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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."
Once a bunch of theaters start to buy them the price will come down and there are some pretty good benefits to doing so. One, it makes it cheaper so movie studios can do more effects and maybe even hire a few decent actors. Two, it looks sweet. I saw SW: AOTC on both formats and I could see the difference. Imagine how slick the Matix would look in this format as well...
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. Quality isn't the big reason, flexibility is.
-E2
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
those that want (??) to pay 15-20 dollars for a film that is all flash, and no substance, and
those that want to see a movie that is made on film because it's cheaper, and doesn't require mammoth amounts of special effects
I'll take the cheaper option, foreign films and quality shows anyday...
One need only look at the track record of digital technology to answer this question.
Microfiche gave in to digital archives, vinyl has been replaced by CDs for all but the nuttiest audiophiles, even books are more and more moving to an e-book format.
For the moment, however, we're stuck with analog. I saw a digital projection of ATOC in New York, and it was a disappointment. The colors were off, blurry pixels were visible in many of the scenes, fast action shots were marred by compression artifacts, and there were too few scenes with Jar-Jar Binks. The digital sound was great, which should come as no surprise, as it's been great for the last half decade.
Fortunately, we can always count on Moore's Law. Even as I type here at my dumb terminal, digital projection technology is being improved at a rate that analog tech can't touch. I'd hold out for the moment, but in a few years digital projection should be much better and more affordable than the "old school" systems currently in place.
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There is nothing natural about 24fps.
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Just think of books - does it really matter what sort paper the book is printed on? Of course, it may matter at extremes - books on toilet paper probably wouldn't be readable and books on fancy paper can be really beatiful. But ultimately the contents is what's important.
Would "Blaire Witch Project" be any more effective on a digital screen?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I have a feeling those digital projector parts are going to cost me big.
The cost of digital may start out high, but it will rapidly decrease. Why?
First of all, you're not using nearly so many moving parts. A digital projector is either going to read from a larg capacity hdd or some sort of laser media rather than a large, prone to failure, reel-to-reel system.
For those who haven't been inside a theatre projection room in the last little bit, these 'reels' are actually complex turntable systems that cost thousands to maintain.
Also, as LCD projectors become more and more common, the bulbs and other projection equipment are coming down in price. You can already set up a reasonable home digital projection system for under $5000. Scale that up, and you'll see that as more and more of digital projection equipment becomes commodity hardware, prices will plummet.
There is one caveat to this. Hollywood may see this as a bad thing since it lowers the bar for theatre ownership and therefore, control of theatre revenue. They may leverage their influence against hardware manufacturers or buy legislation that makes it prohibitive to buy the equipment, even if the prices would normally fall.
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The DLP projectors that they use in a theater have a resolution of 1280x1024, and that's progressivly scanned of course. So, you get approxmiately 1.3 megapixels out of it. For comparison, a 35mm print has around 4 megapixels of resolution, and a 35mm negative can have around 20 million megapixels of effective resolution. See why I don't like digital?
While it's true that DLP systems don't run at some sort of magic uber-resolution, this doesn't sound right to me -- first of all, I remember hearing that the resolution was more like 5,000 pixels on the horizontal and second of all, that doesn't seem like the dimensions of a movie screen.
Where are you getting your information?
Ah!
-Snerdy
Like all technology, the price of digital projectors will go down. In a couple years, repairing your analog projector may cost more than repairing your digital, just like it costs more to fix a reel-to-reel audio machine than it does to fix (or buy a new) digital audio editing station.
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You have basoically put your finger on the central point. The benefits of Digital projection fall mainly to the distributor, but the costs fall mainly to the theatre. Given their own, first use, 35mm "celluloid" print, ther will be little difference to th theatre between a digital and a 35mm print. - except that they have to shell out big bucks to pay for the digital projection equipment.
The studio, by contrast, ahs a problem. How may prints, at approximately $6000 each, to they make? If you want to open in 2000 screens in the US (forget international for the moment) thet $12M for prints alone - not trivial even in the budget of a megamoveie. Digilally - $5000 of satellite time for a multicast to every cinema in the US (that has bought the $200,000 worth of kit to do the job).
Expect (or see - it is already happening) an arm-wrestl3e between the distributors and the thatres. Victory for the studiois is inevitable - the onluy question is the timescale. My bet - 3 to 5 years. In 5 years time, 355mm will be standby equipment only, with digital (techie details irelevant) the main distibution medium.
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Yes and after you play that LP 1,000 times it sounds like utter crap even on the good stuff. Oils from the human hands and using it over and over will (not might, WILL) degrade the vinyl. CD's may not be perfect (Only thing perfect in music is a live performance), but they are very very good. Good enough I don't care. People who say this are the kind taht have a few hundred albums and are trying to justify keeping them or going to CD. Don't kid yerself. Also, DVD will DOOM us parents to watching Roly Poly Olie 500 times a day because the DVD will never wear out. ONly way us parents will have a way out is to severely scratch the DVD.
Gorkman