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I recall saying that the real threat to movie theatres is NOT Digital Cinema. It is Digital Cinema technology applied to the home theatre environment. We're already seeing DLP technology being used in some high end home theatre systems, and TIVO is a home version of a movie server. High Definition DVDs are on the way, and satellite HDTV is a reality.

IMHO, the "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow" for many "Digital Cinema" (electronics and communications) companies does not lie in a few thousand theatres, but in millions of homes.

If theatres treat Digital Cinema as a panacea for their current woes and don't improve the basics of presentation and showmanship NOW, the parade will pass them by, and home theatre "couch potatoes" will rule. Whether it's "Film Done Right" or "Digital Done Right", theatres MUST provide something much better than people can get in their homes.

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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 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

While home theatre can currently give me only 720x480 resolution, it looks better than a lot of the dim or out-of-focus or misframed or cropped presentations I frequently see here locally.

Professional quality must come back to theatres or their days will be numbered.

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Cell phones have the technology to be unobtrusive so people can be available to help with emergencies 24/7 without annoying others. Don't blame the phones, blame the inconsiderate users.

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I'll bet that many users of cell phones dont' even bother to read their manuals to learn about their politeness features. Most people seem content with the default annoying loud primitive tone-based tune rings. Most people probably want everyone around them to know they have a cell phone (the coolness or importance factor that went out two or three years ago), and they're perfectly content to ruin movie experiences, or have their phones ring in church. Manners and politeness are becoming a things of the past, and it hurts movie theatres and similar gatherings of people.

If jammers are illegal in theatres, what about detectors at the doors that go off if a cell phone is detected? That would avoid the legal problem of restricting cell phone signals in the building, but would simply solve the problems by not allowing the things in the building to start with. If the detectors gave off a loud beep that got the attention of everyone else in the lobby so that all other people would look at them when it happened, I'll bet people would stop bringing them in. (embarrassment factor)

Question: How often do cell phones send a signal to "handshake" with the closest cell array to keep track of location? If the signal is frequent enough, designing a local "cell phone emission" detector should be practical, and probably very marketable to theatres, churches and hospitals (where cell phones can interfer with medical equipment).

A simple metal detector would yield too many "hits" to be used in a theatre (although some of the other threads on theatre violence show finding guns and knives is a priority for some theatres too).

You get what you pay for, folks!

Maybe this would be a good discussion topic: What IS a good adult ticket price for a movie in a theatre? Here in Montana, the larger towns tend to charge around $6.50 to $6.75 (most of the bigger towns have Carmike screens). The cheapest one I know of is $4.75, but they are in a very small town playing several months after the break.

Jeff Joseph writes on 35mmfilms.com:
"Technicolor will only confirm 6 [dye transfer] prints at this point ... 3 are in New York ... 3 are in Los Angeles"

Christopher Seo writes:
"The regular run print I made up was on 2383. The stunning EKs were on 2393, but the regular prints don't seem too shabby either."

My, my. It must be nice to be able to see a top quality print. Sure wish I could.

If the studio/distributor can't be bothered to send a dye transfer or 2393 Vision print to Chicago, and put it in a competently run theatre, then I won't be bothered to lay out my money to see the film.

I was lucky enough to get to see the 70mm print of "2001: a space odessy" at the Bradford Film Festival, the presentation was flawless and I was reminded what a powerful experince "film done right" can be.

My point is, only very rarely does anything comes out of Hollywood these days that's original and new.

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All my best
Thomas
..in70mm - The 70mm Newsletter
www.in70mm.com www.dp70.com www.70mm.dk www.hauerslev.com http://hjem.get2net.dk/in70mm

I've no interest in cannibalism, get bored with the horror movies of today, and find that films are more and more being made exclusively for the teenage set.

There is no amount of "film done right" on the exhibitor end that will stop this trend or stop adults from looking to other sources of entertainment.

I've watched far more films this years off TCM than I've watched in the theatres in the past three years. For example, I've got my tivo set to record all 4.5 hours of "The Sorrow and the Pity" (you might remember it as the film referred to in the Woody Allen film "Annie Hall") and enjoyed a Hitchcock retrospective last month.

I am being driven from theatres, not because of bad presentation, but because of bad product. Price isn't a factor, travel time isn't a factor, presentation isn't a major factor. My interest has turned to Facets rentals and I'm beginning to check out Netflix as an alternate source of stuff I want to see. I also am simultaniously reading four books to get the depth fix that I used to get out of film. I miss the group experience, but I may end up looking for like-minded people to invite over for an evening of real entertainment.

When I see a big budget film like Pearl Harbor totally twisting the history of a conflict like the cheesy romantic war films of the 1930s, and mis-use CGI to show out-of-scale fighter planes playing Star Wars slot tag, I don't trust the mainstream films today any more than I trusted the over-hyped drive-in fare of the 1970s.

I got interested in this thought, so I tallied all the movies I've seen in theatres that I've seen since January 1, 2000, eliminating duplicates and movies not released on DVD as of May 31, 2001. I've seen 47 different movies (some more than once) in first-run theatres in Huntsville and Decatur during this time period that have been released on DVD. Of those 47, I have bought 29 of them on DVD. This means that of the 47 movies seen since the beginning of 2000, 62 percent of them have been considered "good" enough for me to buy the DVD. I'm surprised that the number is that high, and expected the percentage to be lower.

Based on this, I'd say that bad presentation would drive a customer like me away rather than poor movie quality. There always seems to be somethng that is fun to watch.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site