Movie theater resolution (1 Viewer)

[Tom*T]

I know DVD is 420i or 420p and HDTV is 720p or 1080i but what is the resolution of the screen at a movie theater?

 

[chris_bester]

Thats a great question I think they are 420p with an up conversion device or whatever to make the films HD I am not to sure though.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

What are you talking about?

Dunno where 480p comes from whatsoever, confused....

Movie theaters use film which doesn't have a "resolution." It has a range of possible resolutions that can be resolved depending on what generation the film print is, how it has been handled, plus the quality of the lenses and projector and everything used to display it, plus whether it's anamorphic or not. But you should consider film at beyond HD for very high-quality, good-condition prints, and maybe about similar to HD 1080p for average mediocre prints in a run-off the mill theater. this is all very ballpark and rough of course.

 

[Tony Loewen]

One thing that I would like to mention, and maybe see if anyone esle has any similar findings, is that after having my theater set up for a number of months now, I really get no enjoyment whatsoever from going to the movie theater, as far as picture and sound quality go. I am running a sanyo z2 HD projector from an HTPC which upscales dvds from 480p to somewhere in the neighborhood of 960p, doing some slight denoise and sharpening, then video card taking it back down to 720p, being displayed at 98" on a DIY BO cloth screen. The viewing angle from my sweet spot is the THX recommended 30 degrees. This is fully calibrated with both avia and dve. The sound comes bit-perfect down a toslink cable to my onkyo 7.1 receiver, which again, is fully calibrated, however I would like to do a little more room treatment to improve my already pretty good bass response.

Now whenever I go to movies at any of the available theaters, mostly Famous Players, the picture always looks like garbage and the sound is weak and lacks the soundstage I am used to at home. The picture is soft, usually overscanned, and pans are pretty juddery by comparison. The sound lacks the low end clarity, and is usually a little overly bright and tinny, plus usually doesn't have the spacial feel of my home system. This is all from sitting at the sweet spot of the theater as well, with side surrounds at about 90 and 280 degrees from line of sight and 30 degrees between the rears, screen taking up about 30 degree field of view.

Has anyone else noticed this kind of thing after getting their home theater set up? I'm at the point where I will wait for movies to come out on DVD before I will watch them anymore. My wife notices the same thing. Maybe we are just spoiled now.

Just wondering if anyone esle has had similar experiences.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Tony, entire threads over the entire eight-year history of Home Theater Forum have been devoted just to what you're talking about.

 

[Tony Loewen]

Good to hear, Jack, good to hear. I still hear people talk about having built a "good home theater system", and still occasionally going to the movies for a "treat". I just wondered if I was only imagining that I had crystal clear image quality with smooth pans and no noise, and awesome sound response. I was beginning to wonder if all of the local movie theaters (well, if you can call 1100km away local) were just crap compared to what other people had nearby.

Yes, 1100km away is my nearest movie theater. I suppose that was also a pressing factor in deciding to build my own.

 

[Leo Kerr]

Last week, I had the chance to see Sony's new D-Cinema projector in operation.

It's not bad - roughly 3840 X 2160 pixels.

Too bad the lens was crap. Chromatic aberation of that magnitude is completely unacceptable.

Now, if it turns out that it was not chromatic aberation, then the optical engine was totally messed up.

So a decent 35mm print - an early run in a reasonably well set-up multiplex, say - compares favorably with a 4K image.

Of course, to make it work, not only do you need the projector (about the size of a VW Bug,) but you also need the signal decoder, and, of course, the RAID that was feeding it. They were running about 200 megabits/second into the decompressor, regenerating the 8 gigabit/second original data stream...

Leo