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Author Topic: DTS discs not arriving with Prints Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 09-22-2007 01:27 PM                     What's wrong in not letting your prints run in good ol' Dolby SR 05 optical for a change? Let that section of your processor do some work for a while since it sits idly away doing nothing when in you do digital formats (unless, you strongly admit that your system is in dire need of a tuneup and you know that your optics haven't been cleaned and aligned for a while... ), for when SR is tuned to specs, SR can sound close to digital can since you're dealing with a pure analog soundform - not a sampled soundform.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-22-2007 01:49 PM                     A good idea for those that have decent SR capability. Many of my customers do not. Mark  |  IP: Logged Andy Frodsham Expert Film Handler Posts: 238 From: Stoke on Trent, Staffs, UK Registered: Nov 2006 posted 09-22-2007 01:54 PM                     We run SR mode ninety nine per cent of the time and does sound good. DTS makes a nice change and sounds better!  |  IP: Logged Richard May Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1057 From: Floral Park, NY USA Registered: Aug 2004 posted 09-22-2007 03:53 PM                     It's just very surprising that DTS would let this happen. With SDDS basically out of the picture, you would think that DTS would be on top of this more. It's a shame since DTS sounds really good.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-22-2007 06:14 PM                        Yes, it's the ONE bad point about the DTS system and yet they do nothing to address it. But they can yell as loud as they want, it's really the film companies' problem to handle. DTS doesn't distribute the disks.  |  IP: Logged Kenneth Wuepper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1026 From: Saginaw, MI, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 09-22-2007 10:01 PM                     At our neighborhood inde single screen, we have received many films recently with an empty plastic lab film container instead of a broken reel as a spacer in the case. I have always placed a tape on the plastic box "SOUND REEL" and enclosed a block of foam and the DTS case with the disc inside. That way it is a "reel" for inventory purposes and protects from damaging discs in the can. This is also a reminder to put the disc back into the carrier and the "Sound Reel" box. KEN  |  IP: Logged Andy Frodsham Expert Film Handler Posts: 238 From: Stoke on Trent, Staffs, UK Registered: Nov 2006 posted 09-23-2007 04:18 AM                     That's a great idea Kenneth. In the UK we receive our prints in plastic 'cans'. An extra can (possibly customised to accommodate the CD ROM case) would certainly help distributors (and theatres) to think that the DTS sound is an essential part of the package. As for DTS not being responsible for the problems of distribution. I think they need to get involved. After-all, at the end of the day, their product is being compromised. If I was a manufacturer of any product and the distribution and logistics chain broke down, I would feel very worried!  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-23-2007 01:43 PM                     I personaly liked the old DTS yellow diskholder case that was the size of a film reel in diameter  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 09-23-2007 01:56 PM                        I can see the studios not caring too much about second run venues, but as Phil said, he played HAIRSPRAY on the OPENING! How about the theatre call the studio and tell them they won't play it in analog sound. I mean, it's really the studio's responsibility to supply a playable, competitive print. Sure they may say, but you can play the analog track to which the theatre says, "No, that puts me at a competitive disadvantage over my competition who are playing it in digital. If you are going to do that, give me 10% off the ticket percentage to even out the playing field." Yah, I know....I'm delusional.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 09-24-2007 12:14 AM                        To be competitive, I went to the competition and copied their DTS discs when I played Hairspray. If I had of known there was supposedly only 6 copies in Ontario I would have hawked them on eBay as "super RARE, must have".  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 09-24-2007 09:55 AM                        On a "quad" print there are 4 soundtracks: 1. sound on film (analog) 2. sound on film (digital--Dolby) 3. sound on film.....for a while (sdds) 4. sound not on film (dts) Louis  |  IP: Logged Andy Frodsham Expert Film Handler Posts: 238 From: Stoke on Trent, Staffs, UK Registered: Nov 2006 posted 10-07-2007 12:17 PM                     So, what are we going to do guys? Seems like this topic is discussed so often yet nothing happens. Are we going to petition DTS or the distributors or both? I think we need to take some decisive action (or just ditch all our DTS gear and opt for Dolby)!  |  IP: Logged Brian Guckian Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 594 From: Dublin, Ireland Registered: Apr 2003 posted 10-07-2007 02:38 PM                     I think what you said here Andy is a key point; quote: An extra can (possibly customised to accommodate the CD ROM case) would certainly help distributors (and theatres) to think that the DTS sound is an essential part of the package (My italics) If the film is mixed* in DTS...then it should be released in DTS, period. No excuses, no stories, no get-out clauses! Surely Distributors who don't supply discs must be breaking some sort of contractural obligations? Theoretically, it must be possible to also omit Dolby Digital and SDDS tracks on prints (if the film has also been mixed in these formats), but this is never allowed to happen...thus, are the legal agreements for DTS different to those for DD and SDDS? * "Mixed" being used here to mean the release formats decided upon during the mixing stage  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 10-07-2007 03:43 PM                        Sorry if this stating what Basil Fawlty called the bleedin' obvious, but I'm going to state it anyway. The only reason why the DTS system was based on data storage using CDs, is because when it was launched in 1992 there was simply no other viable way of shipping that much digital data from distributor to cinema. Cinemas were willing to faff about with CDs because the higher bitrate of the audio data and the more resilient timecode reading gave it a significant advantage over Dolby and Sony. How big is the longest DTS soundtrack you'll ever really need to transport from A to B? Around a gigabyte, I'd guess. The Internet can now shift that volume of data in a few minutes, even to a domestic household. From this thread it's becoming obvious that the unreliability of CD deliveries is a major problem. Unless they want to continue losing market share, surely it's time for DTS to abandon the offline delivery model and replace it with two alternatives: 1 - a secure server from which approved venues with a username and a password can download ISO CD images to burn for use in existing players, and 2 - equip new players with a hard drive and a direct Internet connection, so they can download the audio data directly and play it back from a local hard drive (or even RAM). Whereas we've probably reached the limit of the amount of audio information we can put on a film print itself (both in terms of the optical data itself and the extent of lossy compression), the timecode synchronised to an external processor model still has life left in it, IF the problem of delivering the data to the processor reliably can be solved.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 10-07-2007 05:14 PM                     That was pretty much the idea behind the LC Concepts system, which used Magneto-optical recordable discs onto which a cinema could download the soundtrack; normal hard disks weren't big enough then. At the time I couldn't see the point in such a system until the picture could be delivered in the same way; something which as then nowhere near being practical. It hadn't occurred to me, and I suspect that it hadn't to DTS either that people wouldn't return the CDs with the print. The current DTS players do have a hard disk, from which they play the track, rather than playing it direct from the CDs. I don't know if they have an Ethernet connection which could be used for downloading tracks. If they do it shouldn't be too difficult to provide a simple software upgrade to enable it to be used for a remote console connection from a pc to do the download, or download to the pc, and then do a FTP transfer onto the DTS player.  |  IP: Logged

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