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Windows Media 9 in Digital Theaters
SpamJunkie writes "Feel like watching new releases in 7.1 surround sound with full digital video? It's coming, not with MPEG 4 but with Windows Media 9. Microsoft announced it is bringing Windows Media 9 to 177 screens in Landmark Theaters."
Wow.....blue screens that huge will be awesome to look at!!!!
There is no patch for stupidity
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Due to DRM restrictions, your eyes must be gouged out after the showing for reprocessing. That is all.
-Staff
I refuse to download Media 9... I don't trust it
not surprised here, where is the linux based mpeg4 alternative?
The newly outfitted theaters will be able to screen films encoded digitally in Windows Media 9 Series, which enables high-resolution,theater-quality experiences with up to 7.1 channel surround sound. The network rollout is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Umm... shouldn't it go without saying that it's theatre quality if they're rolling it out?
[overheard from the booth] ...dammit, where the hell is that installation cd-rom?
I wonder if theyll start renting them out for lan parties? Imagine playing UT or halflife on a 40 foot screen.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
WM9 is a good mpeg-4 implementation. It has slightly better results than Divx 5 or X-vid from what I've seen (with the same file size). If they start doing High Definition transfers of movies and showing them digitally in the theaters, thats a great thing. I don't understand why you'd need a super-advanced codec to do it other than publicity, though. Mpeg-2 works for High Definition just as well, the file sizes are about 30% larger though.
Well reading the article, it seems like the movies are going to be compressed into some kind of MS proprietry format from now on at these digital theatres, but regardless of whatever quality I have seen these files in, MPEG has always seemed sharper & generally better all round.
No I wont make the usual 'is that BSOD supposed to be in the middle of that film' type gag, but I do find this quite a weird move. MPEG has always been, in my opinion at least, one of the more superior video formats. VideoCD uses MPEG, and doesn't DVD?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Promoting the release of independent films onto the "Direct to VCD" market. :)
Remember when people used to cheer the THX Lucasfilm logo? That was before Phantom Menace. I hardly expect anyone to cheer the Microsoft logo, but after the first big public fiasco with Palladium, the jeers may come.
I wonder if people will notice the subliminal "OBEY", "CONSUME" and "REPRODUCE" messages from MS..
Trolling is a art,
They don't care what tech is actually playing the movie. They just care about the movie. So, I am not sure what MS is trying to accomplish? Besides, now they will be competing with industry gaints that have been supplying to the theaters for decades.
It doesn't mention this but woulnd't this make the stuff easier to pirate? Just copy the movie off the hard drive, reencode to desired format, distribute.
What shall we stick in our nose in next?
A headset passed out at the door that will keep your eyes open during the commercials at the beginning of the movie, DRM enforcement of course
Maybe a tiny integrated chip into each popcorn to make sure you don't share the license agreement.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
This is screwed up, I don't see how you can respond without even taking three seconds to think about what you are saying. WM9 is actually pretty impressive, but of course you already knew that, right, cause l1NuX r0x0rz!! Right??
Please, post responsibly and any modding of "funny" for these pathetic jokes is irresponsible.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
... in Theaters! Only a company as great as MS could make that leap!
Though I wonder if this is the same "-Quality" brand they used when describing 64kbps wma files as CD-Quality?
Blue Screen of Death in widescreen...
Is that why they took it out of XP? So they could hype it up for a bigscreen release? :)
Seriously, guys, those BSOD jokes (constituting something like 95% of the posts) are just so funny!
Does anybody have any more info on this? Are there other standards for digitally showing film?
darius
___________
got cheap web site hosting?
Perhaps I am behind the times, But to this day I havent seen a WMP file that didnt really look crummy. *shrug*
On the other hand, digital projection upgrade for theatres cost a fortune. Ihave to wonder if this WMP 'upgrade' at these theatres are gonan lock these guys into some future non fuctional system.
Choosing a propriatry format when there are equally good ones is almost always a bad idea. But as we all now, some slick salesman walks in and talk to some business school graduate management who still hasnt mastered Instant messenger and says "hey look at the shiny object!"
When they start top thin the line between the theater and the home computer, doesn't "piracy" become more popular as theaters seem to be using the same stuff as you do at home...
Now you find the April Fools material.
Sigs are bad for your health.
WTF is right, but WTF are you talking about. Looking good? The big thing here is the infrastructure that this all represents. Being able to distribute and display completely digitally at a somewhat reasonable price is the news here. I guess MS should not attempt to move into any new markets or find new uses for their technology?
Who will start boycottinng new movie releases because of TEH EVIL M$ ?
WM9 is an implementation of MPEG-4, it's just a proprietary one. It uses the same I-frame and compressed p-frame concepts as mpeg-4. DIVX is another well-known implementation. Also X-Vid.
I can't wait to see someone's latest bitchin' GL screensaver interupting Episode 3!!!
I would want my money back...
So you saw Phantom Menace too?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
After a few weeks the whole screen will be covered with patches...
Windows media player isn't part of office. How "entertaining" it would be for that annoying paperclip to pop up in the middle of the movie and give its little own critique on the movie.
I agree completely with your post. Just because Microsoft is doing something doesn't mean that everyone needs to set up their soap box. If the parent of this parent had read the article he would see that Microsoft is actually giving a leg up to the little guy in this case. Digital theatres have previously been reserved for only the largest theatres in the largest cities and only the biggest blockbusters were shown on them. Microsoft's foray will change that and give a chance to indie films to get on screen at a much cheaper rate.
As it currently stands, digital filming is cheaper than the old way BUT you have to be big time in order to get into a theatre that shows digital films. Thus, the cost savings of digital film are only available to the guys with the money. Clearly Microsoft is aiming to make a buck with this but they're also helping to create competition for Hollywood.
So, since the MPAA represents Hollywood we have a situation here where Microsoft is going against the MPAA. Who will the Slashbots support? The MPAA of course! Microsoft is the most evil company in the universe, right? The MPAA is just a lackey of evil.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
This could be a great boon to the independent film "industry!" As they mention in the article, the costs of getting your movie out to distributers would be much much lower...no more copying and mailing huge film reels to each theater (but no more spliced-in single frames of porn either :-( ). Of course, this would only be the case if the encoding software were similarly inexpensive, and with MS cuddling up to Hollywood for DRM, I don't see this happening.
Perhaps, this will provide the impetus to upgrade to digital projection equipment on which someone will implement an open codec...
credo quia absurdum
I guess you also never watched a DVD? That video is compressed with a lossy compression scheme, yet it still looks good. Why? Variable compression. Someone just didn't pop a tape into a tape player, hit play, then click the record button on a computer. There are actually people that go through and master these things over a period of weeks or months to make the video stream as small as possible while trying to make it as quality as possible. There are also all sorts of measurement and analysis tools applied to it along the way to remove scratches from the film transfer, and to make multiple streams of audio (for foreign languages, commentary tracks, and I've even seen some DVDs that not only support the AC3 digital surround, but will have a Dolby Prologic encoded stream.)
Given a static, known platform, I'll bet they can make it reliable. One of the biggest challenges for operating sytem reliability is that in the typical PC or server, the OS vendor has to try and make allowances for combinations of hardware and software that they have never even thought of. In this scenario, as long as the boxes are dedicated for the purpose of displaying digital video I'm sure they can figure out how to overcome any bugs that come up.
Having said that, it would be nice to see Red Hat or one of the other Linux distributions try to compete in this space. Certainly Linux does well in these sort of dedicated applications (e.g. Tivo).
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
This is just a way for microsoft to champion their own codec.. this has been done for some time in DLP theaters across the country with MPEG-2 format movies. Star Wars Ep2, Lilo & Stitch, etc etc were shown in digital theaters. Now it's a Microsoft (!) digital theater. Great.
Please explain how theaters using WMP9 to distribute digital movies equates to Microsoft abusing their monopoly on the desktop OS.
Thanks.
Even if it does catch on, there are plenty of other companies that are doing the same thing, both of which are bigger than MS in the media dept. Two that I am positive of are Kodak and Sony.
Sure this sounds all peachy on the outside, but is this quality really due to the film and not the projector?
Great if we start getting digital films, but unless they make 30 foot plasma screens, I really don't expect to see much of a difference.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
The exciting aspect of digital video in movie theaters (regardless of whether the underlying technology is MS or not) is the flexibility that becomes available.
With digital projection, why not rent out a movie theater for a super bowl party? maybe we'll start seeing Monday night independent film festivals in suburban theaters? In theory, digital projection could open up all kinds of new possibilities for the theater industry.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
I have always wanted to know how a BSOD would look in a movie theatre.
Oh wait, I forgot to post as Anonymous Coward.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Do we get our money back if it blue screens?
The standards for digital cinema are still being worked out. The major studios have a consortium named Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) which is developing standards, and recently announced a minimum of 2k lines of resolution as their goal. http://www.infocusmag.com/03April/digital.htm The National Association of Theatre Owners has a general list of User Requirements for digital cinema here: http://www.natoonline.org/digitalcinemauserreq.htm
Windows Media 9 tops out at 720k currently.
1. Screensaver kicks in
:)
2. Projectionist plays an MP3 and it blasts out of the speaker.
3. Projectionist forgets to turn off Windows desktop sounds
and so on......
I can see all the candy being hucked at the larger-than-life pause/play button, now.
And you thought the laser-pointers were annoying!
Now they will be digital but they will be encoded in the crappy quality WMV format!
we can call it the blue screen
I would hope that the ticket prices do down with the film in digital format. I get a bit upset when $20 doesn't cover a night at the movies.
I am going to re-invent the wheel, and this time I will make it round!
Well, you've got a point BUT...
a digital feed is a lot cheaper to produce than rolls and rolls of film. This means that theatres could become much different places - they won't be limited to just showing what the big buys have churned out with all their money. Want to watch home movies or you and your dad playing baseball? Rent the theatre for an hour, pump your digital feed in, and enjoy. The possibilities this opens go really far beyond that but there's an example. The difference isn't coming from the quality but from what is being shown.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
And for those who hate trial subscriptions, here's the full text:
Landmark going digital
All auditoriums nationwide to be outfitted with d-cinema
By CARL DIORIO
Arthouse giant Landmark Theaters will today announce plans to outfit its entire 177-screen circuit for digital cinema and a related effort to deal directly with filmmakers lacking distribution for their low-budget digital video features.
The d-cinema initiative involves a joint venture with Microsoft and L.A.-based Digital Cinema Solutions. Terms weren't available, but it's believed the unique three-way relationship will shave Landmark's costs to a fraction of the usual $100,000-plus per screen to install most d-cinema systems.
All auditoriums in Landmark's 53 theaters, located in 20 markets nationwide, will be outfitted with d-cinema playback systems based on Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series. DCS will select digital projectors from a variety of manufacturers.
The Windows Media systems are substantially less expensive than other systems, because they essentially represent off-the-shelf technology, officials said. The playback systems will be married to relatively inexpensive digital projectors, because the smaller size of its screens requires less illumination to project an image of acceptable resolution.
Landmark chief Paul Richardson said he doesn't expect a lot of immediate interest from specialty distribs in converting their primary releases for digital distribution. But he believes they may be more inclined to acquire niche pics shot in digital video than previously.
"There's a whole bunch of product that doesn't get picked up at the film festivals because people don't believe it's worth the cost to invest the money to make a master print, which can cost $50,0000-$60,000," Richardson said. "But for $6,000-$8,000, you can encode the film for digital (to) play our circuit, and I think some distributors will be interested in doing that."
Landmark and its joint venture partners will also ante up the encoding costs for some number of pics, he said. "We're not going to bid on films against the guys in the business," the Landmark CEO said, noting he won't be personally prowling any film markets.
"The films we're going to package are maybe a year old and haven't gotten picked up yet," he explained. "Those people are in contact with us all the time."
In the past, Landmark's steered such filmmakers to various indie distribs but now will deal with them more directly in some instances. Richardson said he's not sure how many such pics the joint venture partners themselves will distribute, nor have they identified a likely first release to run through the digital circuit.
"We're starting out on an adventure here, and we really don't have a road map," he acknowledged. "We have a huge opportunity, but we're just not exactly sure where that opportunity is going to evidence itself."
Landmark aims to outfit all of its screens for digital projection by December. "We're starting on the smaller auditoriums first, because that's where these pictures will play," Richardson said.
Landmark and Microsoft previously collaborated on a small number of digital installations in connection with the BMW Films digital shorts series. For that series, which features BMW autos in several digitally produced action shorts, DCS installed d-cinema systems in a couple dozen theaters, including several Landmark sites.
Landmark also used Microsoft-outfitted auditoriums to exhib Artisan's recent music docu "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" in nine locations.
Agreed, but this appears to be for smaller independant film makers/distributers/theaters, not for the George Lucas' of the world. Plus, how many standards are there for this type of distribution system? How many products are offered and what type of price range are we talking about? Do other manufacturers offer packages? If so, then what's wrong with MS trying to get into this market segment?
Will moviegoers have to sign an end user license agreement upon entering the theatre?
*shudder*
Yeah, divx and others support high resolutions. They might as well use linux and their own computer setup, it would cost less I'm sure.
"That's not film melting, that's the screen saver!"
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Dunno about you but if I go to a movie and it crashes I'm gonna demand my money back at the least. I'd be really pissed if the movie locked up and even more so if I got a blue screen or similar error messages. It's bad enough at airport terminals and on POS devices.
One more way for Microsoft to lock up artist works in their own file formats. How long before studios decide to release Windows only DVD's rather than bother reencoding the movies?
Why was this needed? Couldn't studios have just mastered the movies to DVD and either mailed them to theatures or allowed the theature to download the movie if they had the bandwidth? Damn it costs about $2 to burn and mail a DVD. They couldn't afford that? Then the theature could use a fairly standard DVD player hooked to their projector and audio system. If the movie won't fit on DVD then split it over several discs and allow the theature to rip the DVD to a harddrive and playback.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Whoever modded this as informative is on crack. I make DIVX and X-vid encodes that are totally indistinguishable from the DVD with about 30% less bandwidth. They end up about 2.5-3gig for most movies, with the original AC3 sound. These aren't passed around on the net, they are for my personal use. The studios probably spend 99% of the time for a DVD creating the stupid menus and actually doing the telecine.
I can just see it now -- watching a movie like Outbreak or Andromeda Strain, about a killer virus and it is suddenly changed to XXX porn by the latest M$ TheaterO$ virus....
Also, this is a company that is driven by conquests. They conquered the desktop. What now? You have to expand in order to keep your stock moving upward. It's never enough to stay big; you need to be bigger.
So as with Sidewalk, MSN, XBox, et. al., Microsoft is attacking Google and moving into the moviehouse business because to their way of thinking there is no other option.
For those of you who scoff at these latest attempts, remember that these guys have tremendously deep pockets. They can afford to pour money down a profitless hole for years, knowing that eventually they'll figure out how to market the product. Notice I said "market the product."
The best product doesn't always win. Microsoft's continued dominance is proof of that. Laugh at them all you want, but they're dangerous in almost any arena.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think this a great example of MS using its monopoly leverage to extend its brand (sorry for the buzzwords). They've implemented technology which probably has no real relation to what people do on their home computers -- i.e. it uses special software and hardware -- but are including it under the Windows Media brand to further entrech it in the tech-ignorant public's minds. Unless the theaters are able to go out and buy an off-the-shelf Dell, hook it up to their projection systems and use this content, MS has no business pretending this is just another great use for the same software people already have at home.
seriously now, ppl. is M$ software reliable enough to such operation ?
On standardized hardware, sure - it's the same reason Apple software only runs on their own hardware.
Even on non-standard hardware, WMP is plenty stable - my XP box hasn't crashed in months, and I watch DivX movies quite often in WMP.
I noticed several anoying bugs, one of them the shor lived battery
How's a short-lived battery Microsoft's fault? They didn't make that color LCD suck power like a vacuum cleaner, HP did.
owners of top-of-the-line BMWs also are being annoyed by bugs in the M$ software that runs on the car
Last I heard about it, those bugs were caused by BMW's software, not the underlying OS. If you write a buggy program, it's going to have bugs whether you run it in Linux or Windows.
Microsoft has had some buggy software, but I'm rather convinced that everyone whining about how horrendously unstable it is hasn't used it since Win 95 (or is using Win ME). Win 2000 and XP have been quite stable, in my experience.
now, which will be more annoying: people's mobile phones ringing, or the projectionist who left the default Windows sound theme on?
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
How often does the tape get chewed up in a modern projector. I go to the movies every other week, and in the past four years there have been two movies stopped due to projector failure. This isn't the ISS, people won't die if the projector needs to take a 5 minute break. And honestly, Windows XP does run very reliably and stably for the first two hours, and clearing a theartre takes a lot longer than rebooting XP (Windows 98, no. XP...).
Windows has been running for years in many display kiosks around town and info-screens at the airport. You know it's Windows, because NT will pop up every now and then with a bluish happy little screen. But these things are left on all of the time, all day. If all a machine had to do was boot, display a WM9 file, and reboot, XP should be fine.
Honestly, I'd expect fewer people will be dissappointed with the projection than with the content when the next digitally-projected Star Wars comes out.
The ______ Agenda
Its hard to get a video clip to play on Windows Media Player 9 (the newest version) without it seg faulting. I've been using RealOne Player with success (at least it doesnt segfault).
Hey, maybe that rediculous diamonds commercial from a few years back will become a reality? You know, that cheesy one where the guy takes his girl to a movie, they're the only ones in the theater, and its their wedding video?
:)
I mean, it is realistic, of course the theater would be empty - who is going to watch someone elses wedding video? (Now their honeymoon video, that might be a different story
As an aside, I always like to come up with a "moral" for cheesy commercials. Mine for that one is: "Only incredibly rich guys who have the money rent an entire theater can afford to buy our diamonds."
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
"seriously now, ppl. is M$ software reliable enough to such operation ?"
I used to have a home-brew PVR based on Windows Media 7. The computer had a TV Tuner card that was set up with Snapstream (www.snapstream.com) to capture shows and encode them with WM7 in real time. I also had it hooked up to a TV so I could watch the videos when they were done encoding.
The system had an average up-time of around 2 months before needing a reboot, usually because the sound card gave up for whatever reason. Every week it captured around 10 hours of stuff, and most of it was watched on that computer.
Yes, MS is quite up to it. The WM7 codec was a pretty good codec to boot.
"Derp de derp."
Well, that'll make it easy to boycott, though admitedly I never went to them in the first place.
I have no tag line
Nothing is wrong with microsoft trying, but as usual they aren't breaking new ground, only using alot of money and influence to try to take over a market which is already established. I don't mind this, as the end product is the same and I don't think there's any harm microsoft can do here.
It's seems a good initive. Once the infrastructure will be on place, people could format the hd, install linux and use non-ms codecs for playing pictures, so making them a real low-cost implementation of a filmakers-to-theaters distribution sistem, with improved reliability and net performance.
Any body want to guess that there will be some abbreviated EULA on the tickets. I'd be willing to bet that you specifically agree to not "record" the movie if you buy a ticket. Not much different from now, except they'll be able to sue for damages because someone snuck in w/ a camcorder and releases the movie on the warez channels.
Microsoft Media Manglar 9! I really do not want to goto a theatre to watch windows media player crash or have a hard time decoding videos. Next thing people are going to be complaining about is pixels not rendering properly on the screen, as if people talking in the theatre is bad enough.
:) Free tickets for everyone!!!! Microsoft, from the making money business, to the losing money business!
I guess there is one benifit to this, if it does crash, you get to see the movie again for FREE!
And in related news micrsoft starts moving their monoply and control into another market.
everIEwhere you go?
lookout bullow. the daze of the Godless ill eagle payper liesense hostage ransom stockmarkup bullshipping industrIE are #ed.
in another landmark(tm) case, the oil for babies(tm) program continues to meet resistance from the greed/fear/death mongers upon capitollist hill (of beancouNTers).
lookout bullow.
Its a food chain. Lock in a technology at a high level of the food chain and the rest will follow.
As long as we don't have to see or hear any BSOD-ha-ha-jokes being played, then it's a-ok.
Landmark is a chain of mostly "art-house" theaters that show a pretty eclectic fare. I think this is a really great announcement, because it means a much lower distribution cost for a lot of films that otherwise would go without screenings. This will lead to more choices at their theaters, since you won't have the huge costs of dealing with film spools and prints. Films that currently only play a week or two because the print has to go to the next city can have longer runs, and its easier to play repertoire films due to no shipping costs.
I'm looking forward to see how this works at Austin's Dobie Theater. At South by Southwest 2002 and 2003, lots of the festival films were screened using digital projection, and I thought it worked pretty well, with the biggest problem being the limited resolution of the DV source.
In a theater near you? Oh man that's gonna suck. Watching a cool movie like the matrix and BAM! Blue Screen of illegal operation at blahblahx0blahblah. Or worse yet, the XP style of a pop up saying, "An error occurred, do you want to report this error?"
... why everyone's against everything coming from Microsoft.
Sure, the company is evil, but now in this case it seems to me that they really "invented" quite a good thing, and why not use their product?
Of course, yeah, we can wait a few months till there is an OSS alternative, but hey, they were first.
I think many people should think over their opinion, because there are just too many stereotypes concerning Microsoft. Most people don't think, because "everything that comes from Microsoft is bad."
They certainly have to be kicked of their monopoly-socket, but we have to allow them as well as any other company to bring their ideas to the market and sell them - with fair methods of course.
Martin
Tend to post comments only when drunk
SpamJunkie writes "Feel like watching new releases in 7.1 surround sound with full digital video? It's coming, not with MPEG 4 but with Windows Media 9. Microsoft announced it is bringing Windows Media 9 to 177 screens in Landmark Theaters."
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
how it's a monopoly (which, it isn't)
Actually, it is. I'm going to be putting together a computer for my sister soon. I'll give you two guesses to tell me what operating systems she can choose from, and I'll give you one guess as to which operating system is the only one she really can choose. Here's a hint: she doesn't have the money for a Mac. I'd also give you a guess about her word processor, but it isn't worth it.
I don't have to fuck about for hours installing this and that, having the right hardware...
I say the same things about Solaris and Mac OS X relative to Windows.
The movie goer does not care how the movie is projected, how it gets to the cinema, or whatever.
I'd bet there will be a two-minute preview hammering into the minds of the audience how great WM9-based movies are. I'd also not be suprised if there are borderline-subliminal messages in that preview to gain even better penetration.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
MS has no monopoly in projection, sound, theater or media markets. It's therefore rather hard for them to leverage it's brand in an industry that is not dependant on it. Now... don't get me wrong. I think Landmark is basically screwing themselves, and hard, but Microsoft isn't really doing anything even remotely unethical here. They've managed to land a big contract, sure, and if they use this contract to force movie companies to give them MSMedia player movies vs. something more industry standard, then yes we've entered the realm of Monopoly manipulation. But until then... lets' all be glad at how easy it's going to be to rip movies and spread them on the net.
You don't really need a trained compressionist, you just need a high enough bitrate. e.g. MPEG-1 at less than 1 Mbit/sec tends to look like crap (without extensive tweaking), but over 1.2Mbit/sec it's hard to screw up. I haven't worked with MPEG-2 as much but I'd guess the dividing line for NTSC video is around 5-6 Mbit/sec.
What you need the compressionist for, aside from getting every last bit of image quality from the encoder, is monitoring things like buffer-fill rate and all the other encoder parameters that need to be "just right" to meet the DVD spec.
Remember folks, this is part of their plan to take over the movie industry content distribution, as was their deal a year or two ago to have the WM9 codec in DVD player chips. Pretty soon you'll see them making exclusive deals with movie companies to have movies shown in the digital theatres then only available in their custom WM9-DVD format, and they'll do it with some blockbusters so people will feel they _have_ to buy new players. SSDD.
I wonder how the projectionist would do when the "Would you like to upgrade to QuickTime Pro" message comes onto the screen at the beginning of each movie.
I suppose they would have to install some sort of pointing device.
No more having to go through cam rips! Now, the movie comes fully compressed and playable in anything that supports the wm9 codec as well.
While they're at it I hope they do try to one-up Google, out-Mac the folks at Apple, attempt to corner the virtual machine market, destroy open-source, and run Oracle out of business. If they get so side-tracked as to think they can beat everyone, then collectively there's a chance.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
I also forgot to mention their similar deals with the music industry to ship copy protected CDs using the WM9 format. All part of the same business plan - they have the computer industry by the gonads, now it is time for the movie and music industries to feel the pain.
connecting...
connecting...
failed to download CODEC.
Mother of all Bluescreens?
All your google too.
Okay, this isn't entirely on-topic, but I think the OS of choice might better be OS/2 Warp (already used at ATMs in Tops supermarkets, at least - I saw one of them being booted up) than Windows. Linux would be even better (Linux r0x0r).
-uso.
Mmmm, CP/M 6.0...
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
...is 'pirate' not 'time-shift'.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
i agree... i would think DRM is a top priority to Hollywood sending out digital copies of movies.
No matter what they try I am sure somebody will still have some better way to pirate this than the old "camcorder under trenchcoat" method... but who knows. Remember at one point they were exploring streaming the movies over satellites or something? Some wayt he Theaters didnt really house the movies? I also read they wanted to use satellites for distribution so they would not have to be sent out in advance and rely on FedEx or whatever.
As long as M$ can give them an acceptable quality level, they will surely win for now...... unless somebody comes out with a tighter DRM format. I guess there is no reason there can not be a totally new format or format derivitative for theaters..... it's not like those film projectors are a huge mass selling market either.
As some posts mentioned, I would really like to see theaters open up to other forms of digital entertainment:
A Quake LAN party across a multiplex would be cool.
How about movies on demand? Rent a theater for a Friday beer bash and watch a movie from their movie library.
gillbates@lycos.com
I try to support the local independent theatres as much as possible, but for me this doesn't really help them. I'm sure a lot of people don't care, but I'd prefer not to go to a theatre that is sponsored by and supports Micro$oft. I realize that their computers are probably running windowz, and that's just a result of the monopoly, but as this move really puts them in bed with Microsoft, I'll have to think about going elsewhere. Such a dilemma!
Just because Landmark would be early adopter, doesn't guarantee success. Read this older story about Inacom at Microsoft site. Funny thing is, the date on the article says May-2000 which is really really close to the date Inacom filed Chapter 7 and closed down completely.
I wonder, do they make everyone sign an agreement before they enter the theater? Or is it just assumed that by purchasing the ticket, you agree to whatever fine print they can cram onto the back of it?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Seriously, who needs 7.1? The majority of DVDs out there are 5.1 and most movies simply won't benefit from the extra 2 channels. Let's make 9.1 because more channels sound better! The capability is nice but it's not that useful.
they mention in the article that the movies could be distributed over a network or via optical media i.e. DVD... but does anyone have any insight into how big a, say, 2 hour, 5.1 surround sound movie will be? pirating 10+GB files still isn't that mainstream...
and on a similar note, what is 'theater' resolution?
Please mod this down as a TROLL
After Episode III I can die in peace.
Windows Media Encoder 9 produces the best quality video I have ever seen from any encoder. I used to be a DivX 5 fan but Microsoft seems have beaten everything as far as quality of the video is concerned.
I am not much of a audiophile so I can't comment on the audio quality. (though I couldn't make out any difference between the source audio and the encoded audio)
Here is the encoder params I used if anybody is interested in trying.
cd %ProgramFiles%\Windows Media Components\Encoder
cscript wmcmd.vbs -input C:\test\recordedshow.mpg -output C:\test\encoded.wmv -a_codec WMA9PRO -a_mode 4 -a_setting Q100_44_2_24 -v_framerate 24 -v_mode 4 -v_bitrate 700000 -v_performance 100 -v_height 384 -v_width 720 -v_clip 0 96 0 96
Used the WinDVD 4 mpeg2 decoder with the NOVIDEODROP registry setting.
Speaking for myself, I have had great luck with QT6. I did do the evil deed of actually buying QT6Pro, but since then, I re-coded most of my movies into Mpeg-4, which, for me, who has a Mac, a Windows PC, 2 Linux PCs, (and a partridge in . . . ) has been really great to just watch it on anything - or edit it if I wished.
I have a Mitsubishi DLP projector, and me and my friends come over and watch movies on the wall (no screen yet $$) And QuickTime/MP4 is my choice. WMP just makes crap, or just crashes on any file over 700 Mb.
just my 2 sense.
'/dev/wit' is not available.
I can remember when 5.1 surround sound was all the rage...
But I keep wondering, when are they going to have an audio release that doesn't need to be patched to x.1 in order to work right? Can anyone tell me what was so bad about 5.0 surround sound that they had to release a fix for it right away? Couldn't they have just waited until version 6 was released?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
To me, the reason for paying silly prices for movie tickets is to see a clean PRINT - to get playback fidelity that I can't get at home. I've demanded, and gotten, refunds on admission when the print was in poor condition.
I'll also deal with increasingly rude and irritating fellow audience members, again, to see a movie in better fidelity.
However, I have a largish TV, I have a DVD player, I have surround sound. I rent movies from NetFlix for about $2-3 a throw.
So, exactly why do I want to pay a money/irritation premium to go the movies any more? I think that Landmarjust lost a small but significant percentage of their customer base.
There goes Microsoft, doing things better and cheaper for customers again. Damn them, evil bastards!
Oh, I mean, "Hurrr, !"
Mod as troll please.
"acceptable resolution"
That article makes it sound far less sexy from the hardware side. If they are shooting for a cost effective way to distribute independent films, then good for them. Again using existing technology and relatively common digital projectors in art-house sized screens seems sensible. With so many indie film makers shooting on digital (for money and simplicity of editing reasons if nothing else) this makes a lot of sense. To shoot a film on digital, edit it digitally and then print it to 35mm is kind of silly. Yes, i am simplifying the whole thing, but when budgets are so tight, this can save the day and get more movies to the theaters instead of straight to DVD (or IFC). All that being said, this is a far cry from the next Star Wars being shown on one of these systems.
So what are the specs for a movie to be shown on a Landmark Theaters screen?
I'm assuming that 360x240 at 15 fps won't cut it.
Also, exactly what kind of projector are they using?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
On the upside my linux rigs have had an uptime of about 120 days since I reinstalled (upgraded), with only ONE reboot because I managed to crash an app I was working on... however I've been using gTV in the background to play videofiles nonstop with no reboots for weeks (roughly 2 gigs of media files that are on my playlist) and the system's been playing the list non stop for about 2 weeks or more now...)
I'd say that's a good test run. And yes I've even had a windows XP rig that did great until it was brought under major stress and then it couldn't keep up and blue screened (I've managed to crash XP to BSOD 14 or so times since I got it... and then I gave it back in disgust)... its no more reliable than 2k or NT4.0 but it is prettier.
Considering this stuff's been running for a few weeks day and night with no reboot... I'd say linux is DEFINITELY up to the task... all we need is the codecs and player software.
That's my 10 cents.
-DaedalusHKX
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
A couple years back, Warren Miller started distributing their movies on DVD to the theatres. For those not in the know, Warren Miller films are awesome ski/snowboard/winterfun movies--excellent stuff.
Anyways, it looked absolutely rotten on the big screen. The big screen really brought out some ugly artifacting, especially around background details.
Quicktime is MPEG4 wrapped Sorensen codec compressed video.
WMP9 is MPEG4 wrapped WMV codec compressed video.
DIVX is MPEG4 Wrapped Divx codec compressed video.
They are all completely legal (not "derived") MPEG 4 implementations with different codecs. Calling Apple's Sorensen codec the only official MPEG 4 implentation is entirely incorrect.
Does anyone have any feedback or pointers to the technical quality of these projectors? In terms of resultion, refresh, color etc?
Why do I feel like I'm going to be watching 1024x768 on a screen 100 times larger than my computer monitor.
Feedback much appreciated.
And yes I know gTV only plays singles and loops them. There are ways around this. -DaedalusHKX
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I've been to 3 movies in my life that crashed. We got free tickets at 2 (the other was free already, a school field trip) and were allowed to finish the movies when they got back up and running.
shit happens in analog, too.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
If all a machine had to do was boot, display a WM9 file, and reboot, XP should be fine.
The catch is that there are systems available that don't require a hardware reboot. But, sometimes, it doesn't matter if the computer needs to be rebooted every so often--not having a reboot is just a convinience in those cases.
They'll probably forget to load the right codecs so the first people viewing it will enjoy crisp 7.1 digital sound all in time with one of the wmp visualisations
Actually, usually we do. Especially in this case.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Microsoft is using a weak "partner", Landmark Theaters, and a weak supplier, independent filmakers, to try and establish themselves as the digital standard for movies. This is a battle with Quicktime and Realplayer on what the standard will be, not with the MPAA. If the main industry is foolhardy enough to fall for this, I can already see the wacky licensing terms Microsoft will impose once there is no competition.
"$5 a seat for every seat in the theater whether there is anybody sitting in it or not"
"10% of the budget goes to us or your can't use WMP9 to distribute"
"Anybody caught trying to tape the movie off the screen will be summarily executed by the MS DRM police"
As a professional geek who also works part-time as a union projectionist (at, among other places, Landmark), I'm interested in what the article doesn't discuss: the actual projection technology being used. Will it be DLP, D-ILA, LCD, or something else entirely? What will the resolution be? How will the whole thing interface with existing theatre automation equipment and sound systems (Component Engineering TA-10 and Dolby CP500, in our case)? Who will install and service the equipment? Will we receive backup 35mm prints in case the system fails? How will the bookers decide what to book in 35mm and what to book in Windows Media? How will the "movies" be distributed? CD/DVD-R, satellite, DLT tape, or something else? What about encryption and compression?
Finally: who benefits from this? Clearly, there is very little benefit to the exhibitor to spending money to do exactly what is currently being done with existing equipment. Ticket sales won't go up as a result of implementing digital projection. If--as I expect--the quality sucks, ticket sales will probably go _down_.
I suppose that this is all very interesting in some ways, but I'd be willing to bet anything that our Simplex 35mm projectors with ISCO lenses will give far better quality than lossily-compressed proprietary Windows Media crap at a much lower cost to the exhibitor and with far greater reliability with a significantly longer service life. I've run film projectors that are well over 50 years old (some still with carbon-arc lamps) which give a great picture; will the Windows Media thing even last a year before becoming hopelessly obsolete?
It's not your eyes you have to give up, it's your tongue, since your eyes are input-only devices, and hence already compliant with DRM.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
is M$ fault. their software doesn't use ipaq's power managment the way it should, which results in 24 hour batery time. with familia 0.6 I get 4X the battery time.
What ? Me, worry ?
Think First Person Shooter...
Think Totally Immersive Environment. This would be like the ultimate game screen! Quake|Unreal|Half-Life|Whatever from the front row in Astounding 7.1 digital. Whoa.
So how long before we see posts from theatre employees telling about running the latest FPS on the big screen?
Largest Blue Screen of Death, ever.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Isn't MPEG-4 (whether it's MS's WM9 implementation or any other) optimized to use efficient compression and minimize file size, making it more appropriate for restricted-bandwidth situations and streaming media than it is for a large-format, super-high-bandwidth setup like a movie theater?
When I go to the theater, I want to best possible picture quality. To me, this means using low-loss compression, or even no compression at all.
dear lord, is there a clinical term for fear of microsoft hegemony yet?
Feels as if nobody in this world is going to be spared from being Microsoftized. I want to live in a free world and don't want to see blue death screens everywhere I turn. Google, Theaters whats next...cars or maybe aeroplane.
Isn't it obvious? M$ is in bed with hollywood with the whole DMR scene. M$ go out and make proprietory systems and filetypes and put DRM in, then Hollywood hapilly comes along and makes everything in M$'s format. Now it's use M$ or not get the films, much like Blockbusters deals with Hollywood. M$ wins, independants die.
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
1. Take existing video standard.
2. Propietarize it.
3. Deliver software to view it on 90% of user computers on the planet.
4. Package software to movie theatre company monopoly.
5. ?????
6. Profit!
*ka-ching!*
This space for rent.
sans the popcorn, though. My in-flight movie crashed with a white screen of death and a Windows error. The reboot took 30 minutes. (and then another 20 minutes to fast forward to where the movie had crashed)
*Audience on the edge of their seats as they come to the climax of the 3 hour lord of the rings final episode*
;-)
Blue Screen Of Death
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Why in the hell would I go to a movie theater to see very compressed video, both Windows Media and MPEG-4 seem very choppy to me. It gives me a headache.
...You!
You made my day with this post. Thank you.
Other than the other issues of DVDs not having enough capacity, the studios wouldn't distribute movies on disc (even a super-high capicity disc). The idea that an unscrupulous theatre employee could (*gasp*) make a copy of their precious movie is too much for their hearts to take.
However, in a nice proprietary format with controlled hardware, they get a nice buzz thinking their movies are safe.
Oh, and I think you may be on the mark on your prediction of WMP-discs becoming a reality. Oh, DVDs will be around for quite awhile, but slowly you'll find that all the extras that you find currently on DVDs (all the interviews, deleted scenes, etc.) will soon start disappearing from DVDs and exclusively appear on WMP-discs. Either that, or the extra content will not appear on standard DVD players, only on WMP enabled ones. Either way, we're on our way to fully DRM'ed content.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Why doesn't someone *propose*, actually plan and try to implement and market a free/open solution? I'm sure someone out here on /. has some kind of resources and just a touch of entrepreneurialship, that it could be done. Doesn't take a lot. The trick is to convince people that "Our Linux method" is better than "Macroshaft's Losedoze method" for any number of reasons (price, performance, ease of use, versatility, compatibility, ...). I think it's possible. It might not be as feasible because Gates is Mr. Monopoly (and I'm not talking about OS monopolies here, but about pure raw dinero), but it's possible, theoretically speaking.
</soapbox>
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
It's been many moons since I last had a Win2k box BSOD, and there it was really crappy drivers for a digital camera. If you're crashing your XP box to the BSOD, you've probably got either a setup issue or flaky hardware.
On the other hand, there's a certain amount of stupidity to running USB drivers in kernel space, but that's an argument for another day.
Regardless, a cleanly set up machine running XP will not arbitrarily crash. I would have plenty of confidance in running a projector off XP, more so than Windows Media Player which is much easier to crash.
bance.net
...because among other things, it'd be illegal. Listen closely to the disclaimer the NFL broadcasts at least once or twice during each game. Theoretically, you're not even allowed to tell your friend how the game went- reporting on the game is expressly prohibited unless you get their permission.
Please help metamoderate.
How "funny." You mentioned DRM and said Microsoft would gouge your eyes. That is witty and clever.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I don't want this.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
In related news...
The movie theatres participating in the rollout are apparently required to install hand-held "Acceptance keypads" that simply have an "I Agree" and "I Disagree" button.
Upon the commencement of the film, a EULA is slowly scrolled along the theatre's screen and after finished, the patrons are required to press "I Agree" or "I Disagree" on the keypad.
Reports of early beta testers pressing "I Disagree" have resulted in a 007-style ejection seat which launches the moviegoer in a hole in the theatre's roof.
-brain
You made the clever and original joke that there would be "OBEY," "CONSUME," and "REPRODUCE" subliminal messages because it is Microsoft. The moderaters will be pleased.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It is a microsoft developed codec that was codenamed corona. It is roughly equivelent in quality and size to MPEG-4 but not the same. Microsoft clearly spent millions of dollars developing a codec just to be incompatible. But win media 9 is a very high compression technology which is why I prefer MPEG-2, might as well stick to what DVD's are using.
You know, you're right. Marketing is actually secondary to wielding monopoly power on the desktop. With all the benefits of monopoly rents, Microsoft can afford to come out with a crappy version 1, followed by successively better versions over time.
Most software companies don't have that luxury. If version 1 sucks, they don't sell software. They go out of business.
Apologies for my wildly off-base initial post, AC.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I see your point, but M$ is an American company...
I see your point, but the density of water at 25C is 0.9970479 g/mL.
People need to check themselves. Everyone is so hung up on the fact that it's Microsoft and Windows Media 9 (On Slashdot? Who knew?) that they're ignoring the bigger picture. They're just saying the picture is too pixellated without even looking at it...
What Microsoft, Landmark and DCS are doing is lowering the cost of entry into the cinema. Instead of having to pay a low six-figure sum for making a master print and copies for distribution, filmmakers can now pay less than $10,000 to convert their movie to this digital cinema format and find new audiences for their creations. They're cutting a major cost of independent filmmaking by about 90%. Ultimately, this is a good thing, because it allows filmmakers to concentrate more on their vision than their financial backing, and it allows good films that might otherwise disappear beneath a radar cluttered with major-studio crap -- have major studios released anything worthwhile yet in 2003? -- an opportunity to be seen.
Major motion picture studios tend to focus group their creations to death, leaving us with a lot of bland, forgettable films. Technology is giving small, independent filmmakers a better opportunity to make their focused, unique visions a reality. The next "Pi" will be created using digital film and distributed to theaters on digital media. I fail to see how any of this could be a bad thing.
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Except for their peripherals department, which makes very good mice, keyboards, and cool joysticks. Give credit where it's due. (note: the x-box controller does NOT fit into the above category :op )
1.) Disable Outlook Express checking email every
15 mins (I don't want to see your hotmail
email.)
2.) Disable windows sounds.
3.) Disable IIS if installed.
4.) Turn off screensaver.
5.) Tell Norton Antivirus not to complain about
outdated virus definitions.
Then check out the Digital Cinema Solutions site, the people who are actually deploying this. "Beautiful ads digitally delivered direct to your theater." "Sponsored Film Series -- BMW Car Movies, Nike Sports Films, Pepsi Teen Movies, Toys R. Us Family Films". This technology has been in limited use for a year now, mostly for ads.
As for reviews, the Los Angeles Times wrote:
Also, Landmark theaters tend to be small, so they can use off-the-shelf digital projectors. Big screen, high-resolution projectors are still expensive, low-volume items.
There's no new technology here; it's a marketing move. It's so Microsoft.
Theaters could probably get equally good results by playing DVDs through a line-doubler and a good TI projector.
. Lo and behold!
But seriously, I don't think anybody likes the idea of proprietary media being used in theatres.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
I sure as hell hope you're talking about the server.
Argh... Digital theaters do NOT use MPEG-2 compression! Digital movies are stored on a large SCSI RAID array, using 4:1 lossless compression of HDTV resolution signals. The compression I believe is an SMPTE standard (or some other standards group) for sending HDTV around the studio. It's then fed through a decoder which is connected directly to the 3-chip DLP projector. The DLP chips at the time digital cinema was introduced had a resolution of 1280x1024. I don't know if that's improved since then.
A solution to the problem with music today
Why the need to use a PC? Couldnt MS find a way to create a WMA decoder in a ROM type fashion? I think a black box that you simply put a dvd containing the WMA file on it would rock. Less points of failure than a traditional PC.
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Landmark theaters suck. I hate them, I hate their owner and I hate his stripper wife. It's not at all uncommon for them to get the more esoteric films and lock them into exclusive engagements with the Landmark shitty theater chain. All the Landmark theaters are overpriced and crappy, some smell weird, some have poorly maintained screens, and one has wooden seats that may give you a splinter. None have decent parking, and few are near anything else of interest. A couple are so bad that I won't go near them no matter how bad I want to see a particular movie, and considering I drove from Seattle to Portland to see eXistenZ, that can be pretty bad.
Where I live I'm practically drowning in screens looking for movies, but the shitty and evil Landmark chain does everything they can to make sure I'm as dissatisfied as possible, even when I'm not seeing a movie at one of their theaters.
If anyone should be urinated on it's Landmark's owner and his stripper wife, I bet they'd pay extra.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
If you cannot win at the low bitrates (xvid, realmedia even better) I guess it's reasonable to focus on the high bitrates.
There were some threads on the supposed superiority of the wm9 codec at high bitrates on the doom9 forums a while ago.
Excellent! Digital distribution should save the movie industry and the cinemas a bundle, which I'm sure can only result in cheaper cinema tickets... er, right?
Why not just distrubute the movies on DVDs and let the theaters choose which players, either hardware or software they choose to use.
Signing on with an evil megacorporation is good for indie films? Yeah, right. Clue: there are cheaper/free MPEG4 implementations.
Now I'll snicker extra at their snarky anti-Hollywood promos. Hypocrites.
Seriously. With any other company, it might be different. But this is Microsofts game. They get in at ground zero, and sit on it until it becomes big, or they push it on people. History repeats itself, it always has, it always will.
The parent of this post observed that Microsofts only reason for this is to make money. That is the goal of most (if not all) businesses. The difference with Microsoft is that they don't have a ceiling. When I say that, I mean, once they have established their products in Landmark theatres, they will expand their influence elsewhere. They are out to turn a profit, and/or increase their profits. As a result, if this is successful on a small scale, there is no reason NOT to expand. They have the funds and the name to support an undertaking like that. And when one person or company controls every aspect of a particular area, people are locked in and don't have a choice(used to be called monopoly, now we just call it legal).
While there are those on slashdot who are quick to trash microsoft, there is a reason for that. Trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice, shame on me. People are simply looking at Microsoft, their history, and coming to a conclusion about how this venture will end up. I don't blame people for immediately smacking down Microsofts new ventures. Obviously waiting until there IS a monopoly, and then trying to stop it doesn't work. The only means of resistance in this case, is to try to stop it from gettting to that point. Microsofts only true intention is to make money. I'm pretty convinced they will do just about anything to fulfill that goal.
So, while this may indirectly benefit the little guys in the short term (they aren't doing this for the little guys, it's like invading Iraq and saying it's to liberate the people....oh wait...), you have to agree that in the long term, it would be beneficial to have 3 or more companies deploying this type of technology and competing. Hopefully, someone with some money to invest and time to give will take notice of this and put up some competition. (Apple/Pixar & Quicktime?) I belive this is something which Linux could definitely compete with, as well as Apple/OS X. We'll see.
[begin offtopicness] Course, in 20 years, they'll probably change the name of my FRENCH FRIES to Microsoft Fries or something. My Physics 2 teacher actually said freedom fries the other day, when he was just talking about french fries. I almost started laughing at him. I guess someone bought into our nationalist propaganda...
Don't forget the subliminal "Embrace, extend and extinguish" part. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Actually, WMV9 isn't a MPEG-4 codec. Earlier versions were based on draft MPEG-4 standards, but they forked quite a while ago.
Also, the difference is a lot bigger than 30%. It's more like 100% more for MPEG-2, with the gap increasing as data rates get lower.
My video compression blog
2gigs of files playing for 2 weeks??? Based on the size of the Divx movies I typically watch that would only be about 5-6 hours of video. Are you watching really low quality video, or have you been watching the same movies over 50 times?
Absolutely.
The problem is that the big theater chains control the channels of distribution, and are afraid of competition. I and several other people I know have tried to get various theater businesses going, including cinema cafes back in the mid-80s. It's nearly impossible to obtain the rights to do this.
The theater industry has its familiar business model, and is not interested in changing. And as long as it has the power to avoid change, it will. The only hope is to convince them of the missed opportunities. The first successful step will probably to get them to partner with a chain of sports bars or something. This too will be difficult, because all the major theater chains are family businesses run by third generation ne'er do wells -- more concerned with holding on to what they have than exploring new possibilities.
IOW, this is a really tough nut to crack. It's a shame, because the possiblities are incredible. Many others have been thinking these very same things, and trying new business models for decades. Every time, they've been crushed by the powers that be. New technology may provide more leverage, but that's not the heart of the matter.
Like the dinosaur music industry, the theater industry's attitude is this:
We don't have to.
We shouldn't have to.
We refuse to.
Don't even bother to try, we'll sue.
I did a quick CTRL+F on the 300+ odd posts here...but hasn't anyone written anything about part of the ticket sales going to MS? Sucks IMO.
Your description is more like an API. The conformance point of MPEG-4 is a bitstream. Any encoder that makes a legal bitstream is legal, and any player than can take any legal bitstream is legal. Within that, players and encoders are limited by Profiles and Levels, which define the tools, and the maximum paramters of the tools, that can be used.
My video compression blog
I'm thinking that most projection failures today don't have anything to do with what software is running them. Cinemas, especially the multiplexs are businesses first run for money. As such, the trends have been to staff them with less and less people (except selling concessions) with more and more automated equipment. Its not unusual for there to be one guy or gal running from screen to screen tweaking the focus. There isn't someone sitting back there all the time anymore. So when there's a problem, expect a long wait-- but if it goes more digital, I consider that a good thing. And other companies can jump in and compete anyway.
And I know its digital, but I'd relish the idea of seeing the next Star Wars melt in a burst of flame. Just a little.
Semantics.
Whether your opponent surrenders peacefully or you kill them all in a war of attrition, when you walk into their capital city and raise the flag you've conquered them.
Microsoft is very good at waiting for their opponents (Apple and Netscape spring to mind) to make mistakes. They are relentless competitors. Say what you will about their technology, but companies that underestimate Microsoft usually wind up regretting thier miscalculation.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Dude, you mofos are screwed in the head BIGTIME..
When TF was the last time you saw a blue screen of death????
I just dont get you mothers.
I'm actually in the process of designing a digital cinema system along these lines, so here's a few comments
Everyone is focusing on the codec being the quality limitation, but that's not true. In fact, the projector is the biggest deal. There are plenty of modern codecs that can give you visually lossless quality if you throw enough bits at them. The issue with codecs is getting compression efficiency up so that transmission and storage is cheaper, and keeping decode complexity down so you don't need to have expensive hardware in the projector. The WM9 system is pretty much a high end (but not the highest end) Dell workstation, strapped to a cart with XLR audio out, a control pad, and a big data projector on the top. All off the shelf parts, which makes implementation cheap, and upgrading the computer very cheap. But those are nice things to have, but not strictly required for digital projection.
But we could do the same thing with MPEG-4, or other formats. WM9 has a more mature DRM solution and some other advantages, but it is absolutely possible to use another format.
The big limit is in having a projector that is bright enough to fill the room, with a dark black, and high resolution. Moore's law gives us improvements in compression faster than we get improvements in projection, so the big photon cannon will be the true limit on quality for a while.
My video compression blog
No they spend most of the time getting the framing right.
Let's see...it has a chip in it, so it must run NetBSD. But since it run windows, it must be an i386 type of arch, so FreeBSD would do just fine ;)
Therefore, /usr/ports/multimedia/mplayer && make install clean && cd /cdrom/lotr && mplayer lotr-3.wmv
cd
Problem solved.
My question is, what is stopping theaters of using an opensource os and mplayer to show these movies?
Because bandwidth costs money aaand. . .
We are talking about resolutions MUCH higher than that. Picture transferring 50 gigabytes VS transferring 40 gigabytes. Now imagine that difference times the hundreds if not thousands of theaters across the nation that would be receiving just that one film in digital format. Multiple this by an even larger number of videos are "streamed on demand" rather than stored locally after being transferred once.
Paying some dude $20 an hour or so to squeeze that extra bit of compression out of the codec all of a sudden becomes well worth it.
Heck, for that matter, just bumping up the bit rate is not always enough. multi-pass VBR encoding kicks ass, as do any of the five gazzilion other new options that keep on appearing in various MPEG4 codecs. If Microsoft wants to truly promote this as a professional standard, then they WILL start adding more and more of the twiddly bits to their compressors, and the movie studios will have to hire somebody who knows exactly how to twiddle those various twiddly bits.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I can't believe how amazingly cool this media player technology is. I mean, no one else is doing 7.1 audio yet. Man, imagine if these people made an operating system. How cool would that be?
But seriously, I don't think anybody likes the idea of proprietary media being used in theatres.
Yeah, I love watching a movie using Dolby or THX sound. Those two are the paradigms of open media.
NOT!
You just won the jackpot for the stupidest post in a really stupid discussion.
Actually, it is.
Actually, it isn't. The fact that you think the (many) alternatives are too expensive doesn't negate the fact that they exist, and that alone is enough to rebut the accusation that Microsoft is a "monopoly." Does Canjet have an airline monopoly in Canada? I always fly with Canjet. I can't afford to fly with Air Canada, so I guess by your definition, CanJet is a monopoly in Canada. Whatever.
I'd bet there will be a two-minute preview hammering into the minds of the audience how great WM9-based movies are.
I'd take that bet. Movie commercials are very expensive. What on Earth makes you think movie producers will put up with a full two minute ad (your words, not mine) before every one of their shows, without Microsoft front a massive wad of cash? The only analogy I can think of is that occassionally, some movies I see show a 15 second "THX" or "Dolby Digital" promo. Certainly not two minutes.
Stop with the FUD. You sound ignorant.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
When the latest movies shows up in a Chinese DVD factory before they are released to theatres in the U.S., it just kind of suggests that it is not the general public doing the "pirating", but rather someone with special access to the film.
That being the case, I'd expect that it will still be possible for the same folks to tap into the final output video stream and save a copy for their friend$. It's just a stream of bits; you can keep it encrypted for as long as you can, but at the very end, just before the light hits the screen, it's got to be unencrypted.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Established? George Lucas counts as this?
I think this is the *least* established market Microsoft has worked on.
Hey man, this is Slashdot. By default they are going to bash anything and everything Microsoft, with whatever FUD they can muster.
Its funny, most times the only justification they can come up with is "hey d00d, M$ iz a monopoly!"
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Standard MS plan here...
Inital release will be much below market costs to gain the interests of movie houses. The copy prevention card for the studios. Dual effort there as the movie houses will be getting the "incentive" to switch from both sides.
Soon after the honeymoon, Licensing-2 comes out, price goes up but still bearable. The one not in bed with MS will probably bear the brunt of the increase (encoding costs at the studio or decoding costs at the theaters). I would venture to say the studios will have the advantage at this point due to my point above.
When Licensing-3 rolls out, it will be much more expensive but not as expensive if you bundle it with the MoviePackage2005 that includes converting the sales office and POS terminals to the MS XP2005 system. It provides the added functionality of integration and a few graphs and pie charts that can be viewed by management on the big screens between movies. Funny how the industry survived as long as it did without any of these tools.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
If you dont like it, go to Russia. Oh wait, that wont work. Go to China! Um, no, that isnt it... Cuba?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
DVD in the big screen is a Bad Idea. DVD has a max 720x480 resolution.
That said, it's possible to have high-bitrate (but still compressed) video that looks good on the big screen.
Try watching some 1080i HDTV content. (Like CSI or CSI: Miami). This will look pretty good on the big screen. Especially if you use a "studio master" bitstream, which is often at 40+ megabits/sec as opposed to the 19.2 Mbps of ATSC HD.
Now take that further, and use a better codec, like MPEG-4. With MPEG-4 at 1080p resolution and a high bitrate, you can still have a high compression ratio but have it look excellent on the big screen.
Probably MPEG-4 encoded at HDTV bitrates (19.2 Mbps) would be indistinguishable from pure film.
(BTW, there is already a looming format war over "high definition" DVDs, as HDTV users are beginning to realize that DVD isn't all it's cracked up to be. The two main competing techniques are standard DVD media but with MPEG-4 encoding, and Blu-Ray with MPEG2. There is also DVHS, which supports MPEG-2 at up to 25+ megabits/sec.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You can download the MS8 and presumably MS9 encoders from their site for free. Now, the server software might be require some expensive licensing, but the cost to encode, at least now, is free. They want every yahoo out there to use MSX for their online video compared to Quicktime or DivX which costs ~$30 either for the ability to encode or the optimized codecs. That's not counting Quicktime's interface isn't good for production encoding/capture, you'd need to use something like iMovie which costs $1,000. DivX doesn't even come with software to do that, it's just a bundle of codecs. Look to buy something like Premier for big $$$, too.
Remember, there are multiple variants of MPEG.
VCD and DVD use MPEG-2.
WM9 is an MPEG-4 variant, as is DivX/XviD.
At a given bitrate, MPEG-4 is better than MPEG-2. Unfortunately it takes more CPU to encode and decode. (There are VERY few hardware MPEG-4 decoders and so far I have not seen any hardware MPEG-4 encoders).
DVD will look like crap on the big screen, it's only 720x480. HDTV MIGHT be acceptable, the ATSC standard includes resolutions up to 1920x1080 interlaced (Actually, I'm not sure but I believe that it may also include 30 fps 1080p, but no one broadcasts that at the moment.) HDTV is encoded at 19.2 Mbps max (approx. 8.5 gigabytes/hour, as opposed to approx. 2.5 or so for DVD). "studio master" HD (used by the networks for distribution before final retransmission) is around 30-40 Mbps or more, and JVC "D-Theater", only playable on JVC D-VHS decks, is around 25-28 Mbps. All of these formats are MPEG-2. Encode using MPEG-4 (WM9, DivX, etc.) at those bitrates and the quality will be even better.
WM9 and high-bitrate DivX are popular formats for backing up HDTV recordings that will fit on a DVD. (Lots of info on that at http://www.avsforum.com/ in the HTPC section.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
While I think WM9 (A proprietary version of MPEG-4) is a bad idea when XviD/DivX (much more open implementations) are nearly as good, I think you're being unfairly harsh on WM9 here.
A video is only as good as its source. Unfortunately, 90% of the time WM9 is used because it excels at low bitrates.
What most people don't know is that WM9 (and DivX/Xvid) also do incredibly well at high bitrates. Try to find some WM9 clips encoded from HDTV sources, or get an HDTV tuner card and encode some clips yourself. (Or use DivX like I do.) You'll change your opinion of MPEG-4 very quickly.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Those numbers are the number of channels, not version numbers.
5.1 indicates 5.1 channels of sound. 5 full-frequency-range channels of sound (Front left/right/center, rear left/right) and one low-frequency-only (subwoofer) sound channel.
7.1 indicates an extra two channels. Maybe front left/right/center, middle left/right, rear left/right plus subwoofer.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
MPEG-4 is pretty flexible. By changing various codec parameters, it can do extremely well at high bitrates. (Or if you don't want to manually tweak codec parameters, the optimum method is two-pass encoding.)
MPEG-4 can do anything MPEG-2 can and more. At a sufficiently high bitrate, you'll be hard pressed to tell it apart from whatever codec was used to encode the theatrical releases of Star Wars Episode 2. (I've read that it was filmed in 1080p, and most likely it was encoded using high-bitrate MPEG-2 MP@HL - Main Profile at High Level, similar to HDTV. DVDs are MP@ML, Main Profile at Main Level.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The fact that you think the (many) alternatives are too expensive doesn't negate the fact that they exist, and that alone is enough to rebut the accusation that Microsoft is a "monopoly."
If General Motors captured the entry-level automobile market, such that the Cavalier was the only car available for under $20,000, would that give GM a monopoly on entry-level cars? Yes, because the other genuine options are: walking (going without), purchasing the greater than $20,000 Toyota, which, in this hypothetical scenario, is the only other mainstream car in the market (a.k.a., Apple), or building a kit car (a.k.a., Linux and UNIX). Does our culture allow us to go without? Rarely, so we either buy the Cavalier or the Toyota. Wealth distribution being what it is, most people get stuck with the Cavalier.
Markets are segmented into price ranges. Microsoft unmistakably dominates entry-level comptuters. The fact that Apple, Sun, IBM, and SGI still sell alternatives, albeit in a higher price bracket, doesn't shake Microsoft's strong hold on inexpensive computers.
For myself, I chose to suck-it-up and buy a used Sun and a Solaris RTU for at home, but my sister doesn't have that luxury--she gets stuck with a cheap PC and Windows XP.
Certainly not two minutes.
My point was that there will likely be advertisements (regardless of duration) for WM9 to rub in the fact that Microsoft technology is behind the soon to start "cinematic experience."
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
was that illegal operation piracy? ;)
Will it be until we are gouged for $100 every time we want to go see a movie? Of course, prices MUST be that high because of RAMPANT piracy that eats away at the profits of Micro$oft.
But this time they'll have a reason for charging that much: because off all the complaints regarding BSOD, lockups, crashes and and all the other crap that comes with Micro$oft products.
Question though: What resolution are they going to play the movies at? 4096 X 3072 X 24-bit color equals scanning 200 megabytes per frame.
Seriously. After waiting 12 hours in line a week early to get tickets to a morning showing on the first day, the film melted right before the movie started!!!
Of course, everyone in the theater went nuts. But then the manager came down and said they would use another reel and everything would be ok.
My friend just laughed because with my bad luck, he was kind of expecting something like that to happen.
No? Well it doesn't work. Xvid, DivX 4 (not earliest versions I think) & 5 is MPEG4 compliant. DivX 3.11, WM is not. Fine you can make a proprietary *encoder* implementation that creates a valid MPEG4 stream. But when you need a proprietary decoder too, it's not MPEG4. It's your own Microsoft "standard".
The I- and P- frame concept are extremely old and in use in almost every video codec out there. They took some good ideas from MPEG4, but have been going in their own direction ever since.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Unfortunately, the fidelity of DVDs isn't all that hot. 720x480, approx. 2.5 Mbps MPEG-2 MP@ML.
The highest fidelity video you can get at home right now is 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced) ATSC HDTV or JVC D-Theater. ATSC HD streams are MPEG-2 MP@HL (Main Profile at High Level) streams at 19.2 Mbps, D-Theater is at around 25-28 Mbps.
At a given bitrate, MPEG-4 (WM9 and DivX/XviD are both MPEG-4 variants/derivatives) will do significantly better than MPEG-2. I'm sure that with some hardware tweaking, WM9 can do 1080p (1920x1080 progressive) video at a high bitrate. The codec supports it, unfortunately that high of a resolution will strain even the latest CPUs. That's the same resolution that I believe AoTC was filmed at. (I believe AoTC was delivered to digital theaters as a high-bitrate MPEG-2 stream.)
In short, WM9 does not mean that Landmark can't provide fidelity beyond what you can obtain at home. In fact, chances are that they will provide fidelity beyond the best available for home use, JVC D-Theater. (Or not. Landmark specializes in independent films, and the independent film industry makes heavy use of DV video these days, which itself is only 720x480, albeit VERY lightly compressed in its source form. But most likely Landmark will be able to provide higher fidelity than what you can get at home, with the potential for much more with high-quality source material.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I can see it now.. The movie stops half way through with a BSOD and a message saying "Projector hardware has been changed, Re-Activation is required.
Damn, with the DRM on MS media files, how the hell am I supposed to splice in single frames of hardcore porn?
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
No please, tell me why it is a troll post? Look at the evidence. It's very true, there is a culture of unconditional hate towards Microsoft. It's almost the same as racism, and it makes me laugh at how wound up so many of you become by it.
My fave, during PowerPoint presentations:
A Messenger box pops up with "Luvergrrl: Hey cutie, whatcha doing?" in the bottom right corner. Extra bonus points if you're giving a presentation to an important client or the board or something like that. Having such a message pop up on the silver screen would rate well on the embarrassment scale.
Or possibly something from his/her mom.
In related news, news went out Tuesday this week that the Swedish equivalent of the FDA has approved PowerPoint presentations for medical use as a sedative. I am not surprised.
Top Ten Reasons Why MS Windows Should Not Run Movie Theater Projectors.
What, you thought I was going to actually write it out? No, I'm at the karma cap. Whoever isn't: go nuts!
>>With digital projection, why not rent out a movie theater for a super bowl party?
>because among other things, it'd be illegal.
I agree that's an issue - but I think its possible that the NFL and other sports leagues would be interested in creating special licensing terms in the same way that they currently do for bars and restaurants (I don't recall the exact terms, but I believe the cost of televising an event in a bar or restaurant was tied to seating capacity).
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
... that using a proprietary Windows encoding scheme to distribute movies to theatres is only a foreshadowing of taking the same DMR-friendly encoding scheme and distributing DVDs using it. Then the player manufacturers happily (because many of them are also content distributors) ante up to make DVD players that utilize the Windows Media Player software. And in the end, Microsoft winds up having successfully extended its monopoly franchise into the entertainment viewing marketplace, without firing a competitive shot, so to speak.
Hopefully, Apple's efforts to promote its MPEG4 implementation will succeed at least to the point of offering the public a choice.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
How will they be when they have to pay for that upgrade in three years?
Get a free ipod.
We needed that extra space for the memory dump....
The thing about /.er's is that they only use what works for their opinion at the time, and it can change daily.
So tell me, who's the troll?
Right, now instead of paying for a $1000 roll of real film you'll have to pay MS $995 for the right to use their 'WM9 theater encoder deluxe'. (prices are completely made up)
I think the major hurdle for the independent film industry is the vast droves of morons who would rather pay $9 to see a bunch of computer-rendered explosions than $5 to watch a well thought-out film.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Your favorite OS is FREE you ass. So, your analogy doesn't quite work. The only reason Sucknix DOESN'T dominate is because it SUCKS as a desktop environment.
Let's see how we came to this conclusion.
I'm going to be putting together a computer for my sister soon.Ok, so you're putting one together, not buying one from Dell or Circuit City, NO PRE-INSTALLED OS. You can buy whatever OS you want to at this point.
I'd also give you a guess about her word processor, but it isn't worth it.This statement makes no sense, proving that you lack brain-power.
Just curious. What kind of rights do you need to obtain? What if you only want to show Indie films and not the junk-food kind?
The reason I ask is because as I was reading this article an idea formed in my head to do something similar in my town.
Thanks.
Should'nt this story be posted under the topic Its Funny, Laugh ?
There is a DLP theater a block from my house. What format are these theaters using now? They look simply awesome.
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
I doubt that this will really be used for feature films. This is going to show up first as technology to replace the ads they show before the movie starts - you know the junk that's up there now that looks like it comes from an old slide carousel? Now you local realtor, carpet salesmen can create a low budget commercial (or rather the theatre's marketing people will contract it) and loop it in a paid loop to the theatres.
It could even be a Good Thing. At least, I'm slightly more interested in a 2 minute infomercial from a local realtor showing the properties they have for sale right now than I am in seeing their smiling faces and some "we're number 1" slogan go by on the slideshow 3 or 4 times while I wait for the movie to start.
It also makes sense for the endless "coming attractions" shorts. I suspect it will be years before this gets used regularly for feature films outside of the indie community.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
if (movie.name == "antitrust")
movie.stop
Hate to be argumentive, but the US goverment disagrees with you. Legally, Microsoft is a monopoly.
You don't have to install anything that you don't need including sound drivers, screen savers and desktop themes.
While I appreciate the humor about blue screens, etc, it seems disingenuous to suggest that the latter option is truly the plan.
I think I'll stop here.
There already is a digital cinema movement thats led by Toshiba, Texas Instruments, and Boeing. The difference is that these guys are actually making an effort to improve the quality of projection while reducing delivery costs, and they deliver on all claims.
:)
I hope that Microsoft's effort is not intended to compete with that. What a joke it would be.
Now on the other hand if this is intended for independent film makers or the like. This is where Windows Media Player driving a DLP would be a good thing.
This is also another story that could have been posted on April 1st
Actully I know of a theatre here in Norway that do something like that.
They have a campain going on at the moment, where you can bring your video game console and rent a screen for 500 NOK/h (aprox 70$/h).
This is during daytime though. They got 8 screens, all THX certified, with DD, DTS and SDDS.
For people in Norway, near Oslo. Check out Kino1 in Sandvika!
A sig would be nice to have..
Everytime MS tries to do anything, it gets bashed here on /. This kind of thing is getting so old. Microsoft is a company, not a religion. Companies try to make money and come out with new products, that's what they do. Microsoft is not a touchy-feely conglomoration of nerds building an OS from scratch. It is in the business to MAKE MONEY, which is what we all are sitting in our offices trying to do...making money.
So their technology will be used to view movies, so what!!
This combined with a decent Content Distribution Network solution is a pretty decent way to distribute content... I think it is Hard Rock cafe uses a Cisco based CDN solution to push all of its restaurant video content via high quality MPEGS.. they have a T1 or so to each store, a regional caching box, etc. They publish they encode and publish the files from corporate, drop them into the CDN system which then does off-peak time data distribution of the weekly videos to regional & local caching boxes for playing on the TV's. Supposedly saves them a fortune in Fedex/UPS fees and the price of DVD/vhs tapes, and having to have somebody at each site deal with loading/queing media, etc.
Imagine the media distributors could realize a huge cost savings by not having to deal with distribution issues, wear and tear on media, etc for things like short films/the unversially hated ads, etc. No mater what Lucasfilms thinks I think the full digital distribution of feature films is a way off yet, but for the disposable content this is a good system.
Obviously this is going to be a hacked version of Media Player that does not have screen overlays and pop up mouse cursors etc...
Well, my comment is on your sig, and the spot a cheater.
I generally think that if you are so careless in considering someome a cheater is CS or DoD you're just a sucky player who can only imagine being beaten by a cheater, not a player with more skill than yourself.
Just about everyone of the things you described can be attributed to skill or scripts (both legal).
Play some more, try to get better, and if you still think everyone is a cheater, realize this: YOU SUCK.
And if you hate all these "cheaters" so much, play on a server with Punkbuster and stfu and again, realize this: YOU STILL SUCK and everyone else is NOT A CHEATER.
Btw, I have been called a cheater b/c I use strategy, have learned from past engagements, and sometimes just use dumb luck to shot an MG thru a wall and score a hit.
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
I'm pretty sure that page is meant to be a joke. I mean, come on: A player is a cheater if he ... walks. Walking makes no sound. How are people supposed to prepare for such cheating?"
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
What many are missing here is that the project will most likely NOT be the primary display.
If you have a secondary display, even if it's not configured as part of the desktop, and not a clone, WMP will display a fullscreen version of the video on teh secondary screen, regardless of what happens to the primary window... (as long as you don't close it).
You can minimise it, work ont he computer, whatever.. and the video on the secondary plays just great.
I do wish WMP allowed more low level control of aspect ratios and whatnot... and I'm sure at some point someone will come out with some filters and tools that do.
How can one forget Microsoft programs warped sense of time.
"The installation has 30 minutes remaining," says the message that has been at that for over an hour.
If MS is successfull with thier attemt, not only would the theaters be running Windows, but the studios would need to be as well in order to encode the movie into WMP. So they will have a stronghold there as well. Just my .02
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The second MS said they were movie quality I knew they were not. MS has never lived up to their own hype. BE VERY AFRAID, the next thing you know they will be trying to convince all of us that Angelina Jolie really does have square nipples.
Winamp and XMMS can figure out the length of a VBR mp3 if there is a Xing VBR header at the beginning of the file that gives the average bitrate (then they just divide filesize by average bitrate). Many VBR files (probably 10% or so of the VBR files on p2p networks) are either missing the Xing header or have a corrupted one (usually this is because it's partially overwritten by faulty id3 taggers). In those cases, both Winamp and XMMS display wrong track length based on the bitrate of the first block, which is updated as more blocks are read (the average is continually updated). There's no other real way to do it other than scanning all the blocks in the mp3 and computing the average bitrate first...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
no doubt there will be atleast one instance of fight club style single frames of porn being spliced into a movie because of this, hehe im pretty sure this doesent help movie pirating either...
I bet some goatsie guys nearly had a heart attack just at the tought.
I just beg them the decency to change the film rating...
The biggest long term benefit of digital projection in movie theaters won't be image quality, it will be selection. Movie theaters will be able to show different movies based on the time of day and day of the week, like a TV station. They'll be able to go from such extremes as dedicating every screen in the building to a single title on the opening weekend of a big budget release, to showing 30 different movies per screen per week.
This will benefit small studios and productions far more than large ones, so it's odd that digital video's biggest proponent is George Lucas.
If I can't buy OSX without a browser, then it ain't a separate program. Same as Windows.
How will this affect ticket prices? For some 'strange' reason I have a feeling that ticket prices are going to go up. As if $8.50 for a (non-matinee) ticket isn't bad enough as it is.
Film used to break regularly when I was a kid and even now, interuptions by technical problems happen. It doesn't help to attribute pre-existing problems to Microsoft, just because they're Microsoft.
Personally I have no problem with Microsoft including a browser with their OS. What I object to, as do most people I know, is the notion that you MUST install that browser, having key components of it loaded at all times, in order to be able to use the OS. A browser should be as optional as a word processor.
BTW most OSes come with word processors too. In Windows it's called WordPad. In OS X, TextEdit. Nobody complains, because neither are required.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
that they dont move the mouse!
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
There are various deals by which you can get rights, none of which are really feasible. Basically, they want a headcount of the people watching, and a certain amount of money per head. The only standard deal in the industry is like a regular theater, where you have scheduled showings and sell a ticket to each individual. This is not feasible in a cafe or bar evironment, where the movie is in the background and people come and go. The only deals like this that are currently in place for such an evironment are PPV TV deals for sports bars, etc.
For music, companies like Muzak have standard deals for background music, based on store traffic or sales, out of which fees go to the original artist. But there are no standard deals for films.
With indie films, you're on your own with the individual producer or distrbutor. However, these people have to be careful who they do business with -- if they cut a deal with you, they may ruin their chances of a deal with someone else who doesn't like your deal -- such as a traditional distributor. Like with music, it isn't the studios or labels that run the show, but the distributors.
In a city like NY or LA, there are enough artist/indie filmmakers who would let you screen their films, but chasing them down is a full time job in itself. And even then, you're basically playing to them and their friends, once. It doesn't exactly pack the house, and these people are generally not big spenders -- not enough to cover big city rent, anyway. Many of these businesses have tried and failed. If this could happen anywhere, it would be NY or LA, and it hasn't. I can think of half a dozen in LA alone that have tried in the last few years, and if they didn't fail outright, they morphed into something else.
Such businesses could maybe work as certain models -- such as silent movie theme restaurants, showing movies for which the copyrights have expired. But current films? Forget it.
Now annoying audio and video codecs that are too lossy, and sound like crap on the big screen.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I can see the future of this type of theatre already...
Screen goes black.
Someone says: Yay, it's starting...
Windows XP dialog appears on screen with the text: You are not licensed to view this movie. Please install a valid license and try again.
Everyone in the theatre says: Aww.
A Windows XP desktop running Windows Media Player comes on screen. The desktop shows someone trying to install a license, but is having problems getting the license to work right.
Movie finally comes back on. The movie quality is really blocky with artifacts.
Everyone cheers.
5 minutes in, a dialog box appears: WMP9Theatre has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
Everyone says: Aww.
Movie restarts again with the same block artifact problem.
10 minutes in, the screen turns blue with a message that Window's just killed itself.
Person over loudspeaker says: We regret to inform you that we're not going to be able to get this movie working. You can go to the box office for a refund. Sorry for the problems.
Everyone sighs.
-Valen
Must this disgusting company ruin everything?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Why do they call digital theaters "movie theaters"? Isn't that false advertising? Aren't they really TV theaters? Does anybody except me care about the difference between watching 24 fps frame-at-once film images and 30 fps scanned video, even HD video? Don't the senses interpret these images ever so slightly differently? And, won't they have to stop giving out Oscars? Won't they all be Emmys from now on?
They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot
Ooooh, bop bop bop bop
"WAHHHHHHHHH!!! I wanted to dominate Digital Cinema."
Dolemite
_______________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
but will it do imax? that's what i'm waiting for.
Imax Experience Explained
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The difference is that in Windows, a signifigant portion of the executable code of the browser Internet Explorer is embedded in DLLs that are also needed for other functionality of the system - so there is a technical as well as economic marriage of the browser to the OS. With OSX the marriage is economic only - you can't BUY the OS without the browser, but you can USE the OS without the browser if you'd rather install some other browser.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Lets see. A team of a hundred people or so set out to win the web streaming video battles. In the process, they learn how to create cinema quality video but still compress it considerably. They'd be morons not to try to sell it.
Actually, no, the courts disagree with me. The governments down own the courts. If they did, there would be no need for a district attorney - they'd just skip right to the judge.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
The courts have also ruled that Bush won an election, despite his opponent garnering more votes.
Just because the courts say something doesn't make it fact. It just makes it law.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
First, I have to say, driving past a computerized billboard with a fifty-foot-wide BSOD (or Windows logon screen) hovering prominently on the side of the interstate is a vastly amusing experience. Three weeks ago, a Toyota dealership off of I-405 provided me with this lovely visual gag.
What I'm really wondering about, though, is this. Ever since I first started reading about Boeing's Digital Cinema, I've been curious whether people would now start to use theaters for things other than feature films. Once the medium for displaying visual and auditory effects shifts from film to bitstreams, one could conceivably show the World Series, the State of the Union address, reruns of the Simpsons, or the 2004 Iron Chef Steel Cage Deathmatch Season Finale, in real time or through rebroadcasting. I don't know that these things would necessarily draw large crowds, or that you could get them to cough up much money per person for this, but you'd still be selling plenty of overpriced Ju Ju Bes and Fizzy Sugar Water(TM), and wouldn't be paying for the rights to show a new release instead.
What I'm really asking is: given the interesting things people find to do when the size of their display changes drastically, what new and interesting things would you do with a digital cinema?
Finally, if you were a theater owner, would you choose to get your digital bitstreams off an encrypted copper/fiber network, off of encrypted ROM/DVDs, downlink from SATCOM, etc? How do the relative merits stack up?
sigs are natural, sigs are good, not everybody has one, but everybody should...
I doubt anyone will read this so late, but here goes.
Hi! It looks like you're trying to make it to second base with your girlfriend while "watching" a movie. Would you like me to:
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.
" You're can't buy OS X without a box either. I wouldn't describe the box as part of the operating system..."
Liar go buy a new budget Mac. The OS has no box.
... M$ will most likely fail... rememeber everytime M$ tried to impliment a program or format that is media related, hoping to make it standard, but it comes out DOA?
Think Windows Movie Maker. It's so useless, it can't even live up to those 3rd rate free download video editors.
Last time i checked, WMA was still living in mp3's shadow.
And, lets not even talk about the half excreated piece of fecal matter that is M$ Publisher...
I really pity that movie chain...
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
My boss who runs our software company is also in a band that had gotten some good airplay for a while but now can't "afford to" anymore. It really sucks that Radio stations and Theatres can't have a simpler model, but they only want to play what the Big Boys want, and NOBODY else can.
Really, I think it's like that in ANY business. What your biggest customer/supplier says goes. It just kills me though that art and entertainment have to be ruined by these big companies. However, I think like you said that the Internet gives us all a better chance than *none* which is pretty much what we have without it.
I'm sorry, I meant that /what they use/ (to back up their opinions) changes daily. One day they will say, "Standards are Good!" and the next day it will be "Standards mean Squat! Blah, Blah, Blah". I think we've seen this recently.
I'd guess something like 60+% of the people here who are so stuck in their own hatred of Microsoft that they blindly disregard anything of value. The general opinions of Slashdot haven't changed for a long time. You can almost feel it.
Your own posting history indicates this rather well.Umm, I have one Troll and one Informative in my last 24 posts, you apparently have had nothing to contribute to the Entertainment or Information areas of this conversation in your past 24 posts. How do you figure?
At this point, I'd like to go back and do a little history. Dirtside said:
how it's a monopoly (which, it isn't)And you said:
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist [go.com]...pointing at the article like it was the official truth of the matter or something. The point is that court's can come to illogical conclusions and we can see this everyday, and most people will agree. Think about all the frivolous lawsuits that come from the Music Industry.
I didn't say you have to disagree with all of them. The implication is that it doesn't really matter what the court says if the public has a different opinion, especiall here on Slashdot. That's all. I think that just because someone had a different opinion than you, you thought that person was a Troll. He wasn't, it was simply a difference of opinion. That makes you the Troll. Sorry.
I have installed linux many a time. You obviously know nothing about Windows though. The window manager isn't even running when nobody's logged into a Windows server, except there's this little thing called the Service Control Manager that can start these things called Services. Things like SQL Server or IIS, which many people find useful everyday. So nyaah.
and it shouldn't be running for a server installation then should it? And it's not when nobody's logged in.
Just about everyone of the things you described can be attributed to skill or scripts (both legal)
Could you list the things that really are cheating? (Since there are less of those)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
You obviously don't install Windows often... You don't have to install anything that you don't need ...
Hmmm, let's see, could I install Windows 98se and above with no web browser, no media player, no direct x, or how about running it headless?, that's with no monitor and sometimes no video card (depending on the motherboard) Can it be used by just a serial console for user i/o? Can it be pared down to just fit on a floppy, and still retain full servability? Because where I'm from, real servers would not have a built in media player, nor cd burning software, no web browser, no gui (and I mean not even sitting on the drive, as opposed to just not being used). Most of them wouldn't even have a keyboard, mouse or monitor attached. My server installs rarely need more than 100MB of disk space for all operating system space. Xp whines if it doesn't have more than a GB and a half, just to install. I could go on and on, but it would do no good. You seem to be of the school of "Gee, look at the pretty colors", and you must need media player installed on your servers, and IE, and all that other stuff.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
I feel that if Microsoft had a closed hardware platform with no third-party software (which would most likely be the case in movie theaters), they could make a relatively stable Windows implementation. For example, take a PocketPC and hard reset it. From my experience, without adding outside software, it will run for months.
Eventually they will get it to work and not crash.
You will go and see a movie.
It will be indistinguishable from an analogue version.
You will not realise which technology is making your experience possible.
I predict that the DRM format will be cracked and usenet/*tellium/IRC will have a new source of high quality media on offer.
BORA. Break once, run everywhere. I think Microsoft coined that one.
Yay!
With digital projection, why not rent out a movie theater for a super bowl party? maybe we'll start seeing Monday night independent film festivals in suburban theaters? In theory, digital projection could open up all kinds of new possibilities for the theater industry.
In the UK last summer, some movie theatres were showing the World Cup (football/soccer) matches that England played in.
" Also the poster is gay and lame and stupid and intellectually-lacking"
No, it's gay and lame and stupid to put something you said as a quote for your sig.
graspee
So the point is that there are options, just none that you want to use for *whatever* reason. I really don't care what your reasons are, don't say there aren't options.
When nobody's logged in a lot of GUI related services aren't running. But SERVICES (like a daemon on *nix) are running and they are extremely useful.
Funny, the judicial branch of the US seems to think Microsoft is a monopoly.
According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary a monopoly is:
As I understand it, the legal definition of a monopoly keys off the 3rd definition. If a single party has control of a commodity and alternatives are not considered viable for whatever reasons, then a case can be made that a monopoly exists. From a legal standpoint in the USA, it has been determined that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop OS and (I believe) the desktop office productivity suite.
Monopolies in and of themselves are perfectly legal in the USA. However, it is illegal to leverage your monopoly to extend control into other market segments. This is what Microsoft has been convicted of.
Granted, it may not seem that way when you look at the slap on the wrist that the settlement gave them. Nevertheless, they do stand convicted of illegally leveraging a monopoly position in a marketplace. If they attempt their old tactics in other arenas, I believe that the burden of proof has shifted to them from the prosecution. It should be easier to check them, as long as action is taken at the appropriate time.
I'm not so sure about that. You can think that if you want, but we'll agree to disagree on that one.
About two-thirds of your last 24 posts (when I looked at them earlier today) were insultingNo, about two thirds of my posts were belittling people who put stupidity into this conversation. I *LOVE* Linux. I also have a lot of love for Microsoft too though, maybe not their company practices, but I think their products deserve some respect and c'mon YOU KNOW that people put bullshit here just to be karma whores. Don't deny it. Besides its more fun to point out other people's mistakes than to fix my own :)
Based on what I know, I think that this particular conclusion.That's fine, I didn't say you couldn't have an opinion. It's just important that you don't go pointing to some article like is supposed to invalidate somebody elses opinion. Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't make them a Troll. See what I mean?
No. But it was the obvious implication of your statements, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.No, the point was that it's an opinion not a court decision that matters here. We're going around in circles I think.
I'm misunderstanding what you're misunderstanding. You said: It's bad if people's opinion's don't change. I said: you're right, and it seems that the Slashdot community's opinion doesn't change for anything, hence the Unconditional Microsoft Hatred. That's all. I was agreeing.
No, it was the way that he was expressing his thoughts that made him sound like a troll...It wasn't simply a difference of opinion. It was a difference of opinion coupled with a negative reaction to his hostility.Ok, I just read the first post over again. There is nothing trollish about it. First paragraph summary: Slashdot people always rank on M$ (fact), thinks M$ isn't a monopoly (opinion). Second: He thinks the Open Source version of this technology (if there is one) would probably suck (opinion). He doesn't like Linux (opinion). Third: Opinions about movie-goer's point of view. Fourth: Opinions about why Microsoft is doing this.
I don't see him putting anybody down, making misleading statements, etc. Please point out the exact trollish statement that he made. I'm done with this conversation, have a nice day.
Here. I am not going to argue this, I know Linux can run without an X server. Big deal. Not my point.
Yeah, see here we go again. Idiot as the subject of the post. Instead of a rational discussion about the issue at hand, you're immediately jumping to name calling. Tsk. Tsk.
Some people just have to ruin the fun of these threads with name calling rather than calmly and rationally discussing the benefits of Product X vs. Product Y. Fine , go ahead and call the products names and insult them. The products don't have any human feelings. But why go for the character assassination? What purpose does it serve other than to boost your ego?
Pooty tweet
that's just about what you've done. you know what I meant.
No. You are not worth my time to educate you.
Try playing Dayofdefeat (dod, or www.dayofdefeatmod.com). Do on dod_avalanche, learn the bugs, the nade-bugs, and then once you make sure not to do those, see how good you are. My guess is that you suck.
Spend some time learning a game and try to master it. And if you are playing on dialup and have a 486, you can never beat the rest of the "dudes on the internet".
(fist, search on www.gametiger.com , for me.)
And here is one example that you asked for: If a player can shoot while reloading, i think they may have switched weapons, which aborts the reload process, and they killed you. If they are reloading and just shoot you, without having to change weapons, then MAYBE you have something to worry about, but I DOUBT it.
Seriously, play on servers that require punkbuster and you should be safe from cheaters and I bet you will still suck.
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
No. You are not worth my time to educate you.
Or maybe you just can't find a single thing on the list that really is cheating. Can you?
Over and Over, I use them as background music, like I said in my original post.. .sort of relaxing (makes for a nice thing to stare at blankly for hours when I feel purposeless).
-Daedalus HKX
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
And here is one example that you asked for: If a player can shoot while reloading, i think they may have switched weapons, which aborts the reload process, and they killed you. If they are reloading and just shoot you, without having to change weapons, then MAYBE you have something to worry about, but I DOUBT it.
No, you just cannot read.
It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine
some of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very
sharp, probably not someone here on campus.
-- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, in
Georgia Tech's campus newspaper after the Internet worm.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...