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"."

Comments

Re:6 years???

[ptomblin]

Considering I saw "Imax Showscan" (which was Imax with double the frame rate) at Expo 86 in Vancouver 16 years ago,this is hardly startling new technology or a startling new idea.

Besides, the shift to digital isn't about quality it's about distribution costs. A movie print costs between $1500 and $2500 PER SCREEN, just for the film, plus you've got to courier it to the theatre, and the projectionist has to make up platter by splicing the 5 or 6 spools that make up a feature along with trailers, ads, etc. The theatres would much rather get a couple of DVDs containing all their content for the week.

And yes, we're working on better compression and encryption technology to make sure that the movies still look good, and nobody can steal the DVD and sell a million copies on the black market. On the system I'm working on, the projectors themselves may have a small single-board Linux computer inside to do the decryption, so the movies won't be playable anywhere but on the projectors they're meant for.

Re:bsod

[capt.Hij]

The movie experience of the future:

1. Watch automated power point slides flash by with stupid questions about celebrities.
2. Teen age kid stops power point slides and brings up explorer browser.
3. Kid then looks around to find the link to the movie.
4. We wait for the buffer to fill before movie starts.
5. Except for the occasional hicup in the downlink or the odd system hanging up we enjoy the experience.
6. Price of popcorn sky rockets to cover cost of new toys in the projection booth.

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.

70mm

[VaguelyBarming]

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.

Digital not that big an improvement

[jmichaelg]

When CD audio came out, there was no question the sound was cleaner. We were so used to hearing snaps and underlying noise on vinyl that the CD sound was simply gold compared to lead. So expecting a similar quality payoff from Digital Video, three of us made an effort to see Attack of the Clones in a digital theater. We were disappointed. In retrospect, it isn't that surprising. A new vinyl record sounds wonderful. It's not until it's been played a lot and collected dust and scratches that the CD/Vinyl gap favors CDs.

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.

Re:Digital not that big an improvement

[AlecC]

Agreed 100% to this. A brand new print on well set up projection equipment gives far better quality that digital projectors. Simply, there are more bits there, both spatially and in depth. IIRC, Star Wars was shot at 1920 wide, but film is still giving more data when digitised over 3K wide. Likewise, film has the depth to allow really good gamma correction before processing - probably the equivalent to 14 or 15 bits, while cameras are at most 10 bits and often 8.

However, the other point you make, that film degrades over time is very relevant. A film print nowadays costs about $6000, and will be showing noticable wear after 2 weeks (as said to me by a film person). And film needs to be physically transported etc.

The problem is that the costs of digital projection fall upon the theatre owner, who sees very little benifit, whereas the benifits go to the producer. In order to make digital really take off, the producers are going to have to find some way of kicking back a percentage of their gain to the theatre owners. One way that has been suggested is for the producers, or a producer-oriented organisation, to buy the projectors and put them into the cinemas, then charge on a pay-per-view. If the digifilms don't come out, the theatre owner doesn't lose, if they do, he has the revenue to pay the rent. Which requires help from the money men - who are a bit suspicious of new-tech propositions at the moment.

Re:48fps makes the movie smoother? nah...

[muggy2]

Well, you're kinda right, but not quite.
Projectors actually show each frame twice in order to stop the flickering (if you just light the frame for longer, it weakens the print.
Whereas this 48fps movie format actually has 48 frames, each with motion blur (it's not a 'technique', it's just what happens when you expose a frame for 1/48th of a second). maxivision48 has much higher resolution by using more surface area of the print and the images are sharper because there is less motion blur captured.
Of course the downside of all this is that it looks more like TV. :( Humans have come to recognise 24fps as 'film' and 50/60fps as 'TV'. That's why HD has a 24fps setting when it can happily do 60.

digital needs more resolution

[_|()|\|]

So expecting a similar quality payoff from Digital Video, three of us made an effort to see Attack of the Clones in a digital theater. We were disappointed.

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.

The real advantages of digital projection

[joshv]

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

Digital != good quality.

[MongooseCN]

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.

Comments on DP and economics....

[nedron]

Frankly, anyone who has actually seen a digital projection of a film sourced production can't help but see that it is nowhere near the quality one gets from straight film production. It does make sense to perhaps project video projects (like the recent Star Wars video sci-fi) in a digital projection center, but it makes no sense to digitally project something that originated on film.

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.