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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Disney, Dolby and Digital Cinema -> OT Bring back 70mm; film stock; hdtv; other stuff
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-01-2005 05:29 PM
quote: Ted Costas
The one advantage to Digital Cinema, and of course it does not affect you guys, is that there is no quality degredation such as wear and tear, over time, with a "digital print." The first show is as clean as the last.
That may be true. But am I going to care about that when I'll be able to watch the same movie with the same number of digital pixels at home on a 1080P HDTV monitor? Why do I need to pay the price premium at the box office once I have something digitally equivalent at home?
Of course, most people here know my opinion: that Hollywood and D-Cinema tech companies really need to push hard for 4K as a minimum standard for mass install into the commercial movie theater marketplace. The product has to be demonstrably superior to anything anyone can view at home.
I think commercial movie theaters are already taking it on the chin when it comes to 5.1 surround sound on home setups. You don't have to spend a ton of money to have a good sounding discrete surround setup in your home. And now digital cable, digital satellite, HDTV broadcast, computer systems, X-Box and more are delivering 5.1 content. By comparison, a lot of theaters have let presentation quality slip in the sound department. Most theaters I visit anymore have really weak sound. Managers and projectionists who do care about this have to fight tooth and nail with their home offices just for basic maintenance, never mind asking for upgrades! It isn't like it was back in the early 1990s when 5.1 surround was one way for a theater to mark itself as better than the rest.
Many people have the perception their home system sounds better than that of most any commercial theaters they can visit. I think if Hollywood chooses to mass install a "good enough to get by" standard of 2K for commercial theaters they're going to invite upon themselves the same problem in the image department. Right now 1080p HDTV monitors are expensive. But by the end of this decade, you probably won't be able to buy a widescreen TV that has anything less than 1980 X 1080 pixels. Commercial cinema has to be able to separate itself from that with significantly sharper image quality. Keep shooting movies on film and then do the digital work in 4K.
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Bruce Hansen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 847
From: Stone Mountain, GA, USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-01-2005 06:46 PM
With all the hype about digital cinema, I wonder if most people believe that all theaters are now using digital projectors? If this is the case, I wonder if, in the backs of their minds, they think "why should I pay $8 to $10 to watch TV at the theater, when I can watch TV at home for free"? This would be an interesting question to ask the general public.
With attendance at theaters falling, some say due to home TVs and sound systems getting better, the last thing theaters need to be dong is installing TVs, that are not even as good as what you can get in your home, right now, today.
A few months ago I read a couple of posts here, written by people who saw a feature projected by a DLP, and than returned to that same theater some time later, to find that the DLP picture had degraded. It sounded to me like dust and dirt had found their way onto the internal optics of the DLP projector, and proper maintance was not being done. To say that digital projection will never degrade, is totally wrong. The problem here is that it won't be just the "older" features that have degraded, but ANYTHING that is shown with the degraded projector will look bad. There is a LOT more that can go wrong with a digital projector that will degrade the picture, than a 35MM projector. If the theaters don't want to spend the money to maintain their 35MM projectors, don't expect things to change with digital, which by nature, will be more expensive to maintain than 35MM projectors.
When TV came along, some years ago, the theaters saw attendance drop. They made changes to bring people in to the theaters. Today, the theaters are making changes that make them THE SAME as TV.
When someone tells me that something is the answer to all the problems in the world, I know that not only will "it" not solve any problems, "it" will cause MORE problems.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-02-2005 09:23 PM
quote:
Quote: Martin Brooks
History shows us that theatre owners have ALWAYS resisted technical changes.
quote: Mike Blakesley
That's because, more often than not, the "changes" are some flash in the pan that costs a lot of money but is really just a novelty or a dumb idea
Yes, but all the ones I listed were important and useful, yet largely ignored anyway. And I can tell you that at NYC theaters that have featured both digital and 35mm for the same film, at the same time, the digital presentations have far outgrossed the 35mm presentations. That might be based on naiveté and incorrect assumptions on the part of the customers, but they are demonstrating that as a preference. Is that putting more customers in the seats? No way to tell. There was no way to tell with 70mm either, but 70mm houses far outgrossed non-70mm houses.
It's not at quality first-run houses that digital will make such a difference, but at the type of theaters that today get used prints and/or have incompetent staff in the booth. I'm not saying that some small-town independently owned theater should rush out and spend $200K on a projector - obviously that doesn't make business sense, but everyone needs to look at this without emotional blinders.
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