the less-than-advertised exporience?

Alternate Versions

[Grendel Drago]

Heh. David Fincher's "Star Wars". The first rule of Jedi Club... is do not talk about Jedi Club. The second rule of Jedi Club... is do not talk about Jedi Club!

Spike Lee's "Star Wars". Mace Windu: Muthafucka!

Kevin Smith's "Star Wars". Silent Bob: [meaningful look] Jay: Snootch to the bootch! [to Amidala] Can I see your tits? [smokes a comedically large blunt] Noitch!"

Toshio Maeda's "Star Wars". Amidala: Aieee!! Tentacle Beast: [unspeakable weirdness] Amidala: Oooh... Tentacle Beast: [decapitates Amidala] Ahh...

Pierre Boule's "Star Wars". Obi-Wan: It's a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!! Anakin: Doctor, I'd like to kiss you goodbye. Monkey Amidala: All right, but you're so damned ugly.

Ahh, I'm all out of +1 Insightful.

--grendel drago

Re:Alternate Versions

[curunir]

I'd like to see a Tim Burton version of it. That man can take a movie with a horrible plot and make it so stylized that it's a joy to watch.

If Tim isn't available, they might try having the Farelly bros. direct it. If the movie is gonna suck anyways, they should have it suck with style. Also, they'd easily keep their target 12-17 demographic happy.

Jar-Jar says:

[MainframeKiller]

Meesa no liking analog screens!

crocodile tears

[sohp]

I might have more sympathy for George Lucas if you could get the first three chapters on DVD. You know, Digital Video Disc.

Ain't Happenin

[smack.addict]

There is a very good reason it is not happening--there is no reason for movie theatres to go this route. Movie theatres barely survive as it is. The ticket prices exist solely to avoid losing their shirts. They break even or make money off of concessions. The movie studios, however, get very, very, very rich off the ticket prices.

Yet the movie studios are pushing digital theatres--a move that will cost theatres dearly and provide really no benefit to the movie-going public. I am much more concerned about a big screen, decent sound, and stadium seating than I am about whether or not my movie is digital video.

Movie studios want digital movie theatres because it will drastically reduce the cost of distribution. The irony is that it could lead to more screenings of non-studio works. IMHO, that is the true benefit of digital movie theatres. But it is not one that is going to give one theatre a competitive advantage over another.

Theaters broke & wary. Plus more on DLP techno

[Krees]

Small Times just ran an article last week on this same thing. There's no distribution cost to the studios, while the theaters are the ones who pay for the cost of the upgrade. Another problem? Theaters switched to digital sound systems in the early 90s, and that didn't pay off for them either. If you're interested in more information on the technology behind DLP check out the Small Times article.

Re:You are wrong. Video is the future...

[mpe]

Actually, modern polyester film stocks are strong enough to tow a car. They do not break under normal projector strain. Instead, they can actually lift the platters off the floor in the case of a brain-wrap!

They can still melt also the film isn't usually supplied in one length. Instead it's something like about 5 bits which need to be spliced together. The spliced bits are those which get handled most and so are more likely to get damaged.

Re:You are wrong. Video is the future...

[flimflam]

First of all, I think there may be a generational difference in terms of what looks better. To me, compression artifacts and regular pixels are much more objectionable than film grain. Because film grain is never in the same place twice, it allows you to have more apparent resolution than you can actually have in one individual frame. Also, I didn't grow up watching digital video (or even TV for that matter), so it just looks unnatural to me.

In response to a couple of particular points, though: I actually think that digital projection is the future, eventually. It's not quite there yet, but it will be. The big problem is economic. The TI projectors are ungodly expensive, and will be obsolete in less than 2 years. For less than half the price you can buy a top-of-the-line 35mm projector that will last at least 20. Since there is no increased revenue for the theater owner by going digital, it is a sure recipe for bankruptcy now.

Second: While digital projection is pretty good, digital acquisition has a long, long, long way to go before it catches up to film. Even the manufacturers will tell you that. CCD's are simply not capable of producing the dynamic range that film does. Video formats are not currently capable of reproducing the range that film does. In projection this is not a big issue, because there is enough range to look good. But in production this is a huge issue. There are many scenes that simply cannot be captured pleasantly on video (daylight exteriors are the hardest) because there is simply too much of a brightness difference between the subject (that you want correctly exposed) and the brightest elements in the frame (like the sky). This is a problem that will take a long time to overcome. For this reason I think that the most viable chain in the medium-term future will be to shoot on film, transfer to digital (files -- not HD-video -- HD is too limited both in terms of resolution and color gamut), and do digital post. Film prints will still have to be made for many years until virtually all cinemas are digital. Even then prints will have to be made for various overseas markets. By the way, my company sells HD cameras and DLP projectors (in addition to film cameras), so I'm not completely biased here. I think that HD cameras are very cool, and definitely have a place (particularly in documentary production). But I also love going to the movies and I don't want that experience to be degraded.

3: Maxivision is actually very cool. It gets you a huge inprovement in quality for a very modest cost. It actually only uses 50% more film, not double because each frame takes up 3 perfs instead of 4. There is only minimal modification of equipment needed (many cameras can already shoot 3-perf, and you don't need a new projector -- just modify your existing one). I suppose it's unlikely this will actually get widely adopted, but it's too bad because it would be nice to actually see a dramatic improvement in quality. (There's a lot to it besides just the frame-rate change -- there are modifications to improve screen brightness, registration and focus consistency as well).

I've only seen it once

[wiredog]

During a showing of "Young Frankenstein".

60fps: Showscan!

[ebh]

I know what the audience's reaction to the higher frame rate is. It's a very weird psychological effect. You want to go down and touch the screen.

Remember the Showscan format from the 80's? 60fps on 35mm film.

The first Showscan film I saw started with curtains separating to reveal an empty stage, where a guy came out and introduced the movie. Almost none of us realized it was the movie. No perceptible motion blur, and no jerkiness like you see on 24fps digital video from the lack of motion blur. It was like you were watching it live, right in front of you.

I wonder if 60fps DLP would be that realistic looking, or if there'd be other psychological effects from the reduced color space...

Re:Film companies DO own theater chains

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not sure when or where or even the UA situation, are they really a film production company? I haven't heard much of them making movies lately.

I think it was all a monopoly issue, much like if Disney, WB and MGM sold their own brand of DVD players that would play only their own DVDs. IIRC, the studios owned the actors, production, distribution and the theaters and played exclusive, the theaters would either only play that company's films or give heavy bias toward their own product.

Digital Theatrs now for P2P

[asv108]

I know a guy who works at the local Cinemark, I can have him stick an 802.11b access point hooked to the storage system. Imagine having a perfect digital copy of a movie on Gnutella the same day it's released?

Akira digital & film

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Actually, in Akira's situation, the film version was based on an unrestored interpositive, the digital version was restored and color repaired.

Something that needs to be said is that some theater chains really have sucky equipment, don't check their tuning and so on, they might be running old equipment and so on.

I do want to see a digital theatrical projection sometime, but I'm sure it's not going to be as crisp as a made-for-IMAX presentation such as the restored Beauty and the Beast.

Re:Lenses and glass

[BinxBolling]

While playing my first copy of Tomb Raider, I was surprised to see those familiar "octogon tunnels" normally associated with a movie camera used in bright sunlight. I'm sure there's a technical name for them; be glad to hear it from someone if they know.

The term is "lens flare". IIRC, it's actually an artifact of bad optics, and is not something that all cameras will produce -- to some degree, it's a deliberate "effect" even when you see it in movies.

Re:You are wrong. Video is the future...

[geekoid]

the 2nd run cities and smaller towns get the prints after they've run through the projector dozens of times.
exactly the people who can't afford digital equipment anyways.
If everyone start going digital, the industry will not make "special" prints just for those small towns and secondary markets. Thats mean at some point, those theaters will have NO new'ish releases. It may take a while for the digital equipment to drop enough for those theater owners, which mean they will probably go out of business.

You keep talking about film costs. which are some of the cheaper costs of a major motoin picture.
Yes ite expensive, but what percentage of Phantom menace cost where they?

My experience

[Tim McNerney]

I've seen probably seven or eight films in digital. Toy Story 2, Dinosaur, Perfect Storm, Monster's Inc. being a few. I've seen a couple in both digital and on 35mm. Here is what I found.

I prefer the digital, especially for animated films. The color saturation is much better, the picture is rock solid as compared to film (you don't really notice the shaking on a normal film until you see the digital equivalent, though when you see bleeding during credits, this is one example) and a pristine copy from the first day to the last are the biggest things I preferred.

Animation is really best able to take advantage of the format (especially cgi). It allows these films to avoid filmstock throughout their entire lifecycle. Plus, it tends to have very little noise in it which makes it a better candidate for compression and less artifact prone (though I don't remember any egregious problems with any of the live action films I've seen).

There are still problems. There are noticeable digital artifacts. Movement can look bad. But it is still early on in the life of these techniques.

I believe that the projecters use are 3 chip DLP's with a resolution of 1280x1024. It really is amazing how good a picture they can produce.

You're exactly right, it's like a big TV

[kfg]

And that's the problem.

My brother was projectionist at a local theater. This isn't just any theater, but a 1920's era Vaudville house that's been totally restored and brought up to spec with the latest movie technology.

He invited me to sit in the booth with him one day shortly after the restored theater had gone "online." It was a good, old fashioned movie show. Double feature with a short and a cartoon. The cartoon was the Bugs Bunny about the penguin from Hoboken.

My jaw dropped when it came on. For 20 years I'd only seen Warner Bros. cartoons on TV. I'd forgotten what they really looked like in their native enviroment.

Was it scratched, gritty, with specs of dirt? You bet your ass it was, but. . .

The colors. My God, this was NOTHING like what you can see on TV! The richness, the subtle shadings, the pure ART of the thing floored me.

Only seeing them on TV for 20 years made me forget what they were supposed to look like.

I'll live with the scratches and dirt specs until digital can make Bugs look the way Bugs is supposed to look.

When I go to the theater I don't want to see a big TV. I want to see FILM, light shining directly through a tinted medium.

At the moment, nothing else even comes close.

KFG

Just one question

[donutello]

Do you have to pay a fine if you return the film unrewound?

Digital Cinema is a Disruptive Technology

[epepke]

History has shown that disruptive technologies (GUI, small disk drives, flash cards, etc.) have followed this path:

1. They are developed by large corporations, are initially less cost-effective, but have certain peculiar advantages
2. The large companies have absolutely no clue how to market them, and they rot
3. They are taken up by smaller companies and find success in niche markets
4. Gradually, the technology improves to the point where is is better and cheaper than the old technologies
5. Large companies suddenly notice them again, and they become standard

Digital film is a classical example of a disruptive technology at stage 2. It won't take off until it is adopted in niche markets.

I suggest for the niche market something I thought of a few years ago for HDTV: small "art" film houses, the ones that now aren't above using projection of standard video at a pinch, who make most of their money from selling beer and espresso, and have small but dedicated clientele. Set up a distribution system where a small theatre can lease such a system and download films. Offer a variety of older films in digital form (possibly scanned from prints but ideally from interpositives). This would provide a nice, steady stream of revenue for older films that were not blockbusters but which will always have a steady market amongst the people who go for this sort of thing.

It is probably too small a market for the studios to notice, so some small entity is going to have to negotiate with studios to provide this service.

As this happens, companies will be able to work to improve the technology, eventually getting it to the point where most of the (currently legitimate) objections will not apply.

Re:You are wrong. Video is the future...

[VValdo]

Second: While digital projection is pretty good, digital acquisition has a long, long, long way to go before it catches up to film. Even the manufacturers will tell you that. CCD's are simply not capable of producing the dynamic range that film does. Video formats are not currently capable of reproducing the range that film does. In projection this is not a big issue, because there is enough range to look good. But in production this is a huge issue. There are many scenes that simply cannot be captured pleasantly on video (daylight exteriors are the hardest) because there is simply too much of a brightness difference between the subject (that you want correctly exposed) and the brightest elements in the frame (like the sky). This is a problem that will take a long time to overcome. For this reason I think that the most viable chain in the medium-term future will be to shoot on film, transfer to digital (files -- not HD-video -- HD is too limited both in terms of resolution and color gamut), and do digital post.


Yeah, I know I kinda diverged from projection to acquisition a bit. I guess what I'm saying is that projection is more or less there-- it looks great-- but in production as well, money will be saved (although Kodak will argue not that much) by acquiring on video. And I think they're a lot closer than you say-- yeah, video's lattitude isn't 11 stops yet, the aesthetic is slightly different, but I kinda like the lack of grain and the better colors. It's not film, but it's.. something else.

Video technology is always improving and becoming less expensive and the film-look processes are getting much better too.

Will film ever completely disappear? I don't think so. Some filmmakers will continue to use it, no doubt. But clearly video is moving in to replace it in a lot of areas. And they're (Bamboozled, Session 9, Series 7, Star Wars II, How High (so I hear), Time Code, etc.) coming to a theater near you.

Then there are movies like "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" that was shot on film, then transferred 100% to digital to be edited and processed, and then transferred back to film...

W

edge out the competition...

[WinPimp2K]

Bah humbug! (Bear with me while I pull numbers out of thin air and further pretend you are a theater operator)

More specifically, the new digital projector will cost upwards of 100 grand. Your theater seats 300 people, and you generally sell 1000 tickets per day. (five showings at 200 people per - you are doing good!) And you aren't going to be able to sell off the old projector - not everything is available digitally, and when it is all digital who the heck will buy your old film projector for anything near what it actually costs?

Now, pretend that you will actually get 5% more people coming for the "improved digital" experience. Well, that is an additional 50 people per day. But your box office basically goes to the distributor/studio (400.00 extra per day,but not to the theater). So you get 5 bucks per person on the concession stand - or an extra 250 bucks per day. Gee that would almost pay for the upgrade in a year -if you can count on that five bucks per extra person at the concession stand. On the other hand, the studio gets an extra 400 bucks per day from the box office (over a hundred grand per year), but it actually saves them a few thousand in the costs of actual films that they do not have to make and distrbute.

Oh, but wait - you don't have just one screen, you a new stadium seating multiplex with 2 dozen screens. And you are still paying off the debt you took on constructing that to get ahead of the competition, plus you are hurting because of the long term leases on the mall multiplexes you cannibalized when you put up the new stadium seating facility.

And having learned some hard lessons from the stadium seating construcion glut, you know that if you do upgrade to digital and start seeing slightly better numbers, well, then your competitors (who lost that extra 50 tickets per day per screen) are going to be forced into upgrading aswell - if they can afford to. If they can't afford to, they will take other steps to remain competitive - maybe cutting their ticket prices. You can pretty much be guaranteed that you won't see those extra customers long enough to recover your investment in a new projector.

But wait, we aren't even talking about a single multiplex! You are actually part of a national chain, and theses decisions are made at a regional level (the manager at McDonalds does not decide what gos on his menu either). So rather than a decision involving a dozen screens, and a couple of million bucks, we are talking hundreds of screens and real money. All so we won't disappoint George Lucas - the prima donna snob whose ideas of "fair play" kept us from running Episode 1 on most of our screens for the first few days to milk maximum revenue, and then cut back to handle just the die hard fans who put down "Jedi" as their religion on census forms.

No, theater operators actually have a strong financial DIS-incentive to "go digital". Their demands that the studios subbsidize it make a heck of a lot of sense - the studios will see all the major cost savings on the digital distribution over physical media, but there won't be any overall change in the actual numbers of tickets sold or buckets of popcorn purchased - hence no advantage for the theater.

Can't be make digital softness?

[AlpineR]

I know of what you speak. In high school, all my music was on cassette tapes. I later bought some of the same albums on CD, thinking the quality would be better. But actually I prefer the old tapes -- a bit softer, richer, and smoother.

But couldn't analog-like filters be applied to digital recordings? Sort of like when you watch Martha Stewart on TV -- they use a blurry lense to give the show a warm, fuzzy feeling. With the right tools, a director could modify the digital print to be soft, harsh, or distorted as the story dictates.

On the other hand, as an amateur artist I see the value of working with limited tools. I can paint more pleasingly with a sable paintbrush and watercolors than a mouse and Gimp. The old analog tools meld well with our analog minds and bodies.

AlpineR

Re:Can't be make digital softness?

[foobar104]

With the right tools, a director could modify the digital print to be soft, harsh, or distorted as the story dictates.

Actually, that's not the job of a director. That happens in visual effects, or sometimes in editing.

Discreet's Inferno product costs upwards of US$500,000, and one of its major selling points is its grain management tools. You can pick a particular film stock and apply grain to your footage that looks like it came from that kind of stock.

The idea, of course, is to match the look of digitally created effects shots to the look of the rest of the film. But the same tools can be used to add grain to HD footage to make it look more "filmic."

The difference between audio and video

[kfg]

When I pop in a CD I want to hear the acoustic guitar like the player was sitting in my living room. Music is an auditory art, and for the most part the artist wants you to hear what he hears when he plays it. Music is the art of reality.

Movies are entirely different. Even the physical medium of images are born of a physical phenomenon entirely different than that which produces sounds and the intent of film production is also very different.

The fact of the matter is that in making a film a great deal of trouble is gone to to make sure the audience * does not * see what the director sees. He dosn't want you to see the microphones, the guy on the soundboard or the miles of cable strewn about. All things that seem perfectly natural when watching a live musical performance.

He also dosn't want you to see that that Victorian drawing room is constructed of paper and paste, that the giant tanker tossing about in a hurricane is a 6 ft model in a swimming pool, and he dosn't want you for a minute to realize there are NO spaceships buzzing about like Fokker Triplanes anywhere in this universe.

The phrase "Movie Magic" exists for a reason, because movies and magic are in fact part of the same art.

Movies are about *illusion!*

With all the advances in CG to create illusion on film, the fact of the matter is that, * at the moment*, film still does a better job of presenting this illusion *to the audience* than any digital medium does.

Watching the latest digital effects on DVD and a high resolution monitor tells me that the time will come when that will change.

But it isn't here yet.

KFG

Re:The difference between audio and video

[Golias]

When I pop in a CD I want to hear the acoustic guitar like the player was sitting in my living room. Music is an auditory art, and for the most part the artist wants you to hear what he hears when he plays it. Music is the art of reality.

Except that most modern music doesn't really exist in reality.

Ever since Wendy Carlos released "Switched On Bach", the definition of hi-fi has changed. For small ensembles, you still want to try to create the illusion of the "real" performance (although no living room stereo could ever match the power of a full orchestra... you wouldn't want it to if it could), but for the vast majority of what people listen to, it's more like animation that photography.

The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" can be reproduced, sort of, on a live stage, but the "performance" captured by the record is the result of endless hours of studio trickery.

David Gilmour recorded a guitar solo on "Comfortably Numb" which is considered one of the all-time great rock guitar solos... but it never was performed, and never can be. It's physically impossible for a single player to reproduce it. He actually played about a dozen improvised solos, and then patched together the phrases he liked best with a mixing board.

more info

[headchimp]

The movies are loaded from a dvd, don't remember the compression specs. Monsters came on a single disk, I'm sure others like Black Hawk Down spanned 2 or more.

The machine I worked on had 4 80gig scsi drives connected via fibre channel which is what the movies are eventually played from.

Here's a link to the parent company that built the machine:
http://www.technicolordigital.com/index.html

Incentive? Costly.

[hether]

Where is the incentive for movie theatres to switch to the new format if they are not having any problems with their current system?? Will they get movies before non-digital theatres or some other perk for switching? If not they won't bother. Consumers aren't demanding digital anyway. So what if George Lucas is dissapointed? Most moviegoers were dissapointed with his last Star Wars film.

Any of the theatres near where I live would have to shut down rather than go to digital. They are old and hardly make any money as it is. The towns they are in are small and they would have no way to justify the cost. As it is I am surprised they are hanging on and wonder if the owners are losing money just to continue to provide one of the only entertainment venues in town. And getting new movies first or similar wouldn't be an incentive to these types of theatres as they already get movies a couple of weeks behind because that's all they can do.

Re:None of you seem to know what your talking abou

[guinsu]

Have you noticed that a home projector setup can be brighter with better colors than the average megaplex? Thats how I feel about setups I have watched, maybe 35mm at its best is better than DLP, but the average is pretty shitty compared to what you can do at home for a few thousand.

Don't forget this critical point.

[bigdreamer]

This whole discussion reminds me of a quote everyone forgets:

"Technology, no matter how dazzling, hold an audience for longer than five minutes without a captivating story."

Steve Jobs
Pixar's 1996 Report

People can wonder about how come some movie technology doesn't seem to make it, why do some movie studios with special effects have been sold. They have all forgotten this essential truth.

Until people see that the movie's ability to captivate is more important than the technology used in the movie (or to display to movie, for that matter) we will have more discussions like this. But as I write, there's over 400 posts to this discussion alone. I expect this point to be lost in the uproar.

Higher frame rate for Digital Movies?

[NanoGator]

One idea I really like is that they can now run movies at higher frame rates. When I was in Brazil, they used a TV projector with a video tape to run local commercials. Since it was NTSC, it was done at 60 fields a second. That looked really cool on the screen! Ever since then I've been aching to see movies at a higher frame rate.

The Seattle Cinerama Rocks!

[Com2Kid]

Somebody above said it is digital, hmm, may be. ::checks site:: Yup, it is!

Ok, listen up, I don't like microsoft having a monopoly any more then the next antiMShavingAmonopoly slashdot'er, but damnit, the Cinerama is ONE damn good benefit of it.

If you have not seen Lord Of The Rings, Starwars Episode 1, Gladiator, and Harry Potter on this screen, then your life SUCKS. Period. It does.

Yes folks, even Star Wars Episode 1 was good on this screen, and with the sound system in it you could hear EACH AND EVERY ARROW flying by in the opening scene of Gladiator.

Made folks damn near want to duck and hide for cover.

The theater is that good. The seats are nice (though they bend back a bit too much, and some people find them too high up off the ground, their legs end up going numb or at least getting bit into by the chairs edge. ^_^ ), the sound system will have your bones shaking (the THX intros alone are well worth it, there are THX approved theaters and then there are theaters that THX movies are MADE for. ) and even the shittiest movie is well worth seeing here.

Bill Gates can rot in hell, but there is a special place in Heaven for people like Paul Allen who bring this much joy to Geeks. :)

DIGITAL IS A DOWNGRADE (for now)

[johnrpenner]

the gamma of digital projectors (usually gamma 2.2) is still not (although someday it might be) as good as FILM GAMMA (gamma 1.0). stuff captured on film has a smoothness of gamma that is still smoother than anything caputured by a CCD.

the same is also true of 35mm cameras vs digital cameras. even a $20 disposable 35mm camera has a MINIMUM resolution (approximately 2500 x 1200 pixels) that is better than most $400 digital cameras, and even if you match the resolution, you still have a lousy 2.2 gamma for digital images coming off a CCD (as opposed to 1.0 gamma for film). if you happen to *like* poor CCD gamma quality - that's your choice, but why do people always automatically swallow the HYPE that equates digital = better, when its not!?

although the benefits of going digital (convenience of downloading the film instead of shipping physical flim) is great, it doesn't necessarily follow that the picture that you're going to see is actually any BETTER!

A Disney Animator Recommended It...

[wls]

Went to Walt Disney World at the end of last year, and managed to get substantial face time with a really nice animator. She recommended we pop over to Disney's digital theater and watch Monster's Inc.

Coming from someone who made movies for a living, she seemed pretty qualified to notice the difference.

Frankly, I'd have to agree. In the opening Pixar demo, I could easily see details that just weren't visible on standard film stock. The bird's had scratches on their beaks from pecking; the wire they sat on was branded; everything looked very crisp and bright.

Convinced I was just being more observant this time around, I made a point to see the movie again in a non-digital theater. My observations on the digital showing were correct. The animator was right.

The funny part was when, as I was buying my ticket, I asked the person at the ticket booth what they thought of the digital show. The answer was "it looks the same to me."

That got me wondering -- if you don't know what to look for, are you going to be able to appreciate it?

Unfortunately, I'm not a big stereo buff, and when my musician friend took me to a local store to pick a home theater system, I couldn't tell the difference between the really high end stuff and mid-range. Perhaps this is due to my hearing not being as acute as his? Now my vision is much better.

Could it be that the average eyesight is not that great, or could it be that the average viewer isn't looking for extra details but does notice the absence of extensive film damage and splicing?

I wasn't being sarcastic! I like the grain!

[Artifice_Eternity]

Man, ppl. on Slashdot are so damn cynical. I was being serious. I like film better than digital, partly for the grain (also for the superior image capturing -- see my earlier post under this topic).

I don't even own a turntable, and I'm not dogmatic about vinyl being better than CDs, but I do find vinyl interesting. And I freely admit that the distortion, in both media, is part of the charm.

Re:I wasn't being sarcastic! I like the grain!

[colmore]

I'm too young to have any nostalgia for vinyl other than a sesame street record on a fisher price record player. But recently I've started to like it more and more. There's something to be said for the quaint and inconvenient. Certain albums, especially anything relating to folk or hip hop, just work better on vinyl for some reason.

Also with old recordings, there's something intellectually satisfying about knowing that from the singer's vocal cords, to the sound waves in the air, to the magnetic patterns on tape, to the shape of the groove on the record, to the electric pulse in the speaker, to the sound wave in the air, to your eardrums, there has been a continuous and unbroken *physical* reproduction of the original waveform. Encoding makes the whole thing a little bit artificial.

Another messed up film

[althalus]

My bad film experience was when a bonehead projectionist messed up the order of MI:2 on opening day. Apparently there were 4 film reels.. obviously played in sequence. Only problem is the sequence we got was 1-3-2-4... Ever seen a packed theater give a collective WTF??? "Didn't that guy just get shot a minute ago?"

But Wait! There's More!

[cryptochrome]

Everyone here is right. The current resolution and color space of digital is insufficient - but it can be improved with new/better technology. Those digital projectors are expensive - but those prints are even more expensive.

What really matters is that distribution of digital films could be an IMMENSE improvement over the existing network. There would be no limits on where, or when, or how many screens a film could be shown. Everyone could show a hot film on opening night. Theaters could adjust the number of screens they're showing their films on at will. Staggered worldwide release of films due to limited prints would be a thing of the past (the sole reason for the evil DVD region coding). Older films could be re-shown at will, without worrying about coordination. Instead of renting a copy of a film at a set price, theaters could pay based on seats sold/available, eliminating discrimination between large and small venues - indeed, leading to a trend towards theaters with more, but smaller screens for increased flexibility, and greater intimacy when desired - including private, on-demand screenings. Who needs a home theater when you can have the real thing?

In short, going to the movies could be a lot more fun for the fans, and more efficient for the theaters and studios.

Hell yeah, we should go digital. And the studios should be paying for it. They stand to benefit in a big way.

Perhaps this is why...

[cr0sh]

Imagine that digital projection is everywhere, and it is great quality. Movies "zip" across the internet from the distributor to the movie theater near instantly on dedicated high-speed data lines. Here is where the problem lies...

Currently, a film is made, then multiple copies of it are created. There aren't enough copies made for every theater in the world, because the cost of making the copies is pretty large. So, a limited number are made, and the movies are sent out in a "staggered" fashion around the world - first in America (for American films, usually), then to Europe and Japan, etc. What happens is a movie will open in one country, but not in every country - a few months later Europe gets it, then Japan (or however the order is) - until eventually some backwater country may get it, after it has passed through a ton of mailings and numerous playings (pity the small man on the totem pole) - scratchy and ugly - but that is the way it is.

With digital, it doesn't have to be that way - "instant" transport via dedicated lines, no film to copy, etc - there isn't any need now to suspend sending it everywhere - right?

Well, look at DVDs - same thing, nearly - but it has this funky thing called "region coding" - it is an artificial scarcity placed upon the medium, to continue with the staggering of releases, so that the DVD isn't seen in Europe while it is waiting for the actual movie. If movies went digital, wouldn't this DVD region-coding staggering issue be seen as the real scam it is?

Or maybe they (MPAA? SOMEONE!) are making extra money by staggering the movies in some fashion (ie, the staggering has to be done - so let's make money off of the situation!) - but with digital distribution, away goes that revenue stream...?

As always - follow the money, and there will be your answer (it surely can't be the cost of the projectors - I am certain that the money saved by using digital projectors over normal projectors would easily cover any extra infrastructure cost - ie, network, servers, etc - at the theater - those non-digital projectors are EXPENSIVE)...

Re:None of you seem to know what your talking abou

[Alex Belits]

I don't know, my projector is rather limited, and I would prefer film over aanything that iy can produce... Maybe film projectors' power is limited by air-cooling of the film, and colors are limited by the need to have all pigments on all frames, and under threat of fading, while LCDs are easier to cool and can use any reasonable way to get red, blue and green as close to the optimal as one would want...