RobertR
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Dec 19, 1998
- Messages
- 10,675
Let me preface this by saying that I am VERY pleased with my home theater. I have an HTPC feeding an NEC XG135LC, and the picture quality is OUSTANDING. It almost makes me giddy sometimes, knowing that I have picture quality that's equal to or better than almost any of the best High End video setups I've seen at dealers and trade shows. It gives me a LOT of pleasure, and when I watched The Matrix at home tonight, I thought it looked and sounded wonderful.
But it's not film. This was reaffirmed for me today. First, I attended a seminar at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Hollywood, where High Definition hardware was being discussed and demonstrated. It was fascinating to see Hidef at its best, and its best looks very good indeed, even blown up on a 40 foot wide screen. I heard detailed technical descriptions of the newest hidef cameras from Panasonic and Sony, and they look great.
And then I went to see a movie, as in a motion picture shot on film. The movie was The Score, playing at one of the theaters in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. Some of the theaters in Westwood are known for being very high quality, and they often host studio premieres. This means that the theaters know studio people frequent them, and they make an extra effort to ensure proper sound levels, proper illumination, proper film handling and so forth.
The results were very noticeable. I was looking at a virtually pristine print with superb color rendition, superb contrast, superb black levels (unlike many theaters, this one has DARK side walls and NO lighting at all during the show except for a small exit sign), superb shadow detail, and overall detail that NO video system can TOUCH. Even blown up to 60-70 ft. wide, film grain was minimal. I kept thinking "this is what it's all about!".
Now I know that much has been written about the often bad experience of going to the theater--rowdy teens, crying babies, cell phones, etc. bad prints, bad sound etc. (none of which was a problem today). I grant all that, and don't like such things either.
But what I saw today (and several times recently, since I've been fortunate enough to be invited to studio screening rooms) was film done RIGHT (SO right that I've decided never again to bother with a run of the mill multiplex), and doing so makes it EASY to see how much better film is than ANY video representation. Even the most "film-like" of our video systems is at best a pale imitation of The Reference, which is film, and we should never try to kid ourselves otherwise.
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[Edited last by RobertR on August 12, 2001 at 12:39 AM]
But it's not film. This was reaffirmed for me today. First, I attended a seminar at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Hollywood, where High Definition hardware was being discussed and demonstrated. It was fascinating to see Hidef at its best, and its best looks very good indeed, even blown up on a 40 foot wide screen. I heard detailed technical descriptions of the newest hidef cameras from Panasonic and Sony, and they look great.
And then I went to see a movie, as in a motion picture shot on film. The movie was The Score, playing at one of the theaters in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. Some of the theaters in Westwood are known for being very high quality, and they often host studio premieres. This means that the theaters know studio people frequent them, and they make an extra effort to ensure proper sound levels, proper illumination, proper film handling and so forth.
The results were very noticeable. I was looking at a virtually pristine print with superb color rendition, superb contrast, superb black levels (unlike many theaters, this one has DARK side walls and NO lighting at all during the show except for a small exit sign), superb shadow detail, and overall detail that NO video system can TOUCH. Even blown up to 60-70 ft. wide, film grain was minimal. I kept thinking "this is what it's all about!".
Now I know that much has been written about the often bad experience of going to the theater--rowdy teens, crying babies, cell phones, etc. bad prints, bad sound etc. (none of which was a problem today). I grant all that, and don't like such things either.
But what I saw today (and several times recently, since I've been fortunate enough to be invited to studio screening rooms) was film done RIGHT (SO right that I've decided never again to bother with a run of the mill multiplex), and doing so makes it EASY to see how much better film is than ANY video representation. Even the most "film-like" of our video systems is at best a pale imitation of The Reference, which is film, and we should never try to kid ourselves otherwise.
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[Edited last by RobertR on August 12, 2001 at 12:39 AM]