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Star Wars Digital Projection Theaters
Zoreta writes "Wired Magazine lists the 19 digital projection theaters in the country where Attack of the Clones can be viewed as Lucas intended."
Say what you will, I can't wait for AotC- digital projector or not. I just
wish *blatant non subtle hinting* some kind soul could get me into an early
showing in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area ;) And at least I have spiderman to
tide me over. Sam Rami vs. George Lucas. Gonna be a fun summer.
DIGITAL PROJECTION
...
In a Theater Far, Far Away
When he began shooting Star Wars Episode II in an all-digital format, George Lucas imagined that Attack of the Clones could screen in 2,000 digital-projection theaters nationwide. Oh, well. As of the May 16 opening, only 19 screens had the equipment required to do so. Here's where to find them.
- Chris Baker
Harkins Arrowhead Cinemas 18 Peoria, Arizona
AMC Media Center 6 Burbank, California
Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21 Megaplex Irvine, California
El Capitan Theatre Los Angeles, California
Loews Century Plaza Los Angeles, California
AMC Mission Valley 20 San Diego, California
AMC 1000 Van Ness San Francisco, California
AMC Pleasure Island 24 Lake Buena Vista, Florida
AMC South Barrington 30 South Barrington, Illinois
AMC Studio 30 Olathe, Kansas
General Cinema Framingham 16 Framingham, Massachusetts
Show Case Cinemas Randolph Randolph, Massachusetts
Edgewater Multiplex Cinemas Edgewater, New Jersey
AMC Empire 25 Theatres New York, New York
Clearview Ziegfeld Theatre New York, New York
Loews Cineplex E-Walk New York, New York
Cinemark at Valley View Valley View, Ohio
Showcase Cinemas Springdale Springdale, Ohio
Cinemark at Legacy Plano, Texas
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
Commander Taco, I could suggest contacting someone at Star Theaters. I'm sure you could get into some advanced screening with press credentials. Here's the URL:
http://startheatres.moviefone.com/
I'd shoot for the Star Southfield -- stadium seating and THX r0x0rs.
Speak truth to power.
It's not digital projection, but nothing else in the area beats the Uptown theater. It's incredible.
Last I heard, the "digital theaters" were working on micromirror arrays, which are great little devices (I spent about a year in college trying to build a microscope with some), except when their pixels get stuck, which although not as frequent as, say, the blue screen of death, is frequent enough to warrant a problem for a theater running the camera for 80+ hours per week. Then again, my last experience with them was 3.5 years ago, so TI and others may have improved the performance significantly since then.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
I saw Mission to Mars projected digitally at AMC 30 in Olathe, KS. The picture was so good that I could see the makeup that Gary Sinise was wearing. But it was very distracting to see hime wearing some kind of rouge on his cheeks and some sort of shiny lip gloss. Movie makers need to be mindful of this sort of thing. Also Mission to Mars was one of the shittiest movies ever. That never helps.
Yes, it is absolutely that much better. You bring up good observations, but TI and the other company that does digital projection knew they needed to match film and that viewers wouldn't tolerate pixelation. When I get poor picture quality on my Dish, it's because of the compression and decompression of the digital signal. Sure Dish Network can cram 500 channels on their satellites, but picture quality suffers. Same with digital cable.
With digital "film" projection, there isn't the same level of compression/decompression. They have as much bandwidth as they need since it's feeding off of a hard drive rather than over cables or through the air.
I'm Peggy.
Digital cable is bad because cable companies seem to be trying to use it as a way to squeeze more channels into their datastream. "Ooh! This fancy MPEG can compress Discovery Science down to 9600 bps! Then we can add the All-Curling Network. Whaddya think, boss?"
At least Comcast in Montgomery County, Maryland has been going down this dark path; their digital channels exhibit far worse quality than the analog ones (which are already pretty horrid).
As for bad signals causing severe glitching, I don't think that will apply in digital projection. Since the source of the signal (Hard disk? How do studios distribute digital movies? anyone?) is in the same room with the display device, there isn't likely to be glitching.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Here's a list of DLP-enabled Theatres from Texas Instruments, includes at least 6 theatres not listed in the Wired article, plus links to the theatres' websites.
DLP = Digital Light Processing and is supposedly better than Plasma/LCD. 4 Million+ mirrors in this sucker less than a micron apart each.
I'm a 2000 man.
Right here. It is world-wide. I am not sure how often the list is updated. I believe Wired's list is more updated for this movie.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
As an aside, I believe any theater showing the Star Wars movies as a first run (e.g. - first 8 weeks of release) has to be THX certified.
Which, of course, pads Lucas's pocket a bit more (THX certification costs $$$), but also "ensures" that you get the movie experience that the film maker expected.
If, for instance, there's an issue with a THX certified movie in a THX certified theater, you can call 1-800-PHONE-THX to lodge a complaint. THX claims that they investigate every such complaint.
Call me picky...
;o)
The "tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh" sound you hear is likely not a gate opening and closing. The light flicker is done using (effectively) a fan blade. The sound is the rollers moving the film across the apperture. The film has to stop over the appature (so you don't get a blurry frame). This stop-and-go is what makes most of the projector noise.
If I misunderstood what you were referring to as a "gate", I appologize.
As to the flicker, that is most often attributable to a nearly worn out Xenon bulb. The older they get, the less even their light output is.
Personally, I can't wait for the end of film. I'm no longer a projectionist though.
Yes, they cost ungodly sums of money, but don't be fooled. Lucas isn't pushing DLP because of the great resolution. He is pushing it because a major release (3,000+ screens) means $33 - $35 MILLION in duplication costs.
Digital distribution cuts that to a fraction. Add to that the ability to check dailies in Hollywood via an optical link -- so the execs don't have to get dirty on site, and you have a winner.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Whoa, hold your horses there. HDTV is NOT simply "broadcasting digital signals". HDTV is a standard (in the US) that encompasses many aspects of digital media including the format of the content, the specs for displays, the format for transmission, etc. HDTV does not necessarily imply digital (though it does here in the states, but not so in countries such as Japan which use(d) an analog standard). The resolution of a digital signal is not necessarily the same as the analog representation, since in the case of most digital cable systems and digital satallite (e.g. DirecTV), they use the MPEG1 standard which has a fixed resolution.
Also, HDTV signals are actually available in a great many regions, esp in large markets. Now the amount of content is fairly small, but it is there (e.g. CBS broadcasts in HDTV in many markets now).
Offtopic but actually, the post you linked to is not from the real "CmdrTaco", it's from "CmdrTaco (editor)" so technically speaking, taco wants to and always wanted to see it. The other guy who must like taco a lot doesn't want to see it. However, you state that your post is "For the lazy:" and i'm lazy so i'll just pretend you really got him...
ps. for future reference, look at the User #
"i can never say no to anyone but you"
Digital projection of digitized analog movie sometimes has problems. I saw a movie about white water rafting that disturbed me. The white water spray was fractal, and kept flickering on the screen. Another problem movie was the DVD version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (seen at MIT, of all places). Some of the model details flickered, especially the craters on the moon.
I suspect an "all the way through" digital processing shot with digital camera, post-processing digital and projection digital would have fewer of these problems. Second, proper spatial filtering to reduce jaggies helps. Third, a director who understands the limitations of digital would film scenes that reduce these problems.
I look forward to seeing Lucas's results.
The DLP website has some information. It is a big task and big expense for theaters to upgrade to it. You need special projectors, although (AFAIK) you use the same screen. The movie is actually stored digitally, which I assume means a big hard drive. The big advantage that I have seen to DLP is that the image brightness higher than film, the color clarity is similarly excellent.
Also the film quality doesn't degrade over time. Ever seen a movie after it's been in the theater for a while? You have probably noticed some aging of the film, such as scratches, fading, and so forth. There is no similar phenmomena with digital, so the 400th showing is just as clean as the 1st.
Saw Episode 1 in two different digital theaters. Had a chance to talk with some of the engineers who developed these technologies.
:-)
The first theater used an infrared-modulated liquid-crystal image light valve, developed by Hughes. An interesting feature of this technique is that the resolution is continuously adjustable (there are no pixels in the projector). Because the transfer function of the liquid crystal is nonlinear, it needs to be calibrated frequently, and that process (at that time) was not very automated -- perhaps that is why the TI mirror chip dominates this application today.
The second theater used the TI mirror chip. It provides fixed HDTV resolution, although it is possible to run this chip at various frame rates.
Both theaters used identical sources, at the same frame rate and HDTV resolution. (The projector uses an appropriate lens to stretch the image into the desired aspect ratio.) The compressed and encrypted movie was stored on a redundant array of disk drives (RAID5 I assume) that had a total capacity of 350 GB. An industry standard [don't remember the name] box was used to decrypt and uncompress the frames on the fly. Episode 1 used up about 250 GB, compressed.
Obviously, the compression used in this application is nowhere near as severe as the compression used on DVDs. I suspect this is one of the most important reasons why the image quality is so remarkably good. Yes, this is merely an HDTV picture writ large, but you will never see an image this good on any home theater -- at least not until you can get a 250 GB file at home....
The biggest improvement I noticed with (both of these) digital projections, compared with film, was the total lack of frame jitter. With film, there is always some wear and tear of the sprocket holes, and even a brand-new print will have the image jittering back and forth a little bit. (Imax, with its film registration pins, is largely immune to this problem.) Digital projection eliminates this annoyance forever.
Although the images looked just fabulous, everything was not perfect. The end credits, in particular, showed some artifacts, although these were not really obvious unless you walked up toward the front of the theater. Perhaps these were due to choices made during the compression process -- after all, Episode 1 was not a fully digital movie, and in fact this version was digitized from a completed film print. It will be interesting to see how a fully digital Episode 2 compares in this regard.
Ultimately, I would like to see digital theaters break away from their current limitations of resolution and (especially) frame rate, but I expect nobody will invest in these kinds of improvements until digital projection is much more widely accepted.
Here is the article by Roger Ebert about why he isn't a fan of digital projectors.
And to be fair, here is the response from a film maker in British Columbia.