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Digital Cinema Not Quite There Yet
An anonymous reader writes "A Reuters article explains how, in some ways, the digital future of movie theatres isn't quite here yet. Despite the push for new technology in the projection booth, theaters have been slow to adopt the new and expensive gear." From the article: " Many in the movie industry hope digital cinema will help revive theater attendance, which fell 9 percent in 2005 in the United States. The studios stand to save about $1 billion a year in print distribution costs because they will be shipping digital movies via computer hard drives, satellite and broadband cable, versus old celluloid canisters. But digital deployment is expensive at about $100,000 per screen, and while the studios agreed to foot most of the bill, current equipment does not meet all the technology standards set by the industry."
Many in the movie industry hope digital cinema will help revive theater attendance, which fell 9 percent in 2005 in the United States.
My guess is that releasing movies that don't suck would increase movie attendance.
Many in the movie industry hope digital cinema will help revive theater attendance, which fell 9 percent in 2005 in the United States.
I stopped going to movies because I was sick of paying the price of a DVD, just to be forced to watch commercials for deodorant and lectures about how I'm an evil baby-killing sealsucker for downloading movies (which is something I don't do).
Now I'm supposed to go back and start going to movies again just because they've tossed in some newfangled, flashy, questionable technology?
Sometimes I wonder whether the people who work for MPAA style companies are stupid, or whether they simply are from some alternate universe where logic actually works that way.
Maybe if movies became affordable for the middle class family again and weren't absolutely fucking horrible and didn't include 20 minutes of advertising at the start. Maybe, just maybe... people would start going again.
"current equipment does not meet all the technology standards set by the industry."
I wonder if this means "The equipment doesn't have the DRM and copy protection we require."
The one place where they could use DRM for a true user pays arrangement - i.e. Pay per screening etc - and no mention at all of this.
I'm sure there are probably other "technical issues" holding them up, but DRM would be the most obvious. I'm sure that I read a while back that copy protection has already been addressed in the form of encrypted hard disks for distribution in the UK.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!
I don't doubt there are technical issues. But even when those are resolved, there may be a long delay while the various actors decide how to split the savings. My guess is that the Consumers Union will not be invited to the negotiating table.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Lets see, the last time I went to the flicks it cost us £20 (tickets and snacks), the seats were very uncomfortable, the picture quality wasn't all that great (poorly done 35mm is barely better than a projected DVD, let alone HDTV) and the sound was nothing to write home about. Also, the guy behind me had stinky feet that he insisted on putting on the back of my chair, some guy at the back of the theatre stood up proclaiming that someone had farted and that it stank like shit (duh!) and stormed down to the front to sit. Admittedly the fart was pretty nasty. Anyway, the fact is, the cinematic experience can be closely replicated at home without all the bad things by playing a DVD on even a budget DLP projector these days. Compared with the £100,000 front projection CRT systems with line doublers etc that were necessary only 10 years ago, a modern cheap DLP blows that away for the most part (black level is the only real problem but they are getting better and better). I can't wait for HD discs (blu-ray or HD-DVD, not bothered, both would be fine by me) so I can finally say that yes, my home projection system is better than all but the very best cinema. At that point the only way you will drag me into a cinema is if it is a *REALLY* good film, or IMAX. From what I understand the digital projection systems are only aiming to be as good as 35mm which means HDTV should be a very similar experience.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
It's the commercials that keep me away. It pisses me off to no end having to watch 20 minutes of commercials and previews for movies I have no interest in after I paid for a movie ticket. If I wanted to watch commercials, I could have stayed home and watched TV.
And, if they are gonna show a preview, at least show a preview for a movie that the audience of the movie being screened might be interested in.
Fæx!
Digital picture quality isn't as good as they like to think. The resolution to match 35mm film is something like 3000-4000 pixels. 70mm film is twice that (going higher isn't neccesary since the eye has a limited resolution). Upgrading will involve replacing the most expensive component.
Cinemas like equipment that's built to last. Some cinemas are using projectors that are 30+ years old and still working perfectly. New equipment such as multi channel digital sound processors are just bolted on. You can't bolt a digital projector onto one of these. The technology is fundamentally different.
People are not going to go to the movies just because they have digital projectors. They don't care! It doesn't make a difference how the popcorn was delivered, or whether the electricity comes from nuclear power or coal either. They want to see a movie. This is the problem. Hollywood is too obsessed with technology (not just cameras but digital sets as well). Give us a decent story. Use the technology to tell the story.
I'd assume the same thing will happen to them that happend to the opera/theatre. Namely only bigger cities will have one and usually only one, that is fully overpriced, but regarded as a "special occasion". Normal people will use their home setups and TVs instead, which are probably shifting towards and Internet-based technology, just like phones are shifting towards VoIP (a single data exchange system is easier to install, maintain, connect to, etc. and thus preferrable as long as you can live with the fact that any reliability issue is going to effect all data streams at once. No calling the TV compay when there's only a blank screen).
:-)
Young people will do what they always did, find something new. There'll still be music clubs, discos, etc. and it's quite likely that another public media-consumation-in-a-dark-room venture will develop, if there's a need for that (Which I doubt, today teens don't have to hide the fact that they want to be alone (In a cinema you aren't alone, but noone can see, thats close enough) with their date anymore, like they had to during the 50's).
*shrug* The world will continue turning
One of the reasons snacks cost so much is that a large portion of the cost of a ticket goes straight to the studio the film came from, so the theater has to put huge mark-ups on its snacks just to survive.
This is one of the reasons that I've always felt theater chains are just shafted in the movie industry. The quantity of business they get is almost completely out of their control, since it's determined by the quality/popularity of movies that other people. If it's a bad year for films, it's a bad year for them, and there's not much they could have done about it.
Not to mention the fact that every ten years someone comes along and says that there's this fabulous new technology that they have to buy for their theaters. Last time it was digital sound, now it's digital projectors. That the studios are offering to front part of the cost is nice, but I have to believe that the theater chains are still stuck with some of it, and choosing to opt out isn't really much of an option if they want to stay competitive. It's really just a very short stick.
While important, the quality of the projection should not be the focus when trying to draw people to a theatre. The commodification/McDonaldization of movie theatres is the problem. Most theatres in the US are mega-plexes, with the front lobby and each theatre looking exactly the same no matter what city you go to in the US. The theatre needs more character and intrigue.
For example, if you go to Westwood in Los Angeles, the theatres look like opera houses, and are ornate and spacious. There is palpable excitement in the crowd on opening night for a new film. I saw a movie at a pizza restaurant/theatre in DC a while back. The tables were set on tiers. Sitting in a comfy chair eating pizza while watching a movie in a theatre is an awesome experience. Lastly, I saw Saving Private Ryan in Amsterdam. The theatre was also very ornate. Some people dressed up for the occasion. A choir dressed in WW2 uniforms sang before the movie and during intermission. During intermission, you could go to the lobby or a number of lounges to have a cocktail or some champagne.
If some maverick theatre owner was willing to turn movie-watching into an EXPERIENCE again, then I might think about attending, but right now I have no interest in being pumped in and out of a suburban money making machine.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Well, this isn't a particularly good time to take a data point on movie quality. January, February, and March are classically the time when studios release their dogs. They figure that the kids are in school, and people would rather spend wintry evenings at home than braving the weather to go to the theater.
They release a bunch of good movies around Thanksgiving and New Year's, when people take breaks. That's also when most of the potential Oscar nominees are released, just before the end of the year (to be fresh in the Academy's mind).
And they're waiting for the summer for people to be on vacation again, so they release the stuff that they thought was not good enough to attract attention during the summer and winter rushes of great movies, and the real losers that they're hoping will be able to recoup their losses as long as there's nothing else good to see.
Not that I agree with this "logic"; the studios love to pander to a "conventional wisdom" and never question it. When Spider-Man was released a few weeks _before_ the traditional Memorial Day weekend rush, they were stunned to discover that people who had five months of cruddy movies would throw gobs of money at a good one.
But logic good or ill, movies are cruddy now because that's when the cruddy movies come out. Last year's whole movie season was pretty bad, and the studios deserved to see attendance fall 9%. But if the studios have learned a lesson, you won't see the results until the late spring. They're still flushing their crap. Sorry.
JURRASIC PARK AND MRS DOUBTFIRE ARE IN NO WAY AS CULTURALY SIGNIFICANT AS SCHINDLER'S LIST
Jurrasic park was a warning message about the dangers of genetic engineering. While it was essentially another retelling of Frankenstein, it also encouraged us to speculate on how succesful prehistoric beasts would be as hunters when we were the prey. As a popular movie, it included a number of iconic scenes, and provided a showcase for revolutionary computer generated effects.
Mrs. Doubtfire was a touching comedy about a man who was separated from his children, and had to go to extreme lengths just to see them. As such, it is incredibly relevent to modern western society where more and fathers are denied access to their children.
Why are these movies less culturally significant than Schindler's List? Is it because they spend as much time entertaining the audience as they do delivering their message?