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Author Topic: Tri-Circle Autoscope Drive-In Theater Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 07-16-2005 05:06 AM                        Nahhh... That thing had to be a monster to maintain... assuming they even tried. Just the process of cleaning all those mirrors risked screwing up the alignment... which you wouldn't know about until you'd started & maybe had to move an unhappy patron. And... I think we have bigger plasma screens now than what those things were. As far as Andrew's comment about maintaining proper ratio... hahahaha!!! It was interesting... but just a novelty. Put it in the bucket with Fantasound.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 07-16-2005 05:22 AM                     quote: Jack Ondracek "....Put it in the bucket with Fantasound...." Nah..Disney's "Fantasound" was the beginning of what we have now -stereo sound in our theatres. We can't plop that in the bucket. Granted, it was used only once, in a handful of roadshow presentations, and a huge undertaking in setting all of it up for 4 channel stereo sound that required two specially built, RCA optical sound dubber machines that played the specially printed 4-channel optical tracks - full film width on nitrate b/w 35mm stock - to run in sync with the projectors projecting the image, for the stereo playback. If you know the history behind the how "Fantasound" began and was used, you'll understand and appreciate all of the work and effort that Walt and Stokowski (who himself was an audio specialist who loved to "tinker" with better sound. He did experimental stereo recordings in the early 30's for Bell Systems) put into that system...and all of this was before the 2nd World War. Just too bad that it had to take almost 50yrs, when the restoration of "Fantasia" finalized in 1990 with the re-release of the film, presented in Dolby stereo and the full-frame 1.37/1 presentation that some of the theatres had to set their screens up at, to appreciate what Walt pioneered to what we have today. Walt knew how to entertain the public. -Monte  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 07-16-2005 12:54 PM                        A local theatre did go to the trouble to "restore" their system for that re-release of Fantasia. They never did quite get the hum out of the system (the owner wasn't too happy with it, either). Added to that: a nearby office building had their elevator retrofitted with a new SCR-(triac?)-based power supply, which made every sound system on the same power transformer buzz whenever someone used it. 3 $.10 capacitors fixed the problem.  |  IP: Logged

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