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Will Digital Cinema Wipe-Out Today's Movie Theaters?
Phantoman asks: "I work for the Campus Cinema at University of California Davis and we are looking into getting a Christie or Barco DLP system for Digital Cinema projection. Now if this is the wave of the future I ask you all to compare 35mm to Digital. The price tag on a digital setup is roughly $140,000. Without content. 35mm isn't all that cheap, but if my old Century 35mm projectors break I can get replacement parts for usually less than $100-300. If something goes wrong with the DMD (digital micromirror device) I have a feeling those digital projector parts are going to cost me big. Are the movie theater chains going to get stuck with big costs down the road because Hollywood producers want to save money and have tighter control over distribution? As if they didn't a monopoly already: it costs us between $500-1000 (or half of our profits, whichever is more) for each night we show a movie!" At those prices it doesn't sound like digital theaters will overtake 35mm theaters anytime soon, but what would happen if Hollywood suddenly got the "bright" idea to limit 35mm reel distribution within the next few years?
"Digital is all well and good for the production end, but is anyone going to be able to foot the cost for digital on the presentation end or are we going to end up a straight-to-video world? Also, If anyone wants to help donate to a nonprofit for our digital system, email me. We were the second school to have 35mm, I would like to be the first to have digital."
Here's to hoping that digital cinema will be put on hold until it's better, and that Lucas will never be allowed to write love scenes again.
But there was a company that was souping up analog film beyond belief.
Basically, they added extra machinery to stabilize the film as it was wound through the projector, make sure the light was adjusted properly and colors were correct, etc. Can't remember if they upped the framerate, or not.
Think it might have been Ebert reviewing it? Anyway, the guy said it was *at least* on par with the best digital projection, and this was the prototype. Not to mention incredibly price competitive (think chopping the legs out from underneath digital) both on projector equipment, and film distribution (uses tried and true plstic film).
So, no, the future isn't necessarily digital. Then again, how many times have we seen a superior product die because someone influential pushes the inferior product (Lucas, in this case) ?
Not at all - this is Campus Cinema at UC Davis, the theater doubles as the largest of the Chemistry lecture rooms, and the price of a ticket is $3-4. Oh, and they don't sell refreshments - the building is primarily a lecture hall, so there's no place to sell them from. Try your math again, please.
The big advatage of Digital is being freed from having only a set number of titles you can run. Digitial takes up no space, doesn't wear out (media, not projectors) and you can run any title at any time.
That might be true if we were using eericson's digital cinema system, but that's not at all how it works in my neighborhood.
The d-cinemas I've been to all use the Technicolor Digital Cinema system, which consists of an embedded computer system with hard drive storage and a point-and-drool interface. The system interfaces with audio processors, a digital projector, and an automation system. Movies are loaded into the system on DVD-ROMs, although Technicolor also advertises satellite or broadband delivery as options.
Each auditorium has one AMS system showing one feature on one projector. The box essentially has no in and no out except for encrypted transports, making it pretty secure from piracy. There is, of course, always the possibility that somebody will steal the DVD-ROMs and crack the encryption, but you can never get rid of every possible weak link.
A system like the one you describe-- in which the content lives on a central data storage system that feeds multiple projectors in a theater complex-- would probably never be practical. It'd be too big and expensive, or too insecure, or both.
Digital cinema is really, practically, no different from traditional film cinema. Take the canisters/discs up to the projection booth, load 'em in the projector, and play the movie. When the run is finished, put the reels/discs back in the canisters/FedEx envelope and send 'em back to the distributor.
Wow, normally people assume I'm a moron, but this response really takes the cake!
Do you really think I thought 24fps movie could be expanded to 60? Didn't it occur to you that I meant that using digital technology movies could be captured at 60fps like they are with both HDTV and even NTSC? I mean seriously, why would you think that I meant converting old movies from 24 fps to 60? Didn't the fact that I mentioned a specific # of FPS to begin with clue you in to the idea that I might already know that about movies? Failing that, everybody knows that old movies wouldn't be reshown in theaters. At best I could catch these magically expanded movies on TV, negating the need to go find a digital theater to see them on. I think this is the stupidest that anybody has ever assumed that I am. heh.
Just so you know, it is possible to expand 24 fps video to 60 fps through interpolation.
There are products on the market today designed for interpolating the in-between frames of video for smoothing out slow motion sequences. Frankly, it'd be easy to use this to increase the frame rate of a video like you suggested I meant. It wouldn't be as accurate as simply filming at 60 fps, but it would certainly look smoother.
"Why shoot things at 60fps when you're going to either more than double your film costs or have something that has to be downsampled for everyone else?"
Becuse there is no film? With digital techonlogy, it's simply a matter of capacity. I don't know if you've heard about it or not, but HDTV is going to support the resolution of 1920 by 1090 (or some resolution like that) @ 60fps. Seeing as how this resolution exceeds what's being shown digitally today it's a safe bet that the technology is there to make full length movies at 60fps.
As for the benefit of it: Ebert had an opportunity to sample footage shot on a camera running at 48fps. He was extremely pleased with how much smoother the video was. The example he used was a moving truck drove by. In the 24 FPS version, he couldn't read the name on the side of the truck. At 48 it became clear.
It's not a question of if, rather a question of when. One day movies will be captured and shown at 60fps.
"Derp de derp."
Actually, it *is* about quality. As you say, a pristine 1st gen film print on a clean projector is better than the best digital projection (better colors, finer and less regular grain, wider exposure ratio). After a week or two of constant projection, though, the film gets scratched, dirty, and the colors wash out due to the lamp intensity. And normal film projectors at your suburban multiplex also have sprocket jitter, weave, and other problems. So yes, unless you plan to see everything on opening night at Grauman's Chinese Theater, the quality of a digital print is often likely to be better.
I saw AoTC at the Cinerama in downtown Seattle last Friday. The Cinerama is set up to do 70mm and it's damned impressive when they do (LoTR was
completely awesome). Yet I was unimpressed with AoTC, there were digital artifacts scattered throughout the film which I assume are caused by the TI DLP system used for projecting the movie.
If digital can make it easier to distribute films great, but not if the quality is going to suck.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.