Dolby Cinema (1 Viewer)

Surprised to not find a discussion about this yet. Dolby Cinema was first announced back in December of last year, but details didn't really come out until NAB last week and CinemaCon this week.


The technology is the first to bring HDR (high dynamic range) technology (i.e. Dolby Vision) to the cinema along with laser projection. The brightness they are getting is impressive and they can achieve 31 footlamberts in 2D (or roughly double the brightness of a standard theater) and 14 footlamberts in 3D (which means 3D as bright as your standard theater 2D). (The system uses two custom-engineered Christie 6G projectors.) The theater also has a redesigned interior with nearly black walls and ceiling, wall-to-wall screens, and a minimum of visual distractions (i.e. no bright EXIT signs on the sides of the screen bleeding their light onto the screen). Dolby Cinema screens also have Dolby Atmos sound systems.


For background information on this technology see: http://www.dolby.com/us/en/platforms/dolby-cinema.html.


Though I've not seen the full system up and running, an industry friend at ARRI Digital was invited to a presentation of it at Dolby and proclaimed it to be the best theatrical presentation he had ever seen. For example, he said that the blacks were truly black - to the point that they displayed a black "flat field" image and he said he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.


AMC is going to be the first theater chain to roll this out in the US and there are supposed to be four screens up and running nationally for TOMORROWLAND. The screens include the AMC Burbank and screens in Houston, Atlanta, and Kansas City. More screens (number not announced) will convert for INSIDE OUT a few weeks later.


Though I don't know which screens are converting in Atlanta and Kansas City, I've confirmed this morning which screens are being converted in Houston. Amusingly they are both suburban theaters well outside of the center of the city. The first online will be the AMC Deerbrook 24 in Humble and it will screen TOMORROWLAND. The second will be the AMC Willowbrook in NorthWest Houston and it will screen INSIDE OUT. (The Dolby Cinema construction crew will move over to Willowbrook once they have completed the rework in Deerbrook. The Deerbrook theater went "down" today and the reconstruction will last four weeks.)


No question I'll be there for the opening in Deerbrook and then again for the opening in Willowbrook!


Can anyone in Atlanta and Kansas City confirm which screens are being converted? A screen that is going to be ready for TOMORROWLAND should be offline now.


-greg

While Dolby Cinema sounds promising, I have some mixed feelings about it.


The biggest negative I see with it is the screen.


The screens in Dolby Cinema are "common width," which translates into all movies projected at the same width. Movie chains sometimes market them as "wall to wall" screens. Common width might sound cool until one realizes most movies are being produced in some kind of 'scope format, framed at 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Any 'scope movie is going to be letter-boxed on a common width screen. Movies in flat format are going to be taller and thus bigger. My favorite phrase to use criticizing common width screens is they make Driving Miss Daisy bigger than Die Hard. It's just backwards from a traditional common height screen approach.


Lately, premium priced theaters have been installing common width screens featuring no masking. A traditional common height movie theater screen often has movable side masking that opens wider for 'scope movies. Some of the nicer theaters have movable curtains along with the movable masking. Any theater trying to be a "movie palace" can't be that without the black felt masking and curtains. Masking serves a number of purposes, the biggest one being hiding the edge of the movie's image frame.


I've seen a few common width screens where no attempt was made to hide the lacing that holds the screen onto the frame. That just makes it look like someone leaned a great big trampoline on the wall. That approach just looks cheap.


The end result with all these masking-lacking common width screens is all 'scope movies get visibly letter-boxed on the screen. While Dolby Cinema may claim to have even better black levels, those levels of black are only going to be as black as the screen. There may be little ambient light in a Dolby Cinema room, but there is still going to be enough to make the letterbox bars on the top and bottom of the screen a dark gray. And the letterbox edges aren't going to be all that sharp. They're going to be a little fuzzy since the 4K laser projection can't be dialed into perfect focus; the pixel grid from the projectors will clash with the perforation pattern on the screen (this was never a problem with film by the way).


The blue glow around the screen (similar to Regal Cinemas' "RPX" screens) makes the screen look more like a TV set than a movie theater screen.


The other issue is room aesthetics. I'm not too sure how the public is going to react to a Dolby Cinema interior. It has a really stark and kind of bare appearance, despite the stealth fighter angled features on the walls and ceiling.

I'm with Bobby - Dolby Cinema is decidedly NOT cinematic and I honestly would hope that this common width screen concept will die a quick death.

I do like common width screens for the few action movies in the 1.85 ratio such as the Jurassic Park films. Much more immersive than the small masked 1.85 area on common height screens.


As to the reason why cinemas are using common width screens, to compete with IMAX which uses 1.44 screens for film based installations and 1.9 screens for Digital installations.

The problem is the 1.85:1 ratio is normally used for "grown up" dramas, comedies and other movies that don't have a bunch of car chases, explosions and other expensive eye candy in them. But even most of those kinds of movies are being framed in 2.39:1 'scope ratio currently.


The biggest movies have traditionally been composed in the 'scope aspect ratio. In traditional movie theaters 'scope movies were always the biggest on the screen and often looked the best as well.


In digital cinema the situation is very stupidly backwards. What we have in effect is a big TV set in a room with a bunch of seats. It's not a real movie theater screen anymore. Like Quentin Tarantino has been saying lately: it's TV in public. If I want to watch a "scope" movie that's merely been vertically cropped down to that shape I might as well just watch it at home on my big HDTV set. I get the same effect there just fine.


We can thank IMAX for this latest trend of bare, unfinished, unmasked screens with little more than a Phillips TV set "Ambilight" halo effect applied to it in some cases (like Dolby Cinema and Regal's RPX screens). At least the first "wall to wall" common width screens I encountered had some vertical masking that would lower down and frame & mask the 'scope image properly.


The 'scope look and even the look of anamorphic lens effects are very popular. HBO's new season of True Detective was shot with anamorphic lenses, despite the fact it's going to be shown in full screen 1.77:1 ratio. They just love all the football shaped bokeh. The same has been happening with the American Crime TV series on ABC.


One would have figured that as popular as 'scope is the format might have been treated a little better in d-cinema. Right now 'scope is the smallest, lowest resolution format out of all the image framing options in a d-cinema projector. The movie studios, theaters and projector manufacturers should have agreed on a 1.25x anamorphic option, filling the entire 2048 X 1080 imaging chip in a 2K projector with a mildly squeezed image and then unsqueezing it through an anamorphic projection lens. This would have been a better approach than the current crop-only travesty.


If the 'scope fad ever dies down the 'scope format could end up going away permanently in future movie productions, especially if there is a big need in pushing image quality. Nearly all the professional digital cameras used in cinema production have imaging chips closer to HDTV aspect ratio. The only exception I can think of is the Arri Alexa 65; the 6K camera copies the aspect ratio of a 5-perf 65mm film camera and, if I recall correctly, can use lenses from 65mm film camera systems.

I agree, Bobby, that common width screens are problematic and I certainly miss the screen that "opens up" for anamorphic films. The reality, though, is that Digital Cinema, more than anything, is driving the move to common width screens. When projecting a DCP you only have a single lens to deal with rather than a more-complicated lens switching system or (shudder) relying on a random teenager to manually switch out the lenses when moving a film over. Since digital makes it so much easier to "move over" a film from one theater to another during the day (putting big new releases on more screens at night or having big animated releases in the larger theaters during the day and more mature movies in the same theaters in the evening) common width just makes sense from an ease of use standpoint. Plus there's no longer any such thing as anamorphic trailers - just one size "fits all" - which means that you don't have to worry about "attaching" the wrong version of the trailer to the first reel when building up a print.


Virtually every new theater I've seen in the past few years - both in Houston and in Los Angeles - are common width. It is a shame from an historical standpoint, but I understand the realities that cause it to be chosen. I do wish they used vertical masking, but I haven't seen a new theater with vertical masking in years.


Regarding the "blue glow" in Dolby Cinema, I checked with my friend at ARRI and he said that the at Dolby Cinema theater installed at Dolby's SoCal office the blue was only there for pre-show and the room was completely black during presentation. Hopefully that will be the case when it is deployed out to theaters in the US. I have contacts at Dolby (their CTO is an old friend of mind) and will inquire with them regarding the blue halo.


Regarding the look, it is hard to perceive how it looks from the renderings on Dolby's website. I'll be able to report back my thoughts once I've watch a film in it.


I'm curious where you saw a Dolby Cinema presentation. I thought the only place outside of Dolby's offices currently was in Eindhoven. The Netherlands.


-greg

I have'nt been to a movie theatre in years but, when I did, most of the theatres in Connecticut had common height.

I'm basing my views on images I've seen from the Dolby Cinema installation in the Netherlands as well as their own renderings of the Dolby Cinema concept.


Regarding 'scope, trailers and "one size fits all" it really isn't like that. DCP movie files, trailers & commercials on a hard drive are still formatted in different aspect ratios. The projector must be set correctly to frame the show properly. The DCP will often have multiple versions of the movie file, like 2D & 3D versions, versions that are 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, Auro, DBox, etc. Sometimes multiple 3D versions will be included, brightened for different foot lambert levels for different 3D systems. You sometimes need a different KDM for each version of the movie. "Digital" hasn't really made life in the projection booth any easier. The chores of building movie reels onto a platter have been replaced with the chores of chasing down the right files, right KDMs and correct projector settings for each. There are plenty of ways how a d-cinema movie can be screwed up and done wrong. I've seen movies mis-framed in the wrong format on at least a few occasions.


A dual lens turret system isn't all that complicated. Such a system wouldn't require projection lenses to be so big and expensive either. Those big, single zoom lens packs add a lot of cost to a projector.

I know that DCP files can be in different aspect ratios, what I meant by "one size fits all" is that they can use a single "prime" lens for all showings. Admittedly, to do that means that 2.39 AR films lose a bit off the sides - or there's a slight black edge left/right on 1.85:1 presentations due to the aspect ratio extractions - if a single lens/position is used for all presentations. I agree that a turret system is ultimately better as you can properly frame both extractions, but from what I'm seeing a lot of theaters don't appear to be doing that.


Regarding the challenges of DCP, I completely get it. I'll admit that I haven't done projection in (shudder) about 30 years, but I'm now working on the other side dealing with source elements, grading, etc.


I guess what I'm talking about is not optimal presentation, but what theaters seem to be doing. A lot of them have been sold on the "convenience" of Digital Cinema. When checking out a new theater I tend to not return to lowest-common denominator theaters, but sadly that's more typically the case. Unfortunately it often means that if I don't see a film within the first two weeks on the largest screen (Barco 4K, Atmos at the theater I typically attend) I know the presentation will suffer.


One thing that I'm looking forward to seeing (with Inside Out) is the 15 fl output to screen in 3D. Not sure how that will ultimately play out in HDR, but it could be so much better than the current situation. That plus the pure dark environment should help dramatically with the quality of a 3D presentation.

The thing is some theaters with proper common height screens are already employing 1.25x anamorphic attachments on their single lens systems to give a better, more efficient spread of light. The problem with this approach is the image from the DCP is having to be artificially stretched vertically on one axis and then optically stretched horizontally in the anamorphic element as the image is being projected.


The best approach for 'scope in d-cinema is mastering the content at full imager height. For instance, if one is creating a 2K master, it should really be a 1080 pixel tall image by 2592 wide image and then squeezed to 2048 width when encoded to the DCP. This method would do like what 'scope on 35mm did: use the entire 4-perf 35mm film frame. In this case all of the 2048 X 1080 imager frame would be used. This would yield a 'scope image that is far superior to the very dopey 2048 X 852 nonsense we've been having to endure for the past several years.


If this sounds familiar, it is. We went through the same thing with DVD. Anamorphic enhanced widescreen DVDs were almost always better than their non-anamorphic counterparts. More native pixels of detail were being encoded with anamorphic enhanced DVDs.


Doing 'scope properly in d-cinema is not difficult. With as many versions of a movie that is being duped to DCP hard discs is it really too much to ask to get a proper, higher resolution anamorphic enhanced 'scope version encoded in a DCP?


If it weren't for some new whizz bang technologies like Dolby Atmos and old school methods like 70mm appearing in theaters I would just watch movies at home on my HDTV set. Most d-cinema installations are really hardly any better than my TV set. The digital shows certainly aren't showing me a sharper, better looking image than what I can see on Blu-ray, not with d-cinema projectors having to be deliberately dialed out of focus to both hide the pixel grid of the source image and prevent that pixel grid from clashing with the perforation pattern on the screen, preventing moire from messing up the image. Film projection could be dialed in as sharp as possible, so you could see the film grain swimming around on the screen. You can't do that with digital. Moire and the screen door effect stop you dead in your tracks. That leaves people looking at a sharper image at home from their Blu-ray discs.

The more I hear about the current state of movie theaters, the more I think their magic is just plain dead. The way scope is handled on digital projection is a joke indeed. If I want to watch a letterboxed movie, I can do that at home!

I wonder how much more they'll charge to see a movie in a "Dolby Cinema" room.

Considering how much it costs for a pair of specially built Christie 6P laser projectors, a fully pimped out Dolby Atmos sound system, all the strange paneling on the walls & ceiling, not to mention the likely very high cost of those animated LED jumbotron signs blanketing the front wall of the entrance, tickets are not going to be cheap.


AMC already charges on the high end for standard Lie-MAX, ETX and Prime with or without Atmos. Dolby Cinema tickets will easily cost just as much if not a couple or so dollars more. $20 for a movie ticket is already a reality in some places.

There's still no theaters within a reasonable distance from me with Dolby Atmos, so I don't expect to have the opportunity to see Dolby Cinema anytime soon. And my situation is probably more common than not. As for the comment about generic cinemas looking like TVs, well that's pretty much what they are now, complete with black bars and the same commercials you can see on your HDTV at home. My last generic digital "cinema" experience was littered with light gray blacks and a washed out area on the screen from the corridor light outside the theater shining in, oh, but the projectors were 4K!

I now rarely go to any cinema, but when I do it's to the AFI Silver where they project film, maintain standards, still care enough to have a certified sound system and try to give you your money's worth.

$20 for a movie ticket is already a reality in some places.

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Ever since tickets went above $7, I've always wondered just how high will they have to go before the public finally says "enough" and stops going altogether.

Okay. I have more information regarding Dolby Vision. According to my contacts at Dolby when a film is being played all internal "blue" lighting is to be turned completely off. Indeed, their goal is to have zero ambient light in the room, with the understood exception that local fire regulations may require the illumination of exit signs or similar.The goal, though, is that EXIT signs are as dim as possible during the presentation and automatically fully illuminate when a power failure is detected or when they are triggered in the booth. (I remember being part of a fun discussion with the fire marshall in Houston back in the mid-80s when I was part of the crew building out the projection/sound system for a five screen art theater. We finally negotiated a workaround solution to his demand that the EXIT signs be at maximum brightness and be placed directly next to the edge of the screen (common height design).


In addition, Dolby has instituted a revenue/profit sharing model, similar to the "virtual print fees" and co-financing that studios offered at the beginning of the digital transition, to help theaters bring up Dolby Cinema screens. This brings the cost down fairly significantly and, honestly, is in Dolby's best interest because the only way this new technology is going to be a success is if a lot of theaters put the screens in.


I find the technology very interesting as I know full well what HDR (high dynamic range) can bring to the viewing experience, having worked with the technology myself and spent time discussing the implementation with Dolby, Technicolor, and multiple VFX houses. What makes HDR extremely interesting is that two of the biggest VFX houses worldwide have been rendering all of their scenes in HDR for years. And if you shoot with a camera such as the ARRI Alexa, you have fifteen or more usable stops captured by the camera so it is relatively simple to grade the camera footage as HDR.


-greg

Good read guys. My biggest problem is, DCI was maintaining a standard for film quality in a digital projection, most of the Rec. for TV's are based on CRT. Last i looked none of them are around anymore, so why the standards are still being used baffles my mind. Like wise i feel the same towards scope and flat. I live in Galveston,TX and we have Premiere CInema here, i think they operate about a dozen or so locations. My biggest problem is they always push a scope movie onto a flat format screen. So most of what is happening on the right and left of center is chopped off, subtitles, actors faces, etc. They also use 2K Barco's with lamps barely bright enough to light the screen and completely pathetic for 3D. Like most theatres, concession and ticket prices have increased, and at the same time nothing new is offered for the increased prices. They still tack on the ridiculous $3 surcharge for 3D. AMC, Tinseltown, and the other big chains are asking stupid prices to view a movie. Dolby Cinema might offer so form of wow factor, but is it worth the price of the movie on Blu-Ray for one admission ticket? My personal opinion is that they are doing too little too late. Theater owners love to preach from their pedestals about the cost of upgrading, yet they want to sell me a bucket of popcorn for $7.00 that cost $.50 to make.

Hey Andrew,


Premiere Cinema - what a total pit they are. Honestly, they run their theaters like a second-run house of old.


Regarding the price of popcorn, keep in mind that concessions are basically what keep theaters in business in this front-loaded releasing world. A typical studio release has a 90/10 split for the first four weeks (or longer, depending on film). That means for each dollar in the ticket the theater only keeps ten cents while sending ninety cents to the studio. For some huge movies, such as I suspect the new Avengers film, the split is 95/5. Those expensive popcorn and coke concessions are critical to the theater so I usually consider it a cost of experience.


Regarding the theaters I visit, with two young children I don't see nearly as many movies as I used to so I seek out the premium experiences such as IMAX, Dolby Atmos, and hopefully Dolby Cinema (if it is as good as folks I trust say it is). And if you do it right you don't have to spend a fortune. I paid $6.25 to see Avengers: Age of Ultron last Friday (opening day) in Dolby Atmos on the biggest non-IMAX screen at the Santikos Silverado. Early bird screenings are the way to go if you can manage it!


-greg

Greg,

You are right about Premiere Cinemas, however the only theatre they own that i had a good experience with was there location in Temple, TX they just added a IMAX there, the only IMAX in central Texas, it was good probably because everything was still brand new. That is all we have down here in Galveston. I occasionally go to AMC Gulf Pointe for certain movies for the IMAX. I saw Avengers: Age of Ultron down here in Galveston on opening day at the 1230 matinee showing, $9, 6 for the ticket 3 for 3D. And $11.50 for a medium leftover popcorn and pibb. I'm kind of slacking on my movie outings, i have still not made a ATMOS or AURORA-3D showing yet. I want to go to one of the Santikos theaters just for D-BOX, but i always find a reason not to make the drive.


I know the theatres do not get to keep all the money they collect, but still, they could do a better job in a lot of areas.

I find the technology very interesting as I know full well what HDR (high dynamic range) can bring to the viewing experience, having worked with the technology myself and spent time discussing the implementation with Dolby, Technicolor, and multiple VFX houses. What makes HDR extremely interesting is that two of the biggest VFX houses worldwide have been rendering all of their scenes in HDR for years. And if you shoot with a camera such as the ARRI Alexa, you have fifteen or more usable stops captured by the camera so it is relatively simple to grade the camera footage as HDR.

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Wide color gamut range or not, movie viewers are accustomed to movies looking as much like film as possible. The HFR thing has not been doing very well since it has a very obvious video look to it, even more so than the video-ish problems we've been dealing with for years via movies shot electronically rather than on film. Movie studios and Dolby will have to be careful about how HDR is handled. If it ends up making the movie look like a "live from the news set" documentary about a movie rather than the actual movie customers will be put off by it.


The bigger question I have regarding HDR use in movies is the bit budget. A standard 8-bit per color channel movie in 2K resolution uncompressed consumes quite a lot of bandwidth and storage capacity. That geometrically increases as more bits per channel are added.

How is Dolby increasing the color range of these movies? I know in still photography HDR color depth makes an image a lot bigger in terms of file size than one with standard 8-bit color depth. From experience I know you can't apply HDR-like exaggerations to bump up detail in shadow and highlight areas or crank up saturation levels on any standard color depth image without shredding much of its fidelity. You must have deeper color depths to allow more push & pull adjustments without harming the image.


Getting back to the home HDTV screen like common width theater screens, I really think Dolby has to re-think that move. I've been hammering common width screens pretty hard at the Film-Tech forum, criticizing them and d-cinema for what a joke they've made out of the 2.39:1 scope format. It's cropped in the imager, just like it is letter-boxed on TV at home. On 35mm film 'scope was the biggest, brightest and highest resolution movie format. In d-cinema it is now the smallest, lowest quality format. Yet most studio releases are still going out in 'scope. The format, and the anamorphic photography look, is that popular.


Here's what Dolby ought to do as an additional feature in Dolby Vision: get 'scope done right. They really kind of need to do that ahead of cranking up the color and contrast in movies.


Here's how they do it. For a 2K movie the production would shoot and render with the 2560 X 1080 resolution in mind rather than the much smaller 2048 X 858 setting -what currently passes for 'scope now. 4K would be produced in 5120 X 2160. In DCP the 2560 X 1080 image would be squeezed to 2048 X 1080, basically a "full frame" image in the projector. A 1.25x anamorphic projection lens would decompress the image on screen. The image would have a very noticeable improvement in resolution. This approach would be similar to what was done with widescreen enhanced DVDs. Anamorphic DVDs looked a whole lot better than non-anamorphic on widescreen TV sets. The anamorphic approach would spread light onto the screen with 23% greater efficiency, saving on lamp and power costs. It would give theaters who have proper common height screens (real movie screens) an advantage over common width TV-like screens.

By the way, the 5120 X 2160 and 2560 X 1080 formats are supported by the latest HDMI spec and 21:9 ratio TV sets have been demonstrated with both resolutions. A number of TV sets and computer monitors have been sold at 2560 X 1080 resolution. That's something to consider for future video formats or video settings.