Originally Posted by Averry

I have friends at the theater here, which comes with it's perks.


They have all digital projectors, with some film projectors when movies aren't offered in digital.


I never have to pay for movies, so I try to see as many as I can.


I've actually got to mess around the software on the projector system. It's a central hub which sends the media to all of the projectors.

I think they use the Christie digital system. I know that there's actually competition for digital cinema sort of like the Hi Def format war. There's no general standard and it can be a a bit of a risk for a theater to pick one.


Interestingly, the movies are either beamed in by satellite, or more often delivered by hard drive.

The hard drives usually hold movies files that are around 200 gigs.

I guess I find it interesting to debate how closely a 30 gig, or 50 gig Blu-Ray disc represents the film when the theater gets these on a 200 gig hard drive.

My friend says he can't rightly say if the audio is a specific size in comparison to the video. I find it interesting that Blu-Ray offers uncompressed masters on their discs.

If we assume 20 gigs for adudio, that means that the theaters video file size is massive. I'm going to assume that this means that the video itself is uncompressed, and that is what makes the difference.

The theater runs a resoultion about the same as what Hi definition is, it's like 1920x1091 or something a little different.

I may be completely off base with any one of these issues, and I fully expect at least one of you to know more about this than me.


I guess Im' just wondering, with these things in mind, how well are Blu-Ray and HD-DVD bringing the experience home? Obviously the demands on a theater are much higher than a home theater, but I think it's an interesting comparison.