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The Future of Digital Cinema
prostoalex writes "This article on ABCNews talks about two different technologies, aimed at bringing the cinemas up to the standards of this digital age. It points out some interesting information regarding the status quo such as "of the more than 35,000 movie screens operating in the United States today, only 60 are digitally equipped, largely because of the technology's $150,000 price tag"."
I'm paying $6 for 50 cents worth of popcorn and they can't afford to go digital? I don't think so.
I mean, it's a nice idea and simple and it's been known that more frames = better quality for years. It's not like he had to sit around and actually think a lot about how to make the quality better, just the way of doing it. 50% of his work was already done for him!
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So what's wrong with movies the way they are now? The resolution is fine and the motion is fine. The only people complaining about it are the Hollywood types who have something to sell. Besides the real money in Hollywood is in renting videos. The new formats that are being proposed will have zero impact on the television even if you are using hdtv.
Give those people a DivX player!! :) Oh and a fast internet connection, and whatever is the latest in P2P technology ;)
DRM can give the movie companies almost total control over how and when movies are shown in all theaters. Which is something theater owners would prefer to control themselves - as you can respond better to your local audience.
So, if "MIB-II" is tanking in Notown, USA, start showing "Minority Report" on an extra screen to bring more people in instead.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
"A conventional movie works by flashing a series of 24 pictures on the screen every second, creating the illusion of motion. All Maxivision48 does is squeeze in 48 frames per second and doubles the speed of the projector.
The effect is twofold: The faster speed provides a stronger illusion and the shorter film exposure creates a sharper picture.
It's a simple change that filmmakers and industry analysts say makes a dramatic difference. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that watching a movie in Maxivision48 is like looking through a window at the world."
As far as I know, that's bullshit. Increasing the number of exposures to 48 per second instead of 24, would only reduce the trademark flickering of conventional film projectors.
The reason for this is that a technique called motion blur has been used for as long as I remember, to negate the low frame rate of normal movie projectors. Notice if you pause a movie during a high-motion scene, the image is blurred. This is done in order to create the illusion of motion even in a still frame.
A high-motion scene projected with a normal 24fps film projector definitely looks much more fluid than playing a high-paced game of quake with 24fps for this reason.
Basically, film makers have created the illusion of fluid motion within the constraints of only having 24 frames per second by using motion blur, and video games have created the illusion of fluid motion within the constraints of not having motion blur by increasing the frame rate to levels way beyond 24fps.
In view of this, I can see why "not a single theater or movie studio has invested in Goodhill's Maxivision48 technology". Technology? Overclocking conventional movie projectors to show 48fps instead of 24fps is not exactly "technology". I know if I owned a movie theater, I wouldn't pay for "technology" like this.
Goodhill expects his company's projectors will cost theater owners about $11,000 for installation, then a $280-per-month leasing fee
What will they think of next? : )
FRA: STFU GTFO
Maxivision48 can not remove flicker (like, who would use a 48Hz monitor?) and there is always trouble with complex anamorphic lenses at the edges. Contrast is probably better on film now, but that will certainly change in the near future. And film will always get scratched...
Score:1, Unread
I can understand why the studios aren't going for this Maxivision48 system. After all, if the studios were really interested in improving film quality, surely they'd have standardised on 70mm by now? The difference in clarity between, say, the 70mm print of 2001 and a 35mm print is very noticable.
No, it seems to me that the principal (possibly the only?) advantage of digital is the ease of distribution, and that's why the large studios are pushing for it. Maxivision48 means you've got twice as much film stock to distribute, so I don't see it succeeding.
Movie prices are already $8.75 here, and they keep climbing. I can't help but think if the theaters here go digital, that price will rise even more. Hell, it's cheaper for me at this point to guy buy a DVD instead of 2 movie tickets.
If there was a "-1 Not Funny", that'd be my most used mod.
For a consumer, the big digital payoff might be down the road when a movie has been through a projector so many times that the quality becomes objectionable on an analog print. But since the majority of a movie's gross is in the first few weeks of the run and the studios get the lion's share of the take during those weeks, the economics may work against digital. The studios reap the long term benefit of digital and the theater owner has to pay for it. If I owned a theater, I think I'd hold back as well.
used to be owned by Hoyts and was only two theaters. Being small , Hoyts only allowed second rate movies to be shown so people would go to the bigger theaters in the surronding towns. Eventually they closed it down and it sat empty for a year till a local guy took out a loan, bought the place, renamed it Welch Theaters, upgraded to Digital and charges $7.50 for a movie. That's what I paid to see AOTC's midnight premire.
It's not Digital Technology that is raising ticket prices, it is poor management. Welch Theaters is one example of why we need the little guys around.
Oh, and one more thing.
FUCK HOYTS!
>
...I can't wait to see the illicit copies of films that start floating about the Internet - rather than being your average filmed-from-the-back-of-the-movie-theatre quality, some bright spark would have managed to point their satellite dish at the right point in the sky, decrypt the signal, monitor the transmission of the film, get the data, decrypt it, post up a perfect copy.
Only thing is, though, that films would of course be of incredibly high resolution if they were being shown in the cinema. About that terabyte disk...
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
3 steps to DivX heaven:
Ph33r m3!!!
Watch the scrolling text at the beginning of any Star Wars Movie. Watch that same movie on digital, like DVD or Episode II in a digital theater. In analog, the text moves around visibly. In digital, the text is rock-solid. The entire film is doing this!
48 fps should be an improvement, but the debates against digital are anti-technology, and frankly anti-copying. You have to ask why this technology, as old as it is, wasn't adopted awhile ago? My guess is cost. Note the lack of technical detail in the article. My guess is that non-standard projectors will not be adopted regardless of cost.
Things really went downhill at the movie theaters when they sprung that "talkie" crap on us. What was wrong with reading captions, and having an organist to provide sound? Who needs to hear what the actors are saying?
What? The only difference I could discern between film and digital is that the digital projection didn't have any dust or cigarette burns. It was just....clean. I mean, blue skies were just....blue. No little black spots or anything. So sue me, I'm a perfectionist, but to me digital projection seems the way to go.
I belong to the ______ generation.
...what a pile of crap. This is the feeblest thing I've read in ages. This is NOT the future of anyone's cinema - the whole point of E-Cinema / D-Cinema is to eliminate the cost of making and distributing film prints, Maxivision48 would DOUBLE the fucking print cost! For those who don't know, there are as many different film formats as there are inventors, and Maxivision48 isn't even in the top ten. Good grief.
That was classic intercourse!
I don't think the excuse should be the price tag. At the theater near me, it's 7.50 per ticket and then about $8 for a drink and popcorn (larges). To top it all off, you fill your own drink and add your own butter... You don't even get a smile, just a vacant look while telling you how much you owe. I finally seriously confronted the person behind the counter and asked, "What do _you_ do??? You realize that after this display I've come to the conclusion that you're worthless? All you do is move candy from under the counter to the top!"
I thought the digital version of Star Wars II looked terrible. The individual pixels were clearly visible. For example, the Star Wars logo had poorly anti-aliased "jaggies."
I suspect that the screen was too large and/or I was sitting too close. I'm sure the DVD will look spectacular, but I don't think digital has enough resolution to compete with film, yet.
You know, with a $150,000 price tag I can see why some movie theaters hesitate to upgrade to digital... However, I dont think most of the theaters take into account how popular and how far some people will go to have "the best" experience. I'm lucky enoug to live in the same town as one of the digital theaters (one of the lucas sound system theaters too! :) and I can say, for any good movie, I'll drive across town to see it. There's a definite difference between seeing it at a normal theater and seeing it in the state of the art theater. Take that into account along with the fact that you have hundreds of geeks lining up for "big" movies like Star Wars, LotR, and Spiderman, and you start making the $150k back really quick, when their coming to your theater for the important movies.
nems
I think people like Roger Ebert don't understand the costs of Maxivision.
First, movie projectors would require much higher engineering tolerences to operate at 48 fps for long periods of time like you get in a movie theatre. That raises the cost of the projector substantially. I just can't imagine today's movie theater employees doing even minor maintainance on such a projector.
Second, Maxivision projection will require a lot more film than today's 24 fps projectors because of its 48 fps speed. A 35 mm 24 fps print of 20 minutes of film weighs 35 pounds and you need six reels of film for a two hour movie; I can imagine a Maxivision 48 fps print weighing 60-70% more. The shipping cost for a single print alone would definitely be frightening, to say the least.
Third, it would require more expensive movie cameras because of the need to shoot at 48 fps. Can you imagine how much more expensive a Panavision or Arriflex movie camera will cost to support 48 fps operation for long periods of time? These aren't special effects cameras where high film speeds are run for only a relatively short period of time.
Finally, you still haven't solved the problem of print degradation over a long period of time. At 48 fps, there's likely a higher chance for a film print to get scratched or break.
Why do the movie guys want digital? Is it for quality? That is likely a secondary reason. More likely they want to bring down their costs and bring in customers. How much to stamp 100,000 12inch discs?
Probably less than a couple of reels of film. The whole world could be covered by one pressing. (languages and all). Digital sub titles etc.
We the customer are just a means to an end. Make them richer.
Ok, the real advantage is not quality, it's flexibility. As digital distribution dramatically cuts distribution costs, theatres could play more, and more varied movies. When getting a new movie into the theatre consists of a fed-ex delivery of 10 DVDs it's a hell of a lot easier to get a new movie on the screen. Lower cost of distribution also levels the playing field, making it easier for independents to compete.
Another huge advantage is the ability to play live content. Weeknights are typically pretty slow nights at the theatre, so why not show some baseball, football or, basketball games depending on the season.
-josh
The money saved by the studios will be absolutely enormous with digital distribution: no more thousands of prints, no more shipping them to tens of thousands of theaters.
As an incentive to theaters, they could offer a discount for theaters that is equal to the amount they save on distribution by going digital. Do this for the first several years to help the theaters offset the cost of the equipment.
This way, the studios get the digital projectors out there and some years down the line they'll reap the cost savings when the carrot discounts disappear.
So what's wrong with movies the way they are now? The resolution is fine and the motion is fine.
Film is expensive. A motion picture print can cost a thousand or two bucks, and you may want to open on 6,000 screens for a blockbuster, or 1,000 screens for a small release. Do the arithmetic.
In addition, a film print is only good for maybe 50-60 showings (you can get more with decent, well-maintained projectors and a competent projectionist, but that's not often the case nowadays).
Big hard drives are expensive, too, but they can be wiped and reused over, and over, and over again.
Ignoring DRM and distrubution isssues, if I owned a theatre I would definitely _not_ be investing in a digital projector right now. It's still early adopter phase for the technology, ie: expensive, full of bugs and prone to standards changes.
That 150K may buy you a projector that you have to junk in a year or two. I'd sit on it for another couple until some sort of 'standard' evolves. After all you can buy a 35mm projector that will work with film shot 75 years ago, and there is an awful huge amount of back catalog still on film.
www.dlp.com
The argument is always that baseball brings in more business. But really, who comes to see the Brewers? They suck. Now, we also have a brand-spanking new Midwest Express Convention Center. I don't know the details behind that behemoth, but there sure wasn't as much controversy about it. I KNOW it brings people into the city (for CONVENTIONS, duh), and those conventions help pay for the new building. Bigger building, more convention/office space. No issues.
What does that have to do with movie theatres? For some reason both Pro-Sports, and the MPAA think that the end-user should pay UP FRONT for whatever new-fangled thing they want. They need to learn to stop mooching, and pay their own way.
I work for a fitness company. We distribute Weight Lifting Belts to a LOT of retail outlets. I can't imagine going into a Dick's or a Champs, and saying, "Oh yeah, we have this new product, but you'll need to remodel your store to carry it."
As if THAT would ever happen.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I've seen one before...at a university auditorium running a wonderful PowerPoint presentation. The blue screen, that came after the lecture was over unfortunately, was received only to a few shouts and laughter, but it was enough to make my day. This can now only be beaten by a theatrical blue screen.
At least I know where my towel is.
As usual, a slashdot story that links to an article *** totally *** devoid of any technical details that would make it news for nerds, or merely stuff that matters.
640K ought to be enough for anyone.
There are many more uses for digital cinema technology that can even be thought of right now. I see this as another technology that precedes it's demand; uses will be developed for it once it's uptake gathers speed. I won't repeat the quality and distribution benefits already mentioned in this thread.
Theaters could play 'censored' [i.e. no nudity, bad language etc.] versions to get extra revenue from the younger and religious audiences. The in-flight version of Outbreak was quite acceptable, though I can't imagine there'd be much left of the South Park movie ;-) How about audience participation? It's a long shot but it could be a laugh for some stuff. I know some people here would like buttons labelled [bra], [panties], [gravy] and [grits] for the next Natalie Portman flick.
I havent had my caffiene fix and it's way too hot in here so I can't think of many more right now, but I'm sure other people can add to this list. As for the slow uptake of digital projection so far, I'd say it's either because AFAIK there's no finalised standard for digital film distribution, or because some people wouldn't know a good investment when it was staring them in the face. ;-)
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
SHHHHHH!!! for f*cks sake, don't let anyone find out that theres something better!
This is the philosophy behind almost everything - DVDs, Oparating Systems, Web-Standards, Music, Love. Its what allows people to be lazy and still get what they want. In the DVD industry for example, no-one as realised that there could be far better formats for the same or less cost, so DVDs are the major standard, everyone buys them. Ok, granted there are cost issues in upgrading a cinema, but why should the owners bother when they're on a nice little ledge.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think this is really simple:
Maxivision: Film improvements have been tried before (70 mm). Not enough of a benefit to justify the cost. This isn't going to fly.
Digital Cinema: The benefit goes to the movie studios, but the cost goes to the theater. Something needs to change in this equation if the theater owners are to get on board.
(As far as quality of digital vs. film, once the novelty wears off, I bet most people won't care. The only real difference is that digital doesn't degrade).
I made the effort to see Episode 2 at a digital theater and was very happy with it. I know a lot of people have complained about jagged edges, but I really didn't see any. To me the difference between watching film and watching digital was the difference between watching VHS and watching DVD. The screen didn't jitter up and down. There were no scratches and no dust. The colors were vivid and very clear... I thought it was great and worth the extra drive to get to the theater. Even the "Don't Talk, Throw Away Your Trash" opening sequence was much better.
--
RumorsDaily
Assuming that you're showing twice as many exposed frames, this suggests that the prints need to be twice as long (or that you need twice as many reels), and I don't think that will fly at all. The primary driver for digital projection is not audience experience or image quality (surprise!), but reduction in distribution costs for print reels, which are costly to produce and incredibly costly to ship to theatres due to both bulk and weight (particularly since movies require one set of reels for each screen it will be showing on, plus replacement reels for prints that scratch/burn/snap).
Why do people think digital is so good? I do photography and still use film. Why? Because film has a much higher quality than a top of the line digital camera. Good low grain 35mm film (which is actually 24x36mm) can hold an image equivalent to a 130meg uncompressed digital image file.
Now look at an 8x10 camera, that's a very large sheet of film that is commonly used. To scan in that image and get all of the information in the image, it's going to be about 14G of data.
Now when you view these images, no top of the line home digital equipment can even approach the viewing quality of a good slide projector with film.
So what's so good about digital? Well, you can repeatedly reuse and copy it without the image degrading. It's also cheaper to make copies of. Analog video and film still has the highest quality and will continue so for a long time. Digital is just a cheap consumer product. Comparing digital to film is like comparing McDonalds fast food to a gourmet restaurant.
Let me just add, I'm not bashing digital. I would like to get a digital camera for snapshots and lots of other quick stuff. But when I want quality, I still choose film.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
The amusement park doesn't make $2.96 on each hot dog. There are other costs that you're not accounting for such as:
Employee salary.
Energy required to cook, sell, clean up, refrigerate, etc..
Wasted food stock (food not sold that needs to be disposed of).
Repairs on the facility.
Insurance.
Cost of the land and building required.
Lest we not forget that most likely the park is using some other feature (entry fee, etc..) as a loss leader, in which case the food concession would assume part of that loss as it's cost of business.
I'm sure I've forgotten some other costs to take into account but I think the point is proven. The factors I mention all sound trivial until you start adding them up. Even though, the margins specifically on hotdogs are probably still huge. But they are not making 99% profit.
"Goodhill says the Maxivision48 is a logical investment for theater owners since the projectors are "backwards compatible" in that they can be slowed down to the current 24 frames per second movie standard. That means theater owners who invest in the technology now will still be able to show any of the current movies while waiting for studios to convert over to the new faster 48-frame-per-second format."
Do domain names matter?
As to the economics, that $150K(US) is an estimate (low in my opinion) per screen. So, for each of your 20 screen theatres you're talking 3mil.
Why do you pay $6(US) for 50 cents worth of popcorn? Because that $6 pays for real estate, salaries, food, benefits, etc. Basically, the concession income pays for virtually all of the construction and operating costs of a theatre. Theatres make virtually no money on ticket sales since the vast majority is paid to the distributor. The only reason they even show the film is to get you to come in and buy concessions. The $6 price also helps defray the losses (yes losses) from people who sneak their own food and beverages into the theatre. If everyone would buy one bucket of popcorn and one soda, theatres wouldn't have to charge $6 for popcorn.
I know, I managed a movie theatre for a number of years.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
.DLP perhaps?
Maxivision 48 is just going to compound the problem. The staff in cinemas can't even cope with the current film standard. I see a lot of film previews - the prints are bad even then, with splices and dirt. Even when the print is clean it's often out of focus.
The current cost of digital is high, and the resolution os lower than HDTV, but all this will change. The cost will drop dramatically, and the resolution will first improve to full HD, and then beyond as HD also improves.
The cost of making a movie on HD is dramatically less than film. If they're doing SFX with CGI, then HD makes this cheaper. Even when CGI is added to a film movie, the resolution used is no greater than HD.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
*Looks lovingly at his 24V DeWalt industrial cordless drill kit* Are ya feeling lucky, punk? Well are ya? Well ok, that's one for the projector engineers, rather than the coders. :)
Either grab the stream from 2 or more projectors/theatres and do a little math on the raw stream, or crack the watermarking technology and fudge the watermark before encoding.
At the end of the day it's pretty much one group versus the other, with a few neutral parties. I won't say "good versus evil" because it's much more complicated than that [e.g. Piracy is "theft", but so is £5.00+ for a soft drink, some puffed corn, and a Hot Dog] and it's not the issue. Pirates keep you in a job, you keep pirates from totally destroying the movie industry. In the end a balance is naturally kept and at the moment, especially with regards to music, it's swinging slightly towards consumers. Losses from piracy are calculated by multiplying the cost of CD's/DVD's by the number of downloads; but when you're buying a car do you buy every car you test drive? How often have you bought an album and thought "oh crap, 3 good songs and a load of shite, I wish I'd listened before I'd bought"?
It's a sorta ecosystem, and it can't survive without the two opposing forces.
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
But, digital has the advantage of incredible convenience. I can shoot a picture, crop it, and post it online in 30 minutes. When making portraits, I can capture a dozen pictures and keep the best ones. And I can see the final image immediately and decide whether to try other poses. This introduces more spontaneity and experimentation into photography.
Also, digital lends itself better to certain creations, like animated snapshows (example, example, tutorial).
So, digital cameras are inferior if you'll use them exactly like a film camera. But if you take advantage of the instant feedback and negligible cost-per-shot, digital can promote great creativity.
AlpineR
As I understand it, most projectors already show each frame twice -- the film is at 24 fps, but the projector actually shows a frame every 1/48th of a second. Otherwise the flicker would be unbearable.
Reading the article, it's unclear how Maxivision48 differs from this.
It's not the camera speed that's the general problem, because it only processes the film once, but the projector because the finished print has to go through many times. Increasing the speed there causes extra stress.
The documentary described the problems the Imax/Omnimax people were having with the increased projection speed. IIRC, in a standard cinema projector, the film is moved, stopped for a period of time while it's displayed, and then moved again etc. (During the movement period I believe a shutter masks the transition). The acceleration of the movement implies quite a bit of force/stress on the film. The Imax/omni developers were having lots of problems with the film simply shredding because of the increased stress due to increased speed.
They then discovered an Aussie invention (plugging my home country here) called something like the "rolling loop" film projector, where the film is "bunched up" slightly in places. The whole film then moves along like a caterpillar a frame at a time with far less stress.
Simon
Digital = good preserved image;
Analog = excellent image, but deteriates
it really just a matter of opinion
i personnaly like digital becuse i cannot stand the scratches..... bleh!
Film still has higher quality
eg a standare 4 x 3 picture is equivalent to
14 - 16 megapixels on a digital camera....
when l33t hardware becomes cheaper and does more then digital will be just as good as film (quality wise) and not have the deteriation....
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that digital is going to come along for quite a while, especially as it seems to be so unpopular with the film buffs (see above). It's more likely that cinemas will get digital-capable projectors now, considering that the film industry is booming.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
There's a few things we should hope for before it happens. (1) projector resolution much higher than we have now. Extracting 1:85:1 doesn't give you many pixels out of a 1280x1024 display matrix. You really want to be seeing on the order of 3000x1500 pixels. This requires another step up in DLP resolution, and the mass acceptance of 16x9 displays for powerpoint to result in (2) much lower cost for the projectors, unless the studios are going to capitalize the projectors in some way. The theatre chains are going broke now under their debt loads at current interest rates, so they cannot front the bill.
Those with long term betting interests would short Kodak. Chemical film, good as it is, is going to vanish except for specialty applications as theatrical and consumer imaging goes nearly totally digital.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Digital cinema is good fot the following reasons;
Digital Cinema
1. Reduces cost of distribution significantly. Each film print costs to the order of few thousand dollars and is not reusable. Whereas, digital media can be re-used.
2. Eases distribution (can be distributed through satellite, DVDs, tapes, hard-disks etc)
3. Had consistent quality. The digital content is not prone to dirt, scratches etc.
4. Is Easy to manage big multiplexes with digital cinema. Has a lot of potential for automation.
5. Adds more functionality to a cinema. A digital cinema can be used for libe shows (sports - football, cricket), concerts, education, games.
Why digital cinema is bad?
1. The current digital projection technology is not advanced enough to beat analog projection. The DLP can go 1280x1024 only. JVC's DILA is yet to be in the market.
2. Film is a more mature technology. Reliable and stable.
3. Compression artifacts spoil the fun of watching movie.
Conclusion - Migration to digital cinema is inevitable. The only question is when?
I absolutely agree that $8.75 for a movie $10 for a coke and popcorn is extremely expensive (and we have kids!). However that doesn't necessarily translate into a large enough profit to swing $150k per screen for the digital upgrade. Does anyone know how much the movies cost the theatre owner? I know that on the first weekend half the take goes to the studio, and then a smaller percentage is given to the studio each week for something like a month until all the money goes to the theatre. Between that and the initial capital outlay, its understandable why theatres don't want to commit to digital.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
"of the more than 35,000 movie screens operating in the United States today, only 60 are digitally equipped, largely because of the technology's $150,000 price tag".
Heck, at $4.00 for a cup of soda and $7.50 for a candy bar, the local theatre ought to be going digital before lunchtime tomorrow, eh?
The article gives a "price" for the digital equipment.
Something important to consider is that businesses LEASE their equipment. Also, consider that the standard "old fashioned" equipment will run between $30,000 to $50,000 per screen (for a platter system, scope lenses, etc.) and THAT stuff is usually leased also. Sure, any theatre that is currently in busniess has sunk costs on that stuff, but the digital isn't *astronomically* more expensive.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
most manufactures are IGNORING this problem.
but for natural images the pixel edges represent high frequency (spatial) noise that is above and beyond the information contained in the desired image (ie, Nyquist theorem) and therefore it can be filtered out.
this is the same process used in audio equipment, where filters are placed after the digital to analog convertor to remove the jagged steps in the waveform. works for audio, works for video. viewers won't realize the image is digital by means of awful jagged edges (which they HATE), but they'll be looking at a picture quality unobtainable from distribution film media.
i'm an engineer working in the refinement of HDTV compression technology, so i've studied all this, and i'm SERIOUSLY dissappointed that mfr's are not UP TO SPEED!
most computers can only display 24 bit color which is 8 bit per channel (256 different reds,greens,blues = 16.7 million). some graphics applications can compute 12 or 16 bit/channel internally but still display 8 bit. these digital projection systems may go as high as 10 or 12bit/channel but, this is a far cry from film's range which can be compared to a 16-20bit color range in computer terms. displaying movies digitally only helps the movie companies who would rather not pay thousands of dollars per theater per copy of the film. digital copies are far cheaper to produce once the systems are set up. also these systems are paid for by the theaters. the movie companies are the only group profitting from digital projection. anyone who thinks digital is a better picture is fooling themselves.
I attended a screening about a year ago in Rochester, NY, it was a documentary on the Pope and it was shot entirely on digital. The quality was awesome - the color depth was excellent, and the sound was clear and crisp. The quality is much better, but the industry needs to adopt it. Once the industry offers releases exclusively on a digital format, theatres will be forced to switch. By that time, the technology should be more affordable on both ends.
Except, last weekend I went and saw a midnight screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was great, except most of the colors were fairly washed out, and every time it got to a reel change (you know, when the little dots appear in the upper right corner), there was invariably a huge increase in the number of scratches on the print, a degradation in sound quality, and there were also a number of frames missing from each end of both reels (the movie would appear to skip a second or two or time).
Now, if we'd had an original digital print of the movie, it would have looked exactly the same as it had when it came out, twenty years ago (which is to say, a lot better than it did last week). That's half the idea.
As it stands, digital projection (DLP specifically) is a mixed bag. I've come to notice that people like me (geeks) who know what pixels are, know what jaggies are, know what anti-aliasing is, and so on, think the quality of digital is lower than people who aren't familiar with those concepts and don't look for them. On Saturday I went to see (for the fourth time) Attack of the Clones, and I saw it at a digital projection with my parents and two of my cousins (specifically, this was at the Pacific Theaters at The Grove, in Los Angeles). We were sitting on the entry aisle (it's stadium seating), maybe ten rows up.
I'd also seen it digitally at Grauman's Chinese (sitting maybe 17-20 rows back) and at the Loews Century City (15-17 rows back). It looked fantastic at both those theaters. I thought that it looked worse at the Grove (on a smaller screen than either other theater), but I realized it was because I was close enough to see the vertical pixel columns distinctly in a lot of shots (especially high-contrast shots with small details). My dad, however, thought it looked better than at the Chinese (the frickin' Chinese!) and he was sitting in the same row I was. We both wear glasses and have corrected 20/20 vision (in fact, my bare vision is much worse than his).
Anyway, I'm rambling, but my point is that there ARE reasons to go digital. Theoretically in a few years, resolution of digital will increase to the point where you need to be standing right in front of the screen to identify the pixels, in which case it will be visually indistinguishable from film for 99% of the viewing audience -- we'll be in the same situation we are now with "audiophiles" who claim that they can hear minuscule variations in sound quality based on what kind of wires their speakers use. Yeah, maybe they can, but almost nobody else can, or cares.
Plus, long-term (if Hollywood ever could think that way), the studios save huge amounts of money on film prints and distribution. If the studios were to pool together and equip every theater in the country with a digital projector over 5 years, they would have made back their money on film printing costs in another 5 years.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
A new theater just opened up in Melbourne, FL (on the east coast about 45 minutes from the Orlando theater) called Cinema World. It's a very nice theater with plush reclining seats and fair prices (7 bucks a ticket). We saw the AOTC there on opening day and it was pretty good when sitting far enough back. My big complaint with digital projection is how badly it blows when you get stuck too close to the screen. Maybe their screens are just too big but it was like watching a movie on my laptop. When I went to the back of the theater the picture was phenomenal, but I wear glasses and 20 or 30 feet makes a huge difference for me. Your mileage may vary... Chris
Digital is poor second cousin to Film. Lower resolution and boxed look to the images.
Digital is great for the low resolution and small picture of a TV. BUT not for 6 story Film Screens.
Yeah, I wasted the money to go see Star Wars at Cinerama in digital projection, to compare with having seen it from print at another theatre...I was stunned at how horrible it was. From the incredible jaggies in the opening credits, to the massively noticeable compression artifacts during high-movement scenes, I was severely underwhelmed. Of course all the companies involved in digital projection have websites, with comment boxes, which I went home to fill up with vitrol, only to find out out that not a single Digital Projection company is capable of configuring a working email server...
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't spend $1k, much less $150k, at a company that can't setup an email response box properly...
Ok, so call me skeptical, but the advantages of digital are most often going to be convinience and cost compared to analogue mediums, with quality as a secondary concern.
Here in the UK we've all been convinced about how great digital TV is and why we should switch to it (it seems the hidden agenda is that analogue gets turned off in about 2010 and presumably the gov will sell the bandwidth). Ok, so the contrast is sharp, but stand anywhere near the TV and the artifacts are awful. I watched a BBC transmission the other week where the artifacts were way worse than MPEG1, and I could see them cleary from the couch.
DVDs are pretty good, and clearly better than VHS, but even so, depending on the film, some are encoded better than others.
Similarly if Music companies ever drop the idea of the CD as a distribution method and go for online music distribution, then we'll all be faced with some crappy low-bitrate music that the average drone thinks sounds 'CD Quality'.
Digital Cinema is just another part of the trend. Now we have to put up with low-resolution compressed video while being told its better quality.
I think everyone seems to remember things being worse than they were. I dont have analogue TV anymore, cos some little bast*** kids cut our antenna wire, but when watching it recently at my dads, I was amazed at how much better it was than digital. Similarly, I've got a stack load of viynl, and on any well looked after record, its very difficult to hear scratches or pops.
Anyway, as ususual, consumers will all buy into it, and lose out as a result.
the site contains a white paper describing the technology in full (goes into much more detail than the thing article), as well as Ebert's testimony to the visual impact of Maxivision.
www.maxivision48.com
...at least some think so.
...[cut cut]... "I doubt that I will ever 'seriously' use 35 mm colour film again! When I want to produce a quality result, I will choose digital -- or a larger format than 35 mm."
A quote from: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d60-first.htm
"I have yet to do extensive testing with the [Canon] D60 [a 6 Megapixel digital camera], but I can say that D60 8X10" prints, and indeed the one D60 11 X 16.5"print I have done so far, are better than any previous 8X10" or larger print I have made from 35 mm colour, no matter how printed. In fact, I would say that the 11X16.5" print is pretty close to similar-sized images printed conventionally (or digitally) from 645 format negatives. In simpler words, I believe the 6 MP D60 is superior to 35 mm colour film-not just the equal. A possible exception might be a really good print from a Kodachrome slide -- but I can't claim to have any that are in fact better"
And as a side note, MegaPixels aren't always a good measurement of the quality of Digital Cameras. For example the Canon D30, a 3 megapixel camera produces better images than Sony F707, 5 megapixel camera. Why? Here is a quote from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/dq.htm
"The reason is simple, it [Canon D30] has a much better SNR. Why you ask? The Sony pixels are much, much smaller. Smaller pixels have less area to gather light. Less light means less signal. For a given semiconductor process, the noise stays the same regardless of pixel size and the signal increases with pixel size."
I have seen Minority Report on one of these digital theaters in Westwood, CA. All I can say about it is negative:
- color resultion: really really suck. It appears they use 4-4-3 bits for RGB or something equally inferior. Openeing scene had very visible banding instead of smooth gradients. While this could be dithered, it was not, probably because of compression requirements. It truly sucked, or have I already said that.
- pixel resolution: is OK, but the black space between pixels is visible. That makes the pixels visible, and that sucks. They need a better LCD panel.
Changes they have to make before I consider digital is:
a) higher color fidelity
b) possibly higher resolution (1.5x - 2x horiz. and vert. too)
c) dead space elimination between pixels
d) less agressive compression (ie. bigger storage)
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
bringing the cinemas up to the standards of this digital age
Yay! Now we can watch a bunch of color-changing dots on the wall rather than an actual projected image!
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
I wrote an article about my experiences with digital projection (it can be read here), based on my background as a projectionist.
As to the question of print length for MaxiVision, the print will not be 2x longer. One change for MaxiVision is the reduction of the 35mm frame to 3 standard sprocket holes high (as opposed to the current standard of 4). They can get away with this due to the fact that the top and bottom of a standard 35mm frame is wasted space for 'flat' films, as that extra space is matted out in the projector by a 'key' (which blocks the light from passing through that portion of the frame). The lens on the projector expands the frame so the left and right image edges match up with the screen width, and the extra material on the top and bottom (beyond the 1.85:1 window) is lost.
This is one of the interesting ideas in MaxiVision, yet it also leads to a major complication: the anamorphic process (often called "CinemaScope" in shorthand) uses the entire current 35mm frame, so the 2.35:1 widescreen format would not work in this revised frame design. Anamorphic processes need the full frame height, as the width is derived from squeezing the image horizontally. Unless you also developed lenses to squeeze on the vertical as well, you'd have either a REALLY widescreen image (somewhere around 3.2:1), or you'd have to 'key' out the right and left sides of the image (losing image resolution).
While the MaxiVision process is interesting, choices in theater equipment always come down to finances: and since the studios control product, they're in the drivers seat, long-term, in forcing the theater companies to go their way. (The terrible financial state of theatrical companies also limits their ability to experiment with technologies not supported by the studios.)
In the last few years, first-run movie admission prices have risen, more previews are shown, and non-movie advertisements are shown (at least in the theaters I go to). I assume from this that the theaters are making more money per customer than they were years ago.
Is it costing them more money to show films, on a per-projector, per-showing basis? Who knows? In newer theaters with digital audio, there is probably more infrastructure cost, but do the actual films cost more?
Making motion picture media digital will require lots of new infrastructure to be installed at theaters to achieve playback equivalent to conventional film. If the delivery of movies to theaters is digital as well, think of the network required to make that happen!
The only way digital will catch on in theaters is for the studios and theaters to rethink their entire economic relationship. Studios *must* finance the distribution and playback infrastructure to enable the cost savings that will be seen when analog media is no longer the primary deliverable. The theaters don't seem to be able to manage their costs very well, or understand how to amortize their infrastructure costs. It's only a matter of time before the insult of paying more to be advertised to more will drive people away from theaters.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
A quote from Ebert's article "Projections on future of digital":
"A bombshell research report just released by Credit Suisse/First Boston supports Maxivision as preferable to digital projection, which is "not ready for prime time." The most unexpected finding of the report is that digital projection would not be cheaper than the current system of distributing prints, but, because of the financing costs, would be more expensive. Other bullet points: Maxivision has dramatically better picture quality; its cost is around $10,000 a booth, as opposed to $100,000 to $150,000 for digital; it is backward compatible and can project all films ever made; and the current Texas Instruments digital standard uses an inferior standard. The report praises the Kodak digital standard as superior, but criticizes Kodak for not supporting Maxivision--which, because it uses film, dovetails with Kodak's dominance of the celluloid market. Since the much-heralded digital rollout of "Star Wars Episode II" was a non-event, it's unlikely that exhibitors are prepared to make an enormous investment in digital projectors. If they want something new, affordable and dramatically better, Maxivision is the obvious choice."
The report itself may be found here (it's a PDF).
Here's another quote from an earlier Answer Man article:
"Daniel Switkin of Palo Alto, Calif., writes: 'I saw AOTC in digital. Although the image was completely flicker- and defect-free, and the sound was perfect, the resolution was dreadful. Pixels were clearly visible, and everything from subtitles to small details were much worse than film. Some digging on www.dlp.com reveals that the current digital projectors use a pathetic 1280x1024 resolution--the same as most 17 inch desktop LCD monitors! This is despite the fact that the Sony camera used to shoot the movie digitally operates at 1920x1080 resolution. How can we the audience tell the industry that these five-year-old digital projectors they're now just installing aren't good enough?'"
1280x1024!!!?? What the heck?
Ebert makes a very good case against digital projection, at least as it exists today. He posits convincingly that the fascination with converting the industry to a digital projection format is fueled by uninformed executives who have been trained to salivate at the word 'digital.' The Answer Man column archive is here.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
Something I don't think anyone has mentioned: I have read somewhere that the cost of striking prints and distributing them is a vanishingly small percentage of the total cost of making/promoting a typical movie. (This would seem to be contradicted by some of the $$$ figures people are tossing around here.)
But for non-Hollywood productions with small budgets, I can see the advantages of this kind of distribution system.
It just seems that at this time, digital projection is not ready for prime time, in terms of quality.
Will theatre owners have to 'upgrade' their projector's hardware every couple of years? Is this a scam to download some costs from movie studios/distributors down to the exhibitors?
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
- Resolution needs to get up to 35mm film levels, which are somewhere around 3K by 6K on a good day. 70mm levels (4x that) would be even better. Current "digital cinema" is actually less than HDTV resolution, although the compression is much less so it looks better.
- Digital cameras need to be better. Right now, you have to use 3-imager CCD cameras to avoid those dumb artifacts that come from all three colors not coming from exactly the same place. The Foveon imager should fix this. (One effect of this is that black and white line patterns stay black and white, without color fringing. There are lots of "video no-nos" that film doesn't have.)
- Frame rates need to go up. 72FPS digital would be a big improvement, and it's not out of reach.
The Showscan experiments indicate that somewhere in the range of 60-100FPS, humans max out and can't detect higher frame rates. So that's the goal.
A generation raised on 75FPS video games sees 24FPS film as choppy.
- Better data storage is needed for distribution. Those 1TB optical disks discussed yesterday on Slashdot are a possibility. Right now, a digital movie is delivered as a truckload of hard drives. (Can't compress much. Compression artifacts look awful on the big screen.)
- Projectors still cost way too much. $150K is insane. Theater owners will listen when it gets down to $25K or so. Which it should. The big problem now is that the quantities sold to theaters are so tiny that they're uninteresting to companies like TI, who build those micromirror display devices.
- The whole production chain needs to be upgraded for these bigger images. That's expensive, but there's no technical obstacle.
The current sub-HDTV digital theater technology just isn't worth deploying. It's nice to get rid of film dirt and pulldown jitter, but not worth it.When this is all done, though, high-quality digital movies won't cost any more to make than current 35mm productions, and will probably become cheaper over time. But it's a few years away.
You figure it cost about $2,500 to create a single copy of the film and get it to a theater, so if your movie is going to premire on 1000 screens, that is $2,500,000 it costs just to get it out there (moderen multiplexes will show the same movie in multiple theaters with a single copy, I know).
But if we could "beam" the movie to the theaters we could charge the theater owners a "subscription fee" to the "network" to get the movie. Even if the distibution is by DVD, the mastering costs (which they are going to do anyway) are what $10,000 (not including menus and "bonus" discs), and then $10 bucks for every copy and $10 to ship it to the theater, now it only cost them $30,000 to get the movie on 1,000 screens, and really since they were going to make the DVD anyway, its only $20,000.
Hollywood Bean Counter: "We just saved $2.48 million dollars!"
Studio Exec: "My wife's second cousin twice removed has this screen play..."
Imagine the crap they could put out for that "pitance".
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
There are two issues that mitigate against wide adoption of Maxivision48:
/. just recently), we could have a complete digital copy of a theatre-projection quality movie on a single 300 mm disc very soon. It's a lot cheaper to duplicate and ship a 300 mm optical disc than to make film prints of a movie, especially a Maxivision48 print.
1. It requires 50% MORE film to show a Maxivision48 movie. Currently, a 24 fps 35 mm print weighs about 35 pounds per 20-minute reel; a Maxivision48 format print would only last roughly 11-12 minutes for the one reel that holds 20 minutes of 35 mm 24 fps film. That would make a two-hour movie on a per print basis head somewhere way up into the stratosphere in terms of duplicating and shipping costs.
2. Maxivision48 projection still does not address the issues of outright physical wear on film (scratches, film breakage, etc.).
With the development of very high-density optical disc storage technology (like that mentioned on
Three words, three titles:
Tape, Final, and Tadpole. All three were (if I'm correct about Tadpole) made for less than $250k. I know for a fact Tape and Final were. Tadpole got bought for $5 million by Miramax and should be hitting limited release this week or next. And all of them were shot on DV, so projecting them digitally would be AOK.