Actually, I'd heard that hi-def was one area they were shying away from. Their logic? HD brings out some things you just don't want to see on the, um, actors.
I've heard that story but yet, some adult movie companies are using 1080i HDTV cameras for at least a year, so they will be ready for HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray formats.
People can laugh all they want but already a number of the more profitable companies making adult movies are seriously looking at making movies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray high-definition disc formats. The resaon is simple: high-definition video cameras are rapidly dropping in price. Already, you can get prosumer 1080i resolution HDTV camcorders for under US$5,000, and even the type of very high-end 1080p cameras that were used on movies like Star Wars Episodes II and III are dropping to around US$100,000 for a one-time purchase, actually pretty cheap considering how much Panavision wants for camera rentals on just one movie.
Don't be surprised that the first adult movies in HD-DVD/Blu-Ray formats goes on sale by mid to late Fall 2006. I believe one company has already done a number of adult movies in 1080i format, so they already have the movies ready for the conversion to these formats when workstations mastering HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs become widely available.
Actually, biodiesel directly from vegetable matter is not the most efficient way to produce it. Most scientists estimate you can get at most 90 gallons per acre of farmland growing plants designed to be processed to biodiesel fuel.
The vastly superior solution is growing oil-laden algae in vertical tanks--an acre of them could yield 15,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel from one harvest operation, and given that oil-laden algae grows extremely fast, we could harvest the algae maybe 15-20 times per year! Put a 200-acre farm of algae tanks fed by the exhaust of a coal-fired powerplant and just that production facility alone could provide many millions of gallons of biodiesel fuel in one year. Put a 200-acre farm of algae tanks next to every large-scale coal or natural-gas fired powerplant and we could make enough biodiesel fuel for every tractor-trailer and diesel-electric railroad locomotive in the USA, plus a large amount of heating oil, too. This could substantially expand the amount of overall motor fuels available from petroleum sources since we can cut out most of the crude oil needed to be refined into diesel fuel and heating oil.
Today's latest nuclear reactor designs are certainly vastly safer--the so-called pebble-bed reactor is designed that even if you cut off the coolant flow the reactor gracefully shuts down with none of the dangers of a nuclear fuel meltdown or explosion.
People forget that the Chernobyl reactor was a disaster waiting to happen, since 1) there was NO containment structure and 2) the reactor design itself was extremely vulnerable to fire and explosion, since it was based on the operating design of the Windscale nuclear reactor that ignited in 1957 and caused a substantial radioactive output. You'd think with the KGB intelligence of Western technology the Soviets would have figured out why the Chernobyl reactor design was too dangerous to operate, but....
I think what really happened was that once Microsoft included Internet Explorer 3.0 as part of Windows 95 (starting with OEM Service Release 2) it was pretty much all over for Netscape. This was why it was very smart to create the Mozilla Foundation, which finally created a decent alternate browser (for free! People forget that Opera wasn't truly free until only very recently) with the Mozilla 1.x series and now Firefox 1.0.x and 1.5.x series.
The thing that did in the Beta format was the fact Matsushita Electric--who has a majority controlling interest in JVC (the inventor of the Video Home System)--licensed VHS technology at far lower cost than what Sony wanted for Beta licenses. That got everyone to climb aboard the VHS bandwagon, and by 1990 VHS pretty much won by default.
The biggest advantage was that JVC was able to match Sony's every technological move--especially Hi-Fi sound and high-quality video--while maintaining its advantage of longer recording times over what Sony offered.
Indeed, anyone who has studied the climate of Europe during the last 1,000 years (thanks to tree-ring growth analysis) shows that Earth can undergo rather extreme climate changes without much human intervention.
I think if you want to find out what Earth's climate is really like, look no further than that thermonuclear fireball about 93,000,000 miles away called the Sun. If you look at the sunspot cycle, note how it often correlates with temperature changes on planet almost perfectly.
Another thing that should be looked at carefully is the location of temperature gauges on Earth. Note that temperature gauges placed in remote areas have never really measured the type of temperature upswings we find in gauges placed in urban areas, a sign that most of the temperature increases are caused by the heat island effect of increased urbanization near the sensors.
Actually, it appears that the best source of biodiesel fuel is NOT from plants. Scientists have discovered oil-laden algae that can be processed into diesel fuel and heating oil, and with further refining turned into kerosene and possibly gasoline!:-) The "waste" from the processing of oil-laden algae into motor fuel can be processed further into animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel!
A company called GreenFuel Technologies is working on using the exhaust gases from coal-fired plants to "feed" vertical tanks of said algae. Fed by NOx and CO2 gases, the algae grows very fast, which means multiple harvests of the algae per year. A side benefit of "feeding" the coal-fired powerplant exhaust into these algae tanks is that the final exhaust gas has 40% lower CO2 levels and 86% lower NOx levels, far below the Kyoto Protocol mandates.
NOx is the only bad one, and is hardly a bad trade off for the reduction in other emissions. Switching to Bio Diesel (even just B20) can drop emissions (excluding NOx) and particulates even further while reducing our dependency on foreign oil. The primary issue with NOx (so far as my understand goes) is that NOx scrubbers get contaminated by the sulfur that is in most of the US's dirty diesel. By switching to 100% bio diesel (B100) you are virtually eliminating sulfur emissions and NOx scrubbing can be preformed much more efficiently. Now we just need the fuel industry to catch up with the auto industry.
Actually, this summer the EPA will mandate the use of 15 parts per million sulfur compound diesel fuel. That will allow the use of common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection, modern particulate filters, and improved diesel exhaust catalysts that will reduce emissions to the same levels as gasoline engines. We'll see this in Europe by 2010, since we will see new EU standards for diesel emissions will be similar to what the EPA wants to implement over the next few years. (EU is in a way bowing to pressure from the Swiss government, who are intensely disliking all those diesel trucks crossing the Alps in Switzerland spewing out all that high NOx and diesel particulate output.)
The best thing about diesel engines is that you can make the fuel from biological sources such as corn, soybeans, cottonseed, etc. The best biodiesel fuel source is oil-laden algae, which could be grown in vertical tanks and they grow VERY quickly when fed by NOx and CO2 gases. Indeed, a company called GreeFuel Technologies is working on taking the exhaust gases from coal-fired powerplants and using them to "feed" such tanks! This has the benefits of producing a LOT of oil-laden algae and also reducing NOx and CO2 emissions from the coal-fired powerplant to far below Kyoto Protocol guidelines.
Putting in compact flourescents is easy, though you want to be aware that the up-front costs of such lightbulbs can be somewhere between US$3.50 to US$8.00 per bulb.
As for your VW TDI, I'll skip out until better technology to clean up diesel exhaust emissions (namely NOx, diesel particulates, and the general smell of diesel exhaust) are widely available, not to mention improving the engine design to eliminate the "clatter" common to many diesel engines. We won't see those for at least two years.
I do think there should be some sort of rebate(s) from the local utility company to install insulated windows and more house insulation, though.
1. Develop cleaner-burning turbodiesel engines. DaimlerChrysler's breakthrough BlueTec technology shows you can build diesel engines that are just as clean as gasoline-fuelled engines, and you get the double benefits of 30-35% better fuel efficiency and general compatibility with clean-burning biodiesel fuel.
2. Get homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) gasoline-fuelled engines into full-scale production. HCCI promises around 33% better fuel economy and lower exhaust emissions compared to today's gasoline engines.
Those two changes right there allow for 20-25% improvements in the EPA Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards without changing current automobile designs one iota.:-)
Further down the road, the imposition of excise taxes based on engine displacement and/or physical size of automobiles may get additional gains on fuel economy, since it would encourage people to buy even more fuel-efficient cars; this is already being done in Europe and Japan.
1. During the Cold War, the main tactic to counter carriers by the Soviet Union was to use specially-modified Tu-95's carrying big tracking radars to help guide the big cruise missiles carried by Soviet Naval Aviation and the larger cruisers. Problem was that the Tu-95 was very vulnerable to attack by carrier planes, so getting the Tu-95 within tracking range of carriers using its onboard radar was a dangerous proposition. Small wonder why the Soviets put in 300 kT nuclear warheads on their anti-shipping cruise missiles, hoping that even a near-miss could take out the carrier.
2. The US Navy devised tactics that made it very difficult for the Soviets to find them in the big ocean, even with the big orbiting satellites the Soviets used.
This is why I've always wondered whether the FTC/DoJ did the wrong thing with the US v. Microsoft case. If they had insisted on one simple thing--making the operating system a separate cost item--it could have drastically changed the software landscape as people realize how cheap Linux is and that could have dramatically increased the usage of Linux a long time ago.
Now that Firefox 2.0 has begun its testing phase, I wonder will the browser be full compatible with all the very latest compatibility tests for web browsers. I remember one rather severe test (whose name escapes me) that the current Opera browser works correctly with; will the Mozilla Foundation make Firefox 2.0 pass this test also?
I agree because in many ways, Windows Vista is the biggest change to Windows since the rollot of Windows XP.
I personally think the delay is predicated on the fact third-party hardware manufacturers need to have their software drivers ready for inclusion on the Vista distribution CD (or CD's) or have the driver ready for download on the public release date. And we're not talking just one set of drivers either--they need to have BOTH 32-bit and 64-bit drivers available.
Also (and I know I'll get modded way down for this) is the fact that I have to take any report from 60 Minutes with a big block of salt, especially with the Rathergate fiasco that effectively ruined the reputation of much of CBS News and likely caused Dan Rather to retire.
Here's the big problem with much of the middle of the USA: the population is so spread out that trying to reach them with land-line broadband is too exorbitantly expensive to do.
This is where new wireless networking technologies such as WiMAX will make the difference, since WiMAX can handle thousands of users per antenna array and also have far more range for the signal than Wi-Fi setups. With WiMAX, rural communities will finally get full broadband access, since it's cheaper to put up a small number of antenna arrays to serve a whole community than to hardwire everyone out in less-populated areas to support ADSL or cable modem broadband.
Sony should admit that cannot make the Christmas 2006 shipping date and instead aim for a February 2007 release, complete with a marketing campaign about "getting out of the winter doldrums" with the PlayStation 3.
I think perhaps the biggest innovation from Muslim mathematicians was the development of modern trigonometry and spherical trigonometry. The resaon is simple: they needed a way to easily compute the direction of Mecca and Medina from out in the desert, and using trigonometry and another device the Muslims invented called the astrolabe such a computation was possible.
These developments paved the way for development of modern calculus in by the likes of Newton and Leibniz several hundred years later.
2. The equipment needed to playback DC-28 doesn't exist in cheap enough quantities yet. This is essentially the chips to decode (encode would be nice as well but it can be done in software). The decoding of J2K is quite cpu intensive and the algorithms don't optimize well in todays CPUs so the decoder chips are a requirement.
I agree for now, but with the cost of hardware always going down and the fact CPU technology is rapidly racing ahead now with dual-core x86-type CPU's and IBM/Toshiba/Sony's Cell CPU designed for multimedia processing, the cost of equipment will likely be far cheaper by 2009-2010.
By the way, we may have gotten the right playback medium for theatrical digital projectors: Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD), which can potentially store one terabyte of data on a single disc the same size as the current DVD! That is more than enough to store a 1920x1080 resolution video movie of at least two hours long with very little signal compression, and signal bandwidth issues from playback drive to projector can be overcome using Fibre Channel connections. Even if you need a protective caddy the shipping costs of a movie on HVD is going to be a tiny fraction of shipping six 35-pound reels of 35 mm film just for a single two-hour movie. As a result, this will drastically reduce the size of the digital projector, potentially cutting the cost of the projector by 60% or more.
By the way, even with only 1920x1080 resolution, digital projection has these advantages over conventional film:
1. Consistent sharpness from edge to edge of display area. 2. Excellent color saturation, especially now that DLP projectors will no longer need color wheels with LED light sources. 3. No worries about scratches or film breakage. 4. There is enough storage space (if HVD is used) to include subtitle tracks in multiple languages and audio tracks in Dolby Digital EX or DTS-ES in multiple languages, very useful for European and Asian distribution.
From what I've read, the best resolution you can get from a reconnaissance satellite using adaptive optics and a main mirror about the size of the Hubble Space Telescope is about 2-3 inches, mostly due to the refractive effects of the Earth's atmosphere and the fact our KH-11/12 digital imaging reconnaissance satellites orbit at around 300 km (186 miles) altitude. This isn't like the older film-based reconnaissance satellites that at times dipped as low as 145 km altitude to get pictures.
The limitations of Ikonos and QuickBird is about 100 cm resolution, based mostly on the limitations of the size of the main mirror on these satellites and the near-300 mile orbit of them.
2004 was an anomaly with these movies that really made a LOT of money from strong repeat ticket sales:
Passion of the Christ (US$370 million revenue) Shrek 2 (US$441 million revenue) Spider-Man 2 (US$373 million revenue) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (US$250 million revenue) The Incredibles (US$261 million revenue) Meet the Fockers (US$279 million revenue)
Just these six movies sent ticket sales in dollar figures to unprecedented levels, and set such a high standard that it will be very difficult to match for years to come.
Anyhow, the details are exceptional, but it still feels like a live-action British version of the Simpsons... and in that small tweak from American to British the alternate-reality feeling is complete.
And I think that is what makes this live-action film so much fun to watch.
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Actually, I'd heard that hi-def was one area they were shying away from. Their logic? HD brings out some things you just don't want to see on the, um, actors.
I've heard that story but yet, some adult movie companies are using 1080i HDTV cameras for at least a year, so they will be ready for HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray formats.
People can laugh all they want but already a number of the more profitable companies making adult movies are seriously looking at making movies in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray high-definition disc formats. The resaon is simple: high-definition video cameras are rapidly dropping in price. Already, you can get prosumer 1080i resolution HDTV camcorders for under US$5,000, and even the type of very high-end 1080p cameras that were used on movies like Star Wars Episodes II and III are dropping to around US$100,000 for a one-time purchase, actually pretty cheap considering how much Panavision wants for camera rentals on just one movie.
Don't be surprised that the first adult movies in HD-DVD/Blu-Ray formats goes on sale by mid to late Fall 2006. I believe one company has already done a number of adult movies in 1080i format, so they already have the movies ready for the conversion to these formats when workstations mastering HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs become widely available.
Actually, biodiesel directly from vegetable matter is not the most efficient way to produce it. Most scientists estimate you can get at most 90 gallons per acre of farmland growing plants designed to be processed to biodiesel fuel.
The vastly superior solution is growing oil-laden algae in vertical tanks--an acre of them could yield 15,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel from one harvest operation, and given that oil-laden algae grows extremely fast, we could harvest the algae maybe 15-20 times per year! Put a 200-acre farm of algae tanks fed by the exhaust of a coal-fired powerplant and just that production facility alone could provide many millions of gallons of biodiesel fuel in one year. Put a 200-acre farm of algae tanks next to every large-scale coal or natural-gas fired powerplant and we could make enough biodiesel fuel for every tractor-trailer and diesel-electric railroad locomotive in the USA, plus a large amount of heating oil, too. This could substantially expand the amount of overall motor fuels available from petroleum sources since we can cut out most of the crude oil needed to be refined into diesel fuel and heating oil.
Today's latest nuclear reactor designs are certainly vastly safer--the so-called pebble-bed reactor is designed that even if you cut off the coolant flow the reactor gracefully shuts down with none of the dangers of a nuclear fuel meltdown or explosion.
People forget that the Chernobyl reactor was a disaster waiting to happen, since 1) there was NO containment structure and 2) the reactor design itself was extremely vulnerable to fire and explosion, since it was based on the operating design of the Windscale nuclear reactor that ignited in 1957 and caused a substantial radioactive output. You'd think with the KGB intelligence of Western technology the Soviets would have figured out why the Chernobyl reactor design was too dangerous to operate, but....
I think what really happened was that once Microsoft included Internet Explorer 3.0 as part of Windows 95 (starting with OEM Service Release 2) it was pretty much all over for Netscape. This was why it was very smart to create the Mozilla Foundation, which finally created a decent alternate browser (for free! People forget that Opera wasn't truly free until only very recently) with the Mozilla 1.x series and now Firefox 1.0.x and 1.5.x series.
The thing that did in the Beta format was the fact Matsushita Electric--who has a majority controlling interest in JVC (the inventor of the Video Home System)--licensed VHS technology at far lower cost than what Sony wanted for Beta licenses. That got everyone to climb aboard the VHS bandwagon, and by 1990 VHS pretty much won by default.
The biggest advantage was that JVC was able to match Sony's every technological move--especially Hi-Fi sound and high-quality video--while maintaining its advantage of longer recording times over what Sony offered.
Indeed, anyone who has studied the climate of Europe during the last 1,000 years (thanks to tree-ring growth analysis) shows that Earth can undergo rather extreme climate changes without much human intervention.
I think if you want to find out what Earth's climate is really like, look no further than that thermonuclear fireball about 93,000,000 miles away called the Sun. If you look at the sunspot cycle, note how it often correlates with temperature changes on planet almost perfectly.
Another thing that should be looked at carefully is the location of temperature gauges on Earth. Note that temperature gauges placed in remote areas have never really measured the type of temperature upswings we find in gauges placed in urban areas, a sign that most of the temperature increases are caused by the heat island effect of increased urbanization near the sensors.
Actually, it appears that the best source of biodiesel fuel is NOT from plants. Scientists have discovered oil-laden algae that can be processed into diesel fuel and heating oil, and with further refining turned into kerosene and possibly gasoline! :-) The "waste" from the processing of oil-laden algae into motor fuel can be processed further into animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel!
A company called GreenFuel Technologies is working on using the exhaust gases from coal-fired plants to "feed" vertical tanks of said algae. Fed by NOx and CO2 gases, the algae grows very fast, which means multiple harvests of the algae per year. A side benefit of "feeding" the coal-fired powerplant exhaust into these algae tanks is that the final exhaust gas has 40% lower CO2 levels and 86% lower NOx levels, far below the Kyoto Protocol mandates.
NOx is the only bad one, and is hardly a bad trade off for the reduction in other emissions. Switching to Bio Diesel (even just B20) can drop emissions (excluding NOx) and particulates even further while reducing our dependency on foreign oil. The primary issue with NOx (so far as my understand goes) is that NOx scrubbers get contaminated by the sulfur that is in most of the US's dirty diesel. By switching to 100% bio diesel (B100) you are virtually eliminating sulfur emissions and NOx scrubbing can be preformed much more efficiently. Now we just need the fuel industry to catch up with the auto industry.
Actually, this summer the EPA will mandate the use of 15 parts per million sulfur compound diesel fuel. That will allow the use of common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection, modern particulate filters, and improved diesel exhaust catalysts that will reduce emissions to the same levels as gasoline engines. We'll see this in Europe by 2010, since we will see new EU standards for diesel emissions will be similar to what the EPA wants to implement over the next few years. (EU is in a way bowing to pressure from the Swiss government, who are intensely disliking all those diesel trucks crossing the Alps in Switzerland spewing out all that high NOx and diesel particulate output.)
The best thing about diesel engines is that you can make the fuel from biological sources such as corn, soybeans, cottonseed, etc. The best biodiesel fuel source is oil-laden algae, which could be grown in vertical tanks and they grow VERY quickly when fed by NOx and CO2 gases. Indeed, a company called GreeFuel Technologies is working on taking the exhaust gases from coal-fired powerplants and using them to "feed" such tanks! This has the benefits of producing a LOT of oil-laden algae and also reducing NOx and CO2 emissions from the coal-fired powerplant to far below Kyoto Protocol guidelines.
Putting in compact flourescents is easy, though you want to be aware that the up-front costs of such lightbulbs can be somewhere between US$3.50 to US$8.00 per bulb.
As for your VW TDI, I'll skip out until better technology to clean up diesel exhaust emissions (namely NOx, diesel particulates, and the general smell of diesel exhaust) are widely available, not to mention improving the engine design to eliminate the "clatter" common to many diesel engines. We won't see those for at least two years.
I do think there should be some sort of rebate(s) from the local utility company to install insulated windows and more house insulation, though.
1. Develop cleaner-burning turbodiesel engines. DaimlerChrysler's breakthrough BlueTec technology shows you can build diesel engines that are just as clean as gasoline-fuelled engines, and you get the double benefits of 30-35% better fuel efficiency and general compatibility with clean-burning biodiesel fuel.
:-)
2. Get homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) gasoline-fuelled engines into full-scale production. HCCI promises around 33% better fuel economy and lower exhaust emissions compared to today's gasoline engines.
Those two changes right there allow for 20-25% improvements in the EPA Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards without changing current automobile designs one iota.
Further down the road, the imposition of excise taxes based on engine displacement and/or physical size of automobiles may get additional gains on fuel economy, since it would encourage people to buy even more fuel-efficient cars; this is already being done in Europe and Japan.
Actually, no thanks to dragons.
Given their fairly high intelligence (and REALLY high if they're magical), such a creature could burn down an entire town before you know it. (eek!)
A couple of comments though:
1. During the Cold War, the main tactic to counter carriers by the Soviet Union was to use specially-modified Tu-95's carrying big tracking radars to help guide the big cruise missiles carried by Soviet Naval Aviation and the larger cruisers. Problem was that the Tu-95 was very vulnerable to attack by carrier planes, so getting the Tu-95 within tracking range of carriers using its onboard radar was a dangerous proposition. Small wonder why the Soviets put in 300 kT nuclear warheads on their anti-shipping cruise missiles, hoping that even a near-miss could take out the carrier.
2. The US Navy devised tactics that made it very difficult for the Soviets to find them in the big ocean, even with the big orbiting satellites the Soviets used.
This is why I've always wondered whether the FTC/DoJ did the wrong thing with the US v. Microsoft case. If they had insisted on one simple thing--making the operating system a separate cost item--it could have drastically changed the software landscape as people realize how cheap Linux is and that could have dramatically increased the usage of Linux a long time ago.
Now that Firefox 2.0 has begun its testing phase, I wonder will the browser be full compatible with all the very latest compatibility tests for web browsers. I remember one rather severe test (whose name escapes me) that the current Opera browser works correctly with; will the Mozilla Foundation make Firefox 2.0 pass this test also?
I agree because in many ways, Windows Vista is the biggest change to Windows since the rollot of Windows XP.
I personally think the delay is predicated on the fact third-party hardware manufacturers need to have their software drivers ready for inclusion on the Vista distribution CD (or CD's) or have the driver ready for download on the public release date. And we're not talking just one set of drivers either--they need to have BOTH 32-bit and 64-bit drivers available.
Also (and I know I'll get modded way down for this) is the fact that I have to take any report from 60 Minutes with a big block of salt, especially with the Rathergate fiasco that effectively ruined the reputation of much of CBS News and likely caused Dan Rather to retire.
Here's the big problem with much of the middle of the USA: the population is so spread out that trying to reach them with land-line broadband is too exorbitantly expensive to do.
This is where new wireless networking technologies such as WiMAX will make the difference, since WiMAX can handle thousands of users per antenna array and also have far more range for the signal than Wi-Fi setups. With WiMAX, rural communities will finally get full broadband access, since it's cheaper to put up a small number of antenna arrays to serve a whole community than to hardwire everyone out in less-populated areas to support ADSL or cable modem broadband.
...That could save Sony in the long run.
Sony should admit that cannot make the Christmas 2006 shipping date and instead aim for a February 2007 release, complete with a marketing campaign about "getting out of the winter doldrums" with the PlayStation 3.
I think perhaps the biggest innovation from Muslim mathematicians was the development of modern trigonometry and spherical trigonometry. The resaon is simple: they needed a way to easily compute the direction of Mecca and Medina from out in the desert, and using trigonometry and another device the Muslims invented called the astrolabe such a computation was possible.
These developments paved the way for development of modern calculus in by the likes of Newton and Leibniz several hundred years later.
2. The equipment needed to playback DC-28 doesn't exist in cheap enough quantities yet. This is essentially the chips to decode (encode would be nice as well but it can be done in software). The decoding of J2K is quite cpu intensive and the algorithms don't optimize well in todays CPUs so the decoder chips are a requirement.
I agree for now, but with the cost of hardware always going down and the fact CPU technology is rapidly racing ahead now with dual-core x86-type CPU's and IBM/Toshiba/Sony's Cell CPU designed for multimedia processing, the cost of equipment will likely be far cheaper by 2009-2010.
By the way, we may have gotten the right playback medium for theatrical digital projectors: Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD), which can potentially store one terabyte of data on a single disc the same size as the current DVD! That is more than enough to store a 1920x1080 resolution video movie of at least two hours long with very little signal compression, and signal bandwidth issues from playback drive to projector can be overcome using Fibre Channel connections. Even if you need a protective caddy the shipping costs of a movie on HVD is going to be a tiny fraction of shipping six 35-pound reels of 35 mm film just for a single two-hour movie. As a result, this will drastically reduce the size of the digital projector, potentially cutting the cost of the projector by 60% or more.
By the way, even with only 1920x1080 resolution, digital projection has these advantages over conventional film:
1. Consistent sharpness from edge to edge of display area.
2. Excellent color saturation, especially now that DLP projectors will no longer need color wheels with LED light sources.
3. No worries about scratches or film breakage.
4. There is enough storage space (if HVD is used) to include subtitle tracks in multiple languages and audio tracks in Dolby Digital EX or DTS-ES in multiple languages, very useful for European and Asian distribution.
From what I've read, the best resolution you can get from a reconnaissance satellite using adaptive optics and a main mirror about the size of the Hubble Space Telescope is about 2-3 inches, mostly due to the refractive effects of the Earth's atmosphere and the fact our KH-11/12 digital imaging reconnaissance satellites orbit at around 300 km (186 miles) altitude. This isn't like the older film-based reconnaissance satellites that at times dipped as low as 145 km altitude to get pictures.
The limitations of Ikonos and QuickBird is about 100 cm resolution, based mostly on the limitations of the size of the main mirror on these satellites and the near-300 mile orbit of them.
2004 was an anomaly with these movies that really made a LOT of money from strong repeat ticket sales:
Passion of the Christ (US$370 million revenue)
Shrek 2 (US$441 million revenue)
Spider-Man 2 (US$373 million revenue)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (US$250 million revenue)
The Incredibles (US$261 million revenue)
Meet the Fockers (US$279 million revenue)
Just these six movies sent ticket sales in dollar figures to unprecedented levels, and set such a high standard that it will be very difficult to match for years to come.
I think as long as everyone comsumes food/drinks moderately and not go over board most people have nothing to worry about.
That's what my doctor says, too. Indeed, eating things in moderation and getting decent exercise is key to a good, long and healthy life.
Anyhow, the details are exceptional, but it still feels like a live-action British version of the Simpsons... and in that small tweak from American to British the alternate-reality feeling is complete.
And I think that is what makes this live-action film so much fun to watch.