Jonny K

Am I crazy, or is the image in theaters blurry?

Whenever I go to a movie theater I find the action always looks blurry. The only time I get a clear look at an actor's face is during an extreme closeup when the head takes up the whole screen and there is little movement. Otherwise, I always find the image to be unclear or unfocused, especially during quick action. And I'm not talking about simple little theaters either, this is at the major Cineplex Odeon and Famous Players cinemas in the city.

But I don't find this at home. DVD is always clean and crisp (with my display properly calibrated too). So what's causing all this blurry action at the theater? Is the film blown up so large to fill a big screen that you end up with the blur? Am I just crazy? I know the film is only running at 24 fps which certainly contributes to the problem, but that can't be all of it.

Steve Schaffer

Jonny,

It's a combination of worn prints and poor projection. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater that looked as good as the dvd of the same movie on my relatively humble widescreen rptv/progressive player setup-probably Titanic back in '97. The last time I heard decent bass on a movie in a theater was the original Matrix.

Pirates of the Caribbean was virtually unwatchable in the "THX Certified" theater I saw it in, nasty print poorly focussed and no LFE to speak of.

Theaters just want to pack in the bodies and don't care about quality presentation any more.

Steve S.
I prefer not to push the subwoofers until they\'re properly run in.

Jonny K

I always thought that theaters maintained high levels of quality, perfectly tuning the sound and picture. I though that going to one of the big theaters was the ultimate experience.

You're telling me that's not the case? How dissapointing. The question becomes, are there any theaters that do it right?

Aaron Garman

Unfortunately, not all theaters maintain the ultimate experience. It seems nowadays that the theaters are in the business to sell advertising space and sell food. Not to say there are not good theaters out there, but many many theaters just stink. We still have a descent place, but nowhere near what it should be. It's sad to say that the film exhibition industry is hurting really bad now and may eventually die with the advent of greater technology for the home. I sure hope something happens that will wake the industry up and it's not D-Cinema.

AJG

\"It\'s been my lifelong ambition to be a movie usher, and I have failed, as far as I am concerned\" - Bob Dylan

Max Leung

Hey Jonny, I notice the same thing too! The Coliseum in Calgary recently has gone majorly downhill in projection quality...The Last Samurai and Return of the King were both out of focus, particularly during movement. It clears up a little when the movement stops, but when subtitles appear you definitely notice the lack of focus. My screening of Kill Bill there would have been out of focus if I hadn't complained to them.

However, the Silver City up in the northeast of the city is good so far (knock on wood). My second viewing of Return of the King there was in perfect focus. Always clear even during action scenes. It is a night and day difference compared to the Coliseum theater...it was like watching the movie live through a window!

I am thinking of writing a letter to the managers of the Coliseum theater (in the far south of the city) and tell them they suck pickled donkey eggs when it comes to projection.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Gameshow host: "Is taking Viagra kosher during Passover dinner?"
Whoopee Goldberg: "Not if it leads to pork."
Kermit the Frog: "Hey, that's my line!"

Jonny K

I remember when the Coloseum used to be the best...

Adam Lenhardt

Even since Regal Cinemas took over from Hoyts, the projection quality has gone right in the shitter. Return of the King was horrible; Paycheck was even worse.

By comparison, the locally-operated theater The Spectrum has uniformly excellent projection with such clarity and detail that it almost makes your eyes hurt

Kami

Jonny K

Well I paid 14 dollars (Canadian) and waited just over an hour in line to see Return of the King yesterday...and it was a blurry mess.

Perhaps I'll e-mail the nice people at Famous Players and see what they say. I bet I won't get a response.

EDIT:

Ok, I sent them a big e-mail asking them a bunch of questions. Let's see what they say...

Jason_Els

Return of the King in a THX certified theater and there was NO surround sound even after I complained to the manager. SDDS blows anyway but my home theater could do better than what I experienced. A severe disappointment.

THX used to have a contact point on their website to let them know if a theater wasn't living-up to their certification standards. That link is now gone. Seems to me they're more interested in selling their certification than caring about what it stands for.

For beauty is only a step removed from a burning terror we barely sustain, and we worship it for the graceful sublimity with which it disdains to consume us. - Rainer Maria Rilke

My DVD Collection

Jonathan_E

Ok, here I go trying to defend theaters a bit (I'm a projectionist, so I feel its my duty).

First of all, if the theater you're going to has a bad blurry image, a shaking picture, or other problems, go tell the management that the projectionists need to start doing their job and maintaining the projectors. I work at a 16 screen theater, and we take very good care of our projectors. The only issues at my theater are issues that we are not qualified to handle, like fixing masking motors or calibrating the sound systems. But, for the most part, if the presentation is out of focus, it just means that the projectionists there are doing a crappy job.

Second of all, the average projectionist gets paid between $8 and $10 an hour. That is complete crap for the amount of responsibility that is placed on them. Our theater, on a busy day will bring in between $20000 to $30000 in ticket sales. For a projectionist to be taking care of 16 projectors all running at the same time, making sure things are running smoothly and correctly, we are really under-paid. So in some regards, I can't really blame projectionists for doing such a lousy job when they get such lousy pay.

Lastly, as a personal request, if you ever happen to be in the position that you see a bad presentation of a movie and have the chance to talk to the projectionist about it, try to get past your rage of anger and listen to the explanation if it cannot be fixed by them. I recently had a run in with a customer who would not let me explain what so ever about a masking problem that we cannot fix ourselves (we have to have techs come out, and as in any business, the corporate office is always very very slow). This customer just went off on this long rant about how he has been watching movies longer that I've been alive and this should have been fixed during the movie (not possible without stopping the movie). He would not except any explantation what so ever, even though I've been a projectionist for several years and sure as heck knew a lot more about movie projection than he did. Even though he got complimentary passes for his inconveniance (which consisted of about 3 inches of the top of the picture being projected onto a curtain, causing the very occasional tops of heads being chopped off), he would still not give me the light of day to explain the problem to him and continued to blame us, where it is actually a problem with corporate being slow to send out techs to fix long recurring problems.

Anyhow, I'm going to stop ranting now, but please be a little nicer to the management if you speak to them. Theaters get some of the worst customers and the staff quite often gets treated badly, which doesn't exactly contribute to us trying to do a better job to please the anal retentive customers, which I'm sure none of you are.

-Jonathan

Jason: I agree, SDDS does really blow. We have one projector that uses it, and it frequently has problems. It also will interfere with the standard dolbly digital backup, so the movie will drop all the way down to analog, which is what you were watching the movie in. Sony has essentially abandoned SDDS and theaters are slowly getting away from it, hopefully.