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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."
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.
There is nothing natural about 24fps.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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?
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