Hollywood leaning towards digital projection! (1 Viewer)

[Terrell]

TF.N has an interesting article on digital projection. One major hurdle is funding, as they are rather expensive. Here's and excerpt followed by a link. Interesting read.

In what could prove to be a milestone for digital moviemaking, Hollywood's seven major film studios on Tuesday said they will form a venture to set open technology standards for Digital Cinema.
The venture's name and management will be announced in coming weeks, but a spokeswoman said the effort will be funded with equal contributions by each of the studios: Disney, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros.
Digital Cinema experts outside the studios called the effort a positive move in the still undeveloped arena for Digital Cinema, which can offer consumers better quality movies and reduce operating costs for studios and theaters.
"We must have a global standard for digital filmmaking that is as useful as 35mm film," said Charles S. Swartz, executive director and chief executive of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California.
"The only way to do that is to jumpstart the marketplace and have the industry agree on open standards," Swartz said. The ETC was established to analyze the impact of digital technology on the entertainment industry.
Executives from large companies like Eastman Kodak Co. and Texas Instruments Inc. to small digital production houses like Los Angeles-based The Orphanage said the move should allay the fears of movie makers and theater owners worried that they might spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy digital equipment only to find it obsolete in just a few months.
"It's definitely a large step forward for digital systems," said Bob Mayson, general manager at Kodak Digital Cinema. Early last month, Kodak showed its first entry into the Digital Cinema marketplace at the theater exhibition industry's ShoWest convention in Las Vegas.
But many large companies including Boeing Co., Texas Instruments, Qualcomm Inc. have been pushing competing digital distribution systems, projection technologies and business models for as long as five years, in some cases.

Here's a link to the story. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...talcinema_dc_1
Thoughts?

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Until the systems cost considerably less than 35mm setups AND look better than well-maintained film presentation, digital projection will remain a specialized thing. Theater owners get absolutely no benefit from these installations and they are the ones being asked to finance the systems! The studios are the only ones who will profit (due to reduced print costs, etc.) from the installation of digital systems - they should be the ones willing to bear the upfront cost of the changeover.

And I'd like to see a digital system that will still be usable 50 years from now - many 35mm systems last a lot longer than that!

 

[Terrell]

I don't know the technical details Peter, but a friend of mine who has seen both film and digital said the digital looked clearly better to him. But I agree with you that right now, it doesn't benefit the theater owners. It benefits the studios far more and they should bear the cost. And you know theater owners don't want to raise ticket prices.
Drinks and popcorn already cost $50.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I've seen a bunch of the digital presentations in New York (and the original test runs in New Jersey). Some looked nearly as good as film, some did not. The best, obviously, were the animated films. "Regular" films looked okay, but there was something vaguely "wrong" with the picture. The chief advantage to digital projection is the absence of wear on the print, although, in a properly maintained projection booth, you can run 35mm film for hundreds of passes (at least 6 weeks) with no visible wear, either.

 

[Bruce Hedtke]

although, in a properly maintained projection booth, you can run 35mm film for hundreds of passes (at least 6 weeks) with no visible wear, either.

Well, that is a more idealized situation. I would hazard a guess that 70-80% of films would show moderate to "extreme" wear after such a run, mostly because most theaters no longer have professionals running the projectors. Digital projection eliminates that and looks the same after every run.

Bruce

 

[Terrell]

Do you guys think this is coming faster than we initially thought? I mean if 7 of the largest film studios have formed a venture to come up with a digital standard, and to hammer out issues, that seems pretty significant. I certainly didn't expect them to do this in such a short manner of time.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

DLP is superior when it comes to noise and wear.
DLP projection, as it exists today, is totally inferior to film when it comes to resolution. There is no comparison.
Unfortunately, in the real world, DLP is not necessarily inferior when it comes to resolution. This is not a good thing, it is because mass printing of film is often not so great, the projectors are not so great. And the management which runs and maintains film projectors is often not so great. DLP is a nice, clean, dumbed-down, low-res image...which often looks great because film is not living up to its true potential.
I'd rather see the money spent on making film look the way it can, which (if the movie is shot well) will blow DLP away. Rolling out DLP in mass right now is settling for a very clean image that is lacking in detail.
Just like CD is not what it was cracked up to be, neither is DLP.
Better to wait for future digital projection (which will be to today's DLP as SACD is to CD). Better to stick with film for now until we have digital technology that is truly superior, not just lacking in noise or scratches.

 

[Nick_Scott]

Whatever happened to the 48fps 35m format?

Is it DOA? Seems like a better alternative to DLP.

nick

 

[Paul Jenkins]

I think that if the digital folks can get the economics of the DLP technology figured out, film is history. Yes, film looks better than DLP if you compare best film to best DLP. But, do you really think the theater companies and movie studios care about that? If there is an economic motivation to go digital, which people are working on achieving, then they will go to it. From distribution to copy protection to ease and consistency of projection, digital has the potential. It will just be a question of *when* not a question of *if*

IMHO

 

[Terrell]

I agree Paul. I think Michael is right that another 5-10 years from now, digital will have improved by quite a bit over what it is now. The technology will mature eventually. I myself would love to see whata digital film looks like. We don't have one in my state.

 

[Paul Jenkins]

I myself would love to see whata digital film looks like. We don't have one in my state.

We have one about 3 miles from my house in Plano, TX. A DLP Cinemark theater. I love that theater and personally, I usually think that the DLP theater has a *better* picture than the other theaters in that mega-chain. I bet it is because of the complete lack of film scratches and noise that all the other films seem to have. I've seen Ice Age twice in that complex, once in the DLP room and once in the larger film room. Of course, Ice Age is animated, so perhaps that is a reason as well, but the DLP room looked better than the film room to me. {and, off topic a bit, but Ice Age is a great movie for the kids, they loved it, which is why I've seen it twice already }

 

[Paul W]

I agree - the image quality at Cinemark Legacy is very good.

I don't think 48fps will ever be economically feasible-it is just too much film to deal with. This is why film is run at 24fps and not 30fps.

I look forward to seeing improvements in DLP resolution and when this happens, film is history.

 

[Mark Philp]

Digital projection is going to put the final nail in the coffin for 2nd run theatres and first runs in the smaller cities and towns. These houses have all they can do to hang on now and can't afford twenty grand for a decent sound system let alone hundreds of thousands for a complete projection system. Sure, the big cities have their multiplexes but there are millions of filmgoers who depend on the others too. When the big chains start converting, guess who's going to pay for it. It won't be long after that we'll see $15 tickets in the big cities.

 

[Terrell]

You may be right about 2nd run theaters Mark. Though I have to disagree about $15 tickets. That won't happen. Tickets increase simply because of inflation or a downturn in business. They won't increase ticket prices unless they have to. And if they can find a way to fund it, they'll do it rather than increase tickets. They may decide to charge you $10 buck for your damn Coke. That more than ticket prices aggravates the hell out of me.

 

[Trace Downing]

Something about the resolution differences between film and DLP, that nobody has addressed is gate jitter.

Looking at still shots, the 35mm print is sharper and most likely more robust in color saturation. However in movement, a film projector's gate jitter wiggles enough of the film to deteriorate the focus of the image slightly. DLP has no gate jitter, and thus a smoother transition from frame to frame. So, I would assume that the relative lower resolution of the 1000 or so lines of DLP, is offset by film's need for frame gates, and the jitter that they cause, and thus evening out the resolution difference when a picture is in motion.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Down here in Smallville (Not actual name of town) we have no movie theaters, digital or analog. We have to drive 20-miles just to see the craptacular Hoyts cinema.

Will DLP look worse? No. The theater is so poor that they couldn't make it look worse unless they burned it down. Watch LOTR in blurry-vision? I did. Johnny Mnemonic had a continuous loop of The Jackson Five playing during it for some reason. And lets not forget the ever-fun "Movies being projected two feet to the right of the screen!".

But in the long run digital will be cheaper than current projection equipment. This is the way technology works. Sp in five to ten years, yeah..I'll probably finally be able to see movies in a decent format.