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Topic: Video question for Ian Price

John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 05-12-2000 05:52 AM

At one of the ShoWest panel discussions on electronic cinema, an exhibitor asked about the cost of maintaining the server that would be required for a multiplex theatre. The answer from the panel expert was that it would be more cost-effective to replace the server if it failed after a few years, than try to repair it.

Does anyone know the "street price" of the 40Gb Q-Bit units being used for the TI/Disney tests?

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 05-12-2000 06:17 AM

Mr. Wilson:

I personally enjoyed "Far and Away". Ron Howard's decision to shoot it in 65mm was a good one. Look at the "land rush" scenes in a 70mm print, and the detail and sharpness are awesome. The picture quality and sound in that film were not the issue with critics.

It's frustrating to have a huge screen equipped for 70mm, and not be able to get prints.

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John Wilson
Film God

Posts: 5438
From: Sydney, Australia.
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 05-12-2000 06:39 AM

Mr Pytlak:

The picture and sound quality was not the issue with me either. This unfortunately was a boring, poorly scripted gift wrapped in gold paper.

It's just sad that a half decent movie may have seen a resurgence in the format...but as we have seen, this wasn't to be 'cos this wasn't a half decent movie.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-12-2000 06:49 AM

I don't know what the Q-bit goes for, but I do know this: at work, we just purchased a new Network Appliance server, which is basically a big RAID array with a network interface; it does nothing but NFS (Unix file service) and CIFS (Windows file service). For 200-gig capacity (expandable, of course), the whole deal was about $100k, including tape drive, UPS, rack, etc. Since a theatre probably wouldn't need the tape drive or UPS, assume about half that price for the unit itself.

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 05-12-2000 09:31 AM

Scott:

I would think that a UPS would be vital to a server used for storing movies. Can you imagine 3000 angry patrons in a 20-plex on a dark and stormy Saturday night when the incoming power gets flaky and ALL the screens go down until the server and digital projectors are brought up again? Getting cheap when it comes to buying a UPS and redundancy would be foolish.

I can imagine the conversation:
Where's that network manager when you REALLY need him? We didn't hire any? You mean that skilled IT people don't work for minimum wage? Call Scott Norwood!

With the level of compression being used today, it looks like a large multiplex could be using something close to a terabyte of compressed image and sound data, plus back-up. I recall that Gordon McLeod said it took something like 8-10 hours to load the data for one movie from DVD's, so that's not your "back-up" with a riotous crowd and dark screens.

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Kyle Smith
Film Handler

Posts: 21
From: Branford, CT, USA
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 05-14-2000 11:52 AM

I have to agree with Ian, hopefully you're not using consumer VHS decks for your playback. You would be much better served with the DVD units, but that's a no brainer to figure out. Then of course it would be ideal to go component. Also, I have compared component Beta to S-Video out on the same monitor. S-Video, on direct output, is hardly different to the untrained eye. And regarding digital cinema, a renowned insider informed me that the industry has recently undergone it's largest expansion across the country. The "word" is that these chains are not going to shell out the cash to replace their vast array of film projection systems for the DLP systems anytime in the near future. I do, however, thinks it's inevitable (unfortunately) someday. At least trailer changes would be presumably faster. Ahhh, big deal.

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