Slashdot Mirror
Irish Cinema Set to Go Digital First
LocalisationDude writes "The BBC is reporting that Ireland will be the first country in the world to have their traditional 35mm film projectors replaced with digital projectors. An American company is installing digital projectors in 500 cinemas to replace the traditional film projectors. Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost."
Am i the only one who thinks that piracy quality will increase now?
Irish cinema operator busted for distribution of l33t 0-day filmz!
Will these be able to take normal digital video input?
Could they play DVDs, for example?
Or Quake...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I can't understand why it's taking so long to move from regular projection to digital projection. I'm hoping someone with more experience here can fill us in on what's going on.
Are they waiting on standards or a big change in the industry? Are they waiting on a new file format, DRM, or aspect ratio? Is the distribution network missing? Where is the bottleneck in getting this rolled out in more places?
I would hazard a guess that they could make an LCD attachment for existing projectors that would allow digital projection to take place at a cheaper rate, kinda like the transparent LCD screens you can get for regular overhead projectors. This being the case, is the distribution network the problem?
The amount of money that would be saved in distribution and replication costs, as well as having the ability to show more films at more times, would surely overcome the cost of upgrades. Or is it all down to being wary of change?
Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost.
Will this mean that we will start to see screeners with higher quality than DvD's? I'm sure it won't take much money to convince a middle-manager to release some of that sweet sweet digital content.
And best of all, the movie would have to be downloaded possibly days before it's actually played.
to just download the torrent :)
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Can you imagine how terrible this could go if they don't use adequate security? Someone could conceivably hack the source and replace a film with a horrific piece of fanfiction. Movies will now have a chance of not only being terrible, but not even the terrible movie you paid to see in the first place.
This makes me laugh...Ireland is behind several european countries when it comes to ADSL rollout with regards to cost and speed and yet we're going to have sat links so cinemas can get movies?
:)
Is this there way of trying to stop piracy over the net?
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
From a cost perspective this was probably only a matter of time, regardless of the country.
I hope the cinemas and the studios also take this opportunity (since distributing films worldwide will now be alot easier, and cheaper!) to start releasing films at the same time rather than their current practice (well, mostly) of delaying releases in different countries.
As an afterthought - where do I get me one of those projectors, a 4K film projector would be pretty nice for the living room!
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
was to stop projectionists from emulating Tyler Durden's insertion of pr0n frames into family movies.
Granted not in all movie theaters, but the mayor cinema group has been showing digital movies for more than a year now.
Check out the 'Hoe werkt digital cinema..' link on the following page:
http://www.kinepolis.be/index.cfm?PageID=2043
I fear that this trend will lead to the use of image compression for movies. I find the MPEG compression artifacts in most digital video (e.g., TiVo, DVDs, and digital cable) to be obnoxious -- digital quality is often an oxymoron due to aggressive compression.
Digital video may avoid analog noise and be capable of perfect copies, but if the sender uses too high a compression ratio (and you know they will to save on bandwidth and storage) then the image is permanently corrupted. And if film makers switch to digital video that does not use loss-less compression during filming, then all is lost.
I can only hope that falling prices for bandwidth and storage will let companies ease off the compression ratio sometime in the future.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What are theaters and the MPAA waiting for? If they're afraid of people outside of the theater/MPAA circle downloading the movies, they can just build their own download network and assign a few trusted people to do that specific job? Or do they all already use digital that I haven't heard of?* If they can spend $200 million on movies, why can't they do this and save their own budgets and the theaters'?
*I do know that IMAX uses digital sound, but it still uses film. The theaters I've been in, last I checked, definitely still use analog and it shows. Is it a matter of spreading the word?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
>IANAP
I am not a Projector?
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Ah be gosh an be gorrah wha tis it yar trin ta saa thar?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
What will the situation be with older films? Many excellent movies are not available in a digitised form, and we may be at the mercy of the film studios as to when, if ever, they are re-released in a format that these projectors can play.
Read Pynchon.
See this Slashdot story.
If this is a LCD projector, that would be pretty cool, because I can't go to a normal theater. 72 hz in a dark room isn't quite enough, so if they want my dollar, they will need to make it faster.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The BBC is reporting that Ireland will be the first country in the world to have their traditional 35mm film projectors replaced with digital projectors.
Since there are many more than 500 35mm projectors in Ireland, it seems a bit of a fantasy to imply that the entire country will have digital-only screens.
My question of interest is... what are the economics of giving away 500 projectors? Are the 500 projectors "gifts", or are they leased or under loan? Is the goal to reduce the costs, or reduce the damage to the film, prevent piracy somehow, or what?
Well, on one hand my first thought is "great, this is a great move and I hopw the entire world follows so we can watch digital movies at any theatre".
But it is quickly followed up by the thought that "But seriously... My entertainment system is already digital. Why go elsewhere?"
Sure, a 30 foot screen is bigger than a 32", but hey, size is not everything. And I can always get a projector. By then, teh advantages of move theatres has kind agone bye bye... I have usually seen everything by the time it reaches the screen here in sweden anyways. (Sometimes up to a year after the american release)
So sure.. digital theatres are good... but only because it is cheaper to distrbute movies for th ecompanies. This way they might cut the prizes, distribute worldwide quicker, and possibly even start to gain some ground on the pirating market. But still... Just buy me a popcornmachine and I'd rather stay home - with friends.
Nah, I cant decide. What do you think.. good step or bad step, or just a completely useless step?
Is it really easier to transfer what must be a massive digital file over some network to each individual movie house then to just fedex them the film reels? Wouldn't people get annoyed that they don't get to watch the movie on opening night because some there was network problems. Isn't 35mm better than digital anyway? Everytime I watch a football game on TV, I'm amazed at how much worse it looks then when they just used to do it in analog.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
At least with traditional film projectors, there couldn't be any viruses.
I can't wait to hear about the first film virus.
Vote devolution! http://www.devolution.co.uk
Seriously though, do they even *have* 500 cinemas in Ireland?
Avica . . . .
An American company, Avica, is installing digital projectors in cinemas to replace the traditional 35mm film projectors.
http://www.itv.com/news/world_262393.html
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far aw -
STREAMING...
Your comment really shows quite a bit of confusion - BitTorrent and satellite links are two entirely different things really, and use of one does not mean the other cannot be used, as they operate on different levels in the network stack.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I'm going to respond to a few things here. Sorry if someone mentioned something on one of these points, I couldn't bring myself to read every one of the 45 posts.
Firstly, yes the projectors can take AVI inputs. DVI too probably, now a days. A few companies in the States have a few projectors scattered around, and I worked as a projectionist at one of them for a time, a few projectionists were fired for outputting a DVD player to the projector after hours and using it to watch Top Gun.
Secondly, the reason we haven't seen it wide spread in the States and probably won't for a bit yet is simply Cost. Cost to produce the movies in a digital format by the distributors, and cost to the theatres to purchase all those digitgal projectors. They are *not* cheap. For your local 24 mega-plex to replace it's 24 multi-thousand dollar projectors with a digital projector would be *well* more than the profit that theatre sees (if the theatre even manages to post a profit).
With rising costs put on the theatres by the distributors, and lowering numbers of patrons *in* the theatres, the profit margins and simple ability to make money to invest in new technology for the theatres is drastically being reduced. So until the time that *that* situation reverses itself (which I don't imagine we'll ever see) or until the digital projectors become much cheaper, we'll just have to wait.
Brian
This film is great -> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111112/ But, I had to watch it a couple of times to understand everything.
Still, it's not as bad as listening to the Scotts!!
Idealy to cut costs further the cinemas could just stream the movies from the one location each time the movies are being shown. Especially with the growth in cheap fibre across europe especially.
The over all cost savings will be more significant than just the film cases. Ive been in cinemas on several occasions where the film has screwed up and we have had to get a refund from the cinema.. Taking that out out or reducing it seriously would be a great bonus for the cinemas.
As this expands and more theaters go digital, will it break the stranglehold that the big distributors have now, or will legal tricks just assure it's the same as before? There are lots of great films out there that get almost no screens because they don't fit the distributors' views of what goes in their catalogs or what will earn them payback for printing and shipping.
As I understand it, not being in the theater business, theaters are pretty much at the mercy of distributors right now because smaller studios just can't afford the cost of wide distribution. Will digital distribution truly lower the cost and give theaters a wider palette of films to choose from? I suspect the big distrubutors will defeat that possibility with legal tricks, but I'm hoping otherwise.
BitTorrent and satellite links are two entirely different things really, and use of one does not mean the other cannot be used, as they operate on different levels in the network stack.
BitTorrent needs a decent upstream throughput. How good is the upstream throughput of a satellite link? Besides, had ISPs properly implemented multicast, there wouldn't be as much of a need for BitTorrent as we know it, and satellite's layer 1 is inherently multicast.
Isn't 35mm better than digital anyway?
Movie film is threaded vertically through the projector. It is claimed that the 24mm width of a 35mm film frame (not counting the area around sprocket holes that's used to hold Dolby Digital AC3 sound data) has the equivalent of about 2000 pixels. Therefore, the 1920x1080 resolution of consumer HDTV should be enough to replicate 35mm film, provided that the lossy data compression uses enough bits so as not to make everything a blocky mess.
...They need a major national movie theater chain to start committing to the technology.
If a company as big a Century Theatres were to announce they were willing to convert some of their complexes they own to include digital projectors and/or open new digital-projector only complexes, that would finally convince people that digital projection is worth the investment.
Having seen digital projection, the amazingly vibrant colors, consistent sharpness and lack of scratches on-screen makes for a breathtaking viewing experience. Small wonder why sales of rear-projection TV's using DLP, LCD and HD-ILA elements are rising rapidly. =)
Not that I really object to paying ridiculous prices for crap.
Am I the only one to think that making the whole Irish theater industry totally dependent on one American movie distributor is actually a BAD thing?
We shall see how this will impact availability of smaller and artsy non mainstream movie productions.
Also, initially this technology may be advertised as being more "low cost" than the traditional way of creating physical copies. However, once the system is established it may well be that price fixing is applied so that the cost benefits may become null and void (or even turned into a financial burden).
The new technology is likely bound by patents and licensing agreements, so there is no alternative distribution channel - and no alternative source for movies. Brave new world.
--- Eat my sig.
Pick a secret key called "movie key". Assign a distinct secret key called "player key" to each projection setup (Improvement 1). Encrypt the movie with the movie key and broadcast the encrypted signal over airwaves. Then encrypt the movie key with each player's key and then send the encrypted movie keys under separate cover (e.g. FedEx) to the cinemas (Improvement 2).
Improvement 1 over DVD Video CSS: Unique key for each individual player, not for each manufacturer. Less possibility of break once break everywhere.
Improvement 2 over DVD Video CSS: Title key sent under separate cover, not on the same medium as the data, so pirates without a license wouldn't be able to decode a random signal.
I think one of the biggest problems with digital projection is the fact there is no standard for the digital storage media for theater-quality digital projectors.
Interestingly enough, the development of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray optical disc technology could solve that problem. Imagine scaling up a Blu-Ray disc to something about 300 mm (12") wide (about the same size as a Laserdisc); the result could be storage capacity approaching the one terabyte range, which (using standard MPEG-2 compression) could store probably at least two-hour movie at beyond 1080p resolution, including multiple subtitling tracks and multiple audio soundtracks! Even if the disc has to be held in a plastic caddy the whole package would weigh under two kilograms (4.4 pounds), which means far cheaper shipment costs compared to 35 pounds per 20-minute reel of 35 mm film!
Will this reduce projector room fires?
I know my family went to a film in Toronto, and at some point in their movie, the frame stuck, then a spot started to grow on the picture. My Mom realized what was happening, and left the theatre to find some staff, and after explaining longer than she should have had to, got one of them to go put out the fire.
The theatre gave them a pass to see another film.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
NO The article says *all* Irish systems wil be replaced. All is more than you're Finland's "most".
Were that I say, pancakes?
Century's not big enough.
The Syufy's have done a good job with their theatre so far, and being privatly owned by the Syufy's main company, they certainly have a certain amount of cash and assets. But they're just not big enough. You'd need a more major contendor, a Regal or Lowes or AMC.
And really you'd almost want it to be a public company, which I believe Lowes is the only one left? At least at that level. Problem is Lowes is having significant cash flow problems right now.
Brian
Am I the only one who thinks video that's digital all the way from capture to display has too high a degree of artificially crispness to it? I really don't like the digital look on digitally broadcast sports, for example. It isn't realistic. Are the frame rates lower?
The April issue of Wired has a feature article about it. Or you can google for assorted articles.
Was someone watching Darby O'Gill and the little people again? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052722/
Century's not big enough.
:-)
They may not have the size of Lowes or AMC, but the Syufy's have already made major commitments to have high-quality theatre complexes--most of the new ones built in the last seven years now sport full THX certification on every screen, which certainly means at least I'll have decent sound quality during the movie!
The Syufy's should in a bold move announce that some of the screens at their complexes will be converted to digital projection, and may announce that some of their future complexes will go all-digital, too. That type of move signals that digital projection is going mainstream, especially in the western USA where Century Theatre complexes are all the rage.
Well, "piracy" isn't something I believe in much either way. Personally, I'm hoping that this will hasten the transition to a viable digital distribution model (ie, all kinds of public information being freely redistributable to all citizens, with REASONABLE production fees paid for through taxes).
Hmm, I wonder if we'll see a growth of cinemas that actually pirate themselves, swapping or buying cheap digital copies rather than shelling out for the original stuff? Who would know, after all?
Anyone know if these new cinemas include a DRM system that would prevent this?
We're not talking about TV-type satellite broadcasts here. Security is one of the alleged benefits of satellite broadband. It goes straight from the ISP to the customers, and you usually have a lot of dedicated hardware on both ends of the connection that make strong encryption easy enough to implement. I would have thought that just demultiplexing out the signal you want would take a fair bit of work. The weakest link would be between the film studio and the uplink, but my guess is that they'll put a 5m dish in the film studio parking lot.
Virtually serving coffee
Still too expensive. Some of their screens, sure. I know AMC's done that at a few, as has Lowes and maybe Regal. But it's still too expensive. And even if it weren't, you still have the problem of the film distributors not making the films in the approrpriate digital format.
So in order to keep thier screens full of a strong variety of movies, they'll have to have "analogue" projectors as well on a majority of those screens.
As far as THX, having your theatres THX certified doesn't say anything about their commitment to digital and audio/visual excellence. SDDS is just as good as THX, and cheaper. Cheaper because THX requires *huge* hoops and hurdles to go through in order to be "THX certified". You have to pay for the technology, pay for the certification, pay pay pay. And then the only movies that show the true "high quality" THX is capable of, are movies designed to use the enhancing capability of THX.
When Star Wars, Episode I came out many people might remember all the restrictions Lucas put on the films. For those of you who keep track of the Theatre Industry you'll also remember that these restrictions were the "straw that broke the camel's back" causing nearly every Theatre Exhibitor to file bankrupcy.
Origianlly one of the restrictions was that you had to THX certify every theatre you played it in. There's a reason that restriction was removed well before the movie actually released.
Brian
lucky irish bastards, i wish i could have gotten my bloody irish citzenship
"to be like god we make our own dolls to play with, but what does that make us, but dolls for god to play with?" Ikari,
OK, so I already have streaming video into my home through my cable box, but the problem is there is only about 2000 movies to choose from, and it is only the stuff they get the rights to cheap.
It is nice that the theaters are going to digital distribution, but most theaters have maybe 10, maybe 15 screens? Other than maybe a slightly better picture, my movie viewing experience won't be different. It is not like they are now going to be showing a bunch of obscure and hard to find movies.
I want to be able to stream any movie ever made to my TV. I want the digital technology to increase my range of choices, not just let me see a movie that looks a little nicer.
Apparently it's not on the web yet, but the new Wired magazine has an interesting article on digital cinema, and how Mark Cuban (Landmark) is the first American cinema owner to go all digital.
The big holdup is there's little incentive for theater owners to spend $150k per screen. Some are holding out for studios to pay for the equipment, to ensure distribution of their digital product. After all, it's the studios, not the theater owners, who stand to benefit from this, because of greatly reduced distribution costs (no actual film).
More then 50% of the commercial theatres have been digital for several years. That it is because it the hometown of Regal theatre. Colorado oil mogul Phil Anshultz bought up several bankrupt movie chains and to form Regal. Competing chains have gone digital in Denver too.
Finland beats Ireland..well, because it's Finland. Show me an Irishman who's a better guitar god then Alexi Laiho(audio samples required), and you might change my mind.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Old news to me. I have a DLP theater down the street from me. It's one of the joys of living in a city.
Time makes more converts than reason
Two words for you:
Rory
Gallagher
A master of blues, rock, & folk, his guitar playing skills were astounding, check out live versions of Tattoo'd Lady, Cradle Rock, As The Crow Flies, (Can be found on Irish Tour), Moonchild, Bad Penny (on Stagestruck), and I have a scarily good bootleg of Tatoo'd Lady.
Other Irish guitar legends include Gary Moore, The Edge (technically better guitarists out there, but a legend in his own right), Phil Lynnot (Bass Guitar, but you never specified what type), Johnny Fean from The Horslips (but I doubt anyone outside Ireland knows/knew about them), Christy Moore -> a giant of the folk scene for about 30/40 years now, he is an impeccable showman with a powerful presence.
Plenty more, but since they most likely won't be known outside Ireland, no point mentioning them.
As an aside Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix's Drummer) was Irish (Irish parents, but born in Middlesex, England), and of course those Gallagher brothers are 2nd generation Irish from England aswell.
I actually attended the first digital movie shown in Denmark, it was I, Robot. It was really impressive razor sharp image quality.
Hmm, I wonder if we'll see a growth of cinemas that actually pirate themselves, swapping or buying cheap digital copies rather than shelling out for the original stuff? Who would know, after all?
The movie distributors, perhaps? "Hi, I see you're advertising that your theatre is showing Robots, but we're the exclusive distributor in Ireland and we don't have any record of you purchasing it. The police will be shutting down your establishment in 3... 2... 1..."
Anyone know if these new cinemas include a DRM system that would prevent this?
They do.
So how long until you're watching a film and a BSOD appears? Or clippy pops up:
"you appear to be watching an adult movie, would you like an irritating paper clip to jump about the screen and obscure all the good bits?"
.sigs are for losers
Since you don't need to put a real reel in a projector for every showing, a suddenly popular film (like if you sell all the seats out and there are still people queueing) can be quickly put on in a vacant (ok, less popular) screen of the multiplex. Good for customers and independant film-makers who can 'scale up' to a major release if they have a hit.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
"It's his sled. Rosebud is the name of his sled. There, I just saved you 2 boobless hours."
Here you go.
Once again, Iceland takes the extreme per capita value. I think we may have the most per capita extremes per capita of any country! ;-)
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Mpeg4 container, Mpeg4 codec.
I heard a story once about a guy who owned both an indoor theatre and a drive-in in the same area. He got one print and played it in his indoor theatre; the drive-in movie started an hour or two later so after the first half of the movie in the indoor theatre was over, he rushed that half quickly across town to the drive-in, then rushed the last half over after the film was completed at the indoor theatre.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I hadn't even thought of that. That sounds more like what would happen. It's not enough that these guys make tons of money, they have to be control freaks on top of it.
Now "Focus!" will be replaced by "Turn off Fast Find backgrounder!"
Sigh
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Got that right!
Should have heard Andrea Corr on the Richard and Judy show in England get irritated when they quoted some idiot journalist who reported she had trouble with the accent in "The Boys and Girl From County Clare" movie (currently in release).
Then they COMPOUNDED the stupidity by doing a skit in which their English researchers imitated various stupid concepts of Irish phrases - including the obligatory "Lucy Charms" reference.
They only escaped being lynched by Andrea by admitting the concept was thought up by one of their staff - who actually was Irish.
The Corrs have been very clear about the fact that there is a "new Ireland" and they don't want to be saddled with the old stereotypes any more.
OTOH, they also admit they don't mind drinking a bit...if it gets a laugh, anyway.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
While this will all but eliminate the distributors from the motion picture industry, the bigger picture (sorry) might also cut out movie theatres entirely. The number of home theatres increases each year. How long will it take the Neanderthals in the industry to realize that they can sell their product directly to the customer, cutting out all the overhead and middlefolk? That might include DVD production as well.
Some people like to go to movie theatres. I don't think they will die any time soon. But people are getting used to purchasing product directly via cable. There is a lot of money sitting on the table if the industry can get past themselves to get to it.
Check out the currently-in-release (actually next week, I believe, for most of the US) "The Boys and Girl From County Clare", with Colm Meany, Bernard Hill, and Andrea Corr. A comedy/drama about two estranged brothers competing with each other in a traditional Irish music competition - with an underlying love story involving Andrea and Shaun Evans (now her real-life boyfriend) and family secrets.
Lots of trad Irish music - not that much comedy. Good character actors - and new-comer Andrea got a "Best Actress in a Comedy" award from the HBO Comedy Film Festival.
Getting mostly good reviews.
They're promoting Andrea heavily for the film, even over the old-timers Meany and Hill, her being a rock star and all. But everybody agrees she did a good job.
Here's the Web site.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Does anyone know what format they are using? There was a Slashdot article a few months back about Microsoft's push for WMV as the default projection standard for theaters. Is this the beginning of that standard? If anyone has the funding and long-term self interest to give away 500 ludicrously expensive cameras to jump-start an endeavor, it's Microsoft.
The ______ Agenda
Sure, flicker and artifacts will be reduced, but will the quality really improve? Is the resolution of digital really good enough for the cinema? Analog is conducive to projection because, well, it's not digital. I realize film has grains that are vaguely like pixels, but it's much more natural. If the tradeoff is pixelation and compression artifacts, is it really worth it? The article has little to no technical detail, so I'm just going on my experience of watching DVDs on (non-HD) projectors. Even at something like 8 feet across, the pixelation was very noticable and distracting.. for me at least.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Is digital currently the way to go? I know Roger Ebert is not a big fan of digital. He prefers a system called MaxiVision I know this is an old artical, but has digital film solved these problems, especially when compared to MaxiVision.
Of course, I don't think the movie industry is really interested in quality. They want the conveniences of digital. Again referring to Ebert, he thinks the films of 40 years ago had better standards than today. How often do they shoot 70mm films today?
Chris Mesterharm
A friend works at a local cinema... One day we brought the GameCube over, after most of the movies were done showing. He hooked up the GC to the projector and theatre audio, and we sat down in the theatre with wireless controllers and played the best game of Super Smash Brothers Melee ever.
And anyway, as others have said, cinemas that pride themselves on picture quality are likely to make sure that encoding artefacts are kept to a bare minimum.
Personally, I'm less worried about that than about the limited resolution, especially temporal resolution. Look at film today when the camera pans at anything other than a crawl: everything goes blurry and you lose all sense of detail and depth. A decent refresh rate will make up for a lot of encoding artefacts IMO.
My other worry is colour. LCDs aren't known for their good colour balance or accuracy, which is why I gather most folk in the publishing industry are sticking with CRTs for the time being...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Ireland might very well be the first nation to convert *all* its theaters to digital. However, digital projection has, quite surprisingly, been in use for almost a year and half in some small town theaters in India. The reason? These small cinemas would have to wait at the end of the queue and get a "film" copy months after the nationwide release. And of course, the copy is used, and often poor quality. It costs much less to have an electronic copy distributed from Mumbai (India's Hollywood - or, Bollywood, as they call it), stored on hard-disks, and then projected using a digital projector. And of course, this means releases reach smalltowns faster and quality is as good as a new print.
Every single "digital" television service I have seen (one over cable, one over phone/dsl, and a couple satellite ones) look blocky and horrible, even at standard television resolution.
And that's where the "enough bits" come in. Digital cable and satellite TV tend to overcompress the video signal so that they can fit more commercials and more home shopping channels through their downstreams. Digital cinema, on the other hand, can use a lot more bits per second because there just aren't as many feature films shown in a year as there are TV shows.
I've noticed that most movies I've been to within the last few years (in the US) have obvious pixellation. I just assumed this was because it was via a digital projector rather than a film projector. How can this atricle claim therefore that Ireland are first with the technology?
Video projection is very expensive ($100k per screen, as opposed to about $30k for 35mm), and lagging behind 35mm and especially 70mm in terms of quality. Contrast is not as good no matter what you use, and resolution is still lagging behind, although the latest demos are showing promise. It's getting better, but still has a ways to go.
Reliability is another factor. At ShoWest this year, there were numerous glitches during demos of digital systems. And this is during a trade show with lots of people around to help keep things running smoothly. Just imagine what it will be like in the field.
And, there is still a deadlock when it comes to who is going to pay for it. Theater owners don't want to pay for it, because they are not the ones who will reap the financial reward. Distributors and studios are the ones who will get to save all the money, but they are balking at the idea of actually making the investment. Financing still has to get hammered out.
Really, the delay is a good thing. The first demos of Star Wars in 1999 were done using 1280x1024 DLP systems. It was pretty lousy, really. Imagine if theaters had standardized on that! Right now people with decent home theater equipment can watch 1920x1080 material off satellite, cable, or D-VHS (and within a few months, HD-DVD will be added to that list). If theaters are going to attract audiences, they need to offer more than what people can get in their homes, not less.
Free Hans!
Nothing new as far as I'm concerned. The Belgian Kinepolis group has been offering digital cinema for quite some time now. The results are quite impressive... never seen such a great quality ! More info on the Kinepolis website
Bah, I get 15000:1 out of my old PJ and 30000:1 out of the new one.
Now that's truly black:)
It's just a matter of using a CRT projector in stead of those nasty little lightvalve devices.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Will they replace ALL their projectors, or will they follow the path of other countries, such as Brazil, in having digital projectors available in some places and analog ones elsewhere?
(8-DCS)
Besides the distribution cost advantage, and the not so consensus picture quality advantage. Digital projectors may have an impact on the way film are schedule. With low costs of distribution and storing a cinema could play different movies in the same week, or in the same day adjusting the movie preferences to their target audience. For example Saturday night would have more screens with blockbuster, Sunday afternoon more kid movies, and during the week more alternative adult movies. This could be a solution to the problem of some movies having very low screen counts and only being there fore one week or two. Also highly expected movies could have debuts with a high screen some everybody could see. In my opinion this is a great possible advantage that could change moviegoer's habits.
There is an already existing plan to give digital projectors to 250 cinemas throughout the UK.
This is being funded by the Arts Council, on the principle that it lowers the cost barrier for entry to smaller independant film makers, as reels of 35mm film are quite expensive to duplicate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4297865.stm
As an Irishman, I want to slap you senseless.
I don't like trolls and mod against me if you like, but I'd prefer if you'd reply.
Having seen digital projection, the amazingly vibrant colors, consistent sharpness and lack of scratches on-screen makes for a breathtaking viewing experience. Small wonder why sales of rear-projection TV's using DLP, LCD and HD-ILA elements are rising rapidly. =)
Too bad every digital projection of a movie I've ever seen has been total crap.
There are several multiplexes in the area where I live that are quite proud of their digital theaters... even to the point of advertising the fact that the movie is digital on the ticket stub. However, in every case, even though the color was quite nice, I was incredibly distracted throughout the movie with the digital artifacts present in the picture. Scenes with camera motion over complex patterns (such as panning past a complex wallpaper, or following a ship past a distant shore full of colorful buildings) always had some glittering and color motion. I was also able, quite clearly, to see individual pixels on subtitles and other abrubt color lines.
My point is not that digital projection sucks; only that the current digital projection sucks. Digital is an infinitely extensible medium, in that all one has to do is increase the resolution of the frame: the crispness of the picture will increase and artifacts, including visible anti-aliasing, will disappear.
By their nature, projected movies would need to have much higher resolution than digital televisions, simply because the screen is bigger, and artifacts are multiplied. In all the movies I've seen projected digitally, I estimated that the horizontal resolution (based on the individual pixels I was seeing in the subtitles) was no more than 1280. That's unacceptable in my opinion, especially if you are advertising the movie as higher quality than 35mm. Even HDTV is 1920x1080 (2 million pixels per frame), and the HDTV spec is not nearly as crisp as plain old 35mm film, which, in a totally invalid apples-to-oranges comparison with digital, approaches something like 20 million pixels per frame.
Any problems 35mm might have with fading, scratches, or sharpness can be attributed solely to the projectionist. If the focus is off, or the lamp is not bright enough, or the reel is not properly taken care of, which are all extremely common problems in a standard multiplex theater where the projection booth is run by an underpaid teenager, the 35mm film will look pretty bad. But a properly run projecter using 35mm, running side-by-side with the digital equivalent, will win the fight hands-down. Currently.
Now, if the digital projector makers could guarantee that the picture would be a 4K resolution scan (4096 horizontal resolution) and would stay 4K throughout the entire process of capture through projection, then I think digital would look better than 35mm. The sheer rate of dataflow from a satellite makes such a projector economically infeasable however, and is likely many years out. Until then, theater owners will be happy to foist sub-par digital projections on us.
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