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This topic comprises 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Author
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Topic: Sony about to release new cinema projector
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 05-01-2007 12:05 AM
[rant] [Redifer 2-paragraph filter].
Why are we still talking about what a film looks like after only one weekend, like that's an issue the average patron cares about?
It's been long established, that an investment of $700 or so into a film cleaner and supplies, and proper handling will keep a print in excellent condition for far longer than the average theatre would care to have it. It amazes me that so many exhibitors don't see this as a no-brainer. Filmguard and Kelmar should be as common in the booth as a xenon light bulb. But then, these are the same companies that held off on red readers, nearly until the prints showed up at their doors.
If the exhibitor saw a substantial increase in his business for the sake of film cleaners and trained operators in every booth, I doubt they'd be running their theatres like they do today.
If this was only an argument over a couple-thousand bucks a screen, I could see making an argument that the exhibitors are just being cheap. However, this whole model is just nuts. There's no other part of this business where the retailer (us) would be asked to make such a huge investment in relatively short-lived technology, knowing up front that the returns probably aren't there. We're still seeing numbers like $100,000++ for basic digital, then four-figured numbers for maintenance contracts. Adding 3D? With no guarantee of content, figure another $50k for the gear and $24k per year for permission from the manufacturer to use it... per screen! Who's making that kind of money?????
Why fingers continue to be pointed at the exhibitor as being the roadblock here doesn't make a lot of sense.
Back in the '70s, I was a union operator in our state's capital. We had 3 large downtown houses, all single-screeners. Two of them had mag sound. We had spotless, well-maintained booths, with sound systems that were under contract to RCA. Our operational standards were comparable to those I worked under in Seattle. If there was anything wrong with a customer's experience in those theatres, it sure wasn't because of the presentation.
Then, Tom Moyer expanded into our state from Oregon. He brought with him a "frugal", cookie-cutter approach to theatre construction, including early-version PRO-35 machines that shook a picture to death right out of the box. He canned the unions, automated everything and cut maintenance to near-zero. The union guys freaked, and did their best to educate people that union equaled good show, and non-union equaled dirt, framing error, upside-down pictures, bad sound, missed changeovers, scratches, burn marks and missing reels (sort of like Grindhouse). Did it matter? Nope. Moyer had newer theatres, better locations, better parking, AND all the titles on the break. The people went where the shows were, and no amount of presentation excellence seemed to matter. You can apply this same argument to digital sound. There are plenty of screens out there that are still running SR, and most people aren't walking out of their auditoriums in disgust.
So it's understandable, at least to me, why this digital stuff isn't in everyone's booth already. Right or wrong... If the studios aren't delivering the equipment with our weekly shipment of posters, the mainstream exhibitor has one reason to hold off on this that overrides all others... money.
If this really is the wave of our future, then get it in at a price that doesn't equal total lunacy, prove a reliability factor that's at least an arm's reach from what we get now, come up with a rational upgrade path, then let's go!
Oh, yah™. A consistent stream of attractive content would also be nice.
..... no?
[/rant] [/Redifer]
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 05-01-2007 03:59 AM
Jack, that's not a rant, that's just common sense. What is sooo incredible is that the big chain exhibitor owners who are by nature a stingy lot, seem to have been drugged or hypnotized or maybe the studios invited them to a big party in Hollywood and now have pictures of them all bedded down with farm animals or something because they seem to be in a trance and are being led like zombies, wallets opened while the studios and the hardware manufactures help themselves to all their money, with nary a peep out of them, other than to occasionally stutter some badly memorized jibberish about how they are on the cutting edge of the new age of jitterless, dirt and scratch-less presentation. And the rest of us stand watching like we are all in an Alice in Wonderland movie.
Oh, BTW, looks like Sony isn't about to lay down.....here comes THEIR "roll-out."
quote:
VIDEO: Sony unveils Quad HD projector with 4096 x 2160 resolution
04/30/2007 | 2:16:56 PM PST
Sony has unveiled a digital cinema projector that can display an image with four times the resolution of a high-definition picture across a 65-foot screen.
The giant projector stands roughly five feet high, just under five feet deep, and over two feet wide. It's also enormously heavy, weighing in at over 660 pounds.
At its heart sits a 4,200 watt bulb, light from which is bounced off mirrors and through a prism to three flat-panel displays based on Sony's SXRD technology before being magnified through a lens as wide as a man's hand.
The result look like this, although you can only appreciate the higher quality and rich colors by seeing it for yourself because our camera is a lower resolution.
Only Sony's image is higher quality. At 4,096 pixels by 2,160 pixels resolution it's double HDTV both horizontally and vertically so each frame has about 8 million pixels versus about 2 million on HDTV.
You won't be using this in your living room but, if Sony gets its way, you might be seeing images from it at a local movie theater soon.
A 4K system was used earlier this month at the world premiere of Spiderman 3 in Tokyo and Sony hopes to spread the sytem so that one third of Japan's 3,000 cinema screens are using it by 2010. It's also promoting it overseas and to industries outside of the movie sector.
In March Muvico Entertainment said it plans to install Sony 4K projectors in all its theaters in the U.S. The company's new 18-screen complex in Rosemont, near Chicago, that will open in August will be first to get the system. It will then be rolled out at the chain's theaters across the U.S.
"In this market the US is the biggest, there is no question. Not only for the cinema industry but also others including government, secuirty and designing. We're showing this 4K to people from these industries and we have started to introduce this 4K to a couple of these industries already."
Sony hopes cinemas will invest the 15 million yen, or roughly US $126,500, per screen that it costs for the CineAlta 4K system to return an advantage over increasingly high quality home theater systems. With the number of HDTV homes rising rapidly one of the main reasons for visiting the movies -- a better picture -- is disappearing."
My question -- who's going to loose their jobs and get their heads chopped off over at Regal for moving ahead, investing in techology that has HALF the crowing power of the Sony unit? Can you imagine the ads: "Yes, Regal had the "beta" video version of digital cinema first.....we have the perfected, next generation, state-of-the-art Digital Cinema. It's like the difference between VHS and High Definition DVDs....where would YOU want to watch a movie?!"
Regal, Cinemark, Landmark, et al....these guys spent $120,000+ PER SCREEN so they could hype it up about their digital picture being better than film (forgetting to mention, but it's not even as good as home HDTV). And now, what, only two years later, they are left in the dust. For about the same price that Regal plunked down for their 2K projectors, any one of their competitors who decides to invest in the Sony 4K system, can shout from the rooftops that THEY have the cutting edge technology, not like those loosers at other theatres who jumped into digital before it was perfected, with those has-been, yesterday's, HALF-resolution, 2K projectors. I mean, it'll be a publicity department's wet dream.
Sure in 1927 sound was an expensive upgrade, but the difference was, that the patron wanted sound, no...more like DEMANDED it. If you couldn't show a talkie, you were dead. Sound was MONUMENTALLY HUGE. Color was HUGE. CinemaScope was nearly as huge. It drew the audiences in magnets. It was a competitive edge that meant more asses in more seats and it MADE money for the exhibitor. The investment might have been tough on cash-flow for some chains, but that it was a solid, money-making proposition was a no-brainer.
No one has yet adaquately explained how DeeCinema will do that --hence our astonishment that exhibition can't throw their money at it fast enough.
The BEST thing you can say about the public's reception to DC is that at best they are curious about it but certainly not WOWed by it and after their curiousity is satisfied, to them, a digital show will look pretty much like every other show that they've seen in every other multiplex. Stadium seating makes more sense from the perspective of the general public's perception -- Stadium seating has a high WOW factor. People KNOW that stadium seating is a real, tangible plus. You don't have pay off "reporters" to write gushing hype about how good stadium seating is over standard seating; it's self-evident, just like sound and color and CinemaScope. Digital? To the public, it looks like what movies always looked like. YAWN.
In fact, I actually heard rumblings by some of the stage crew who sought out a digital screen and it really surprised me; not only weren't they excited by what they saw, but just the opposit....they actually came away saying they were a little pissed. After reading all the ridiculously hyped write-ups about digital projection, they felt they had been royally coned....that it is all just so much BS.
If people start responding that way, it can easily come back to bite exhibition in the ass. People don't like to feel that they are being taken for a BS ride. They feel like they are getting ripped off by concession prices, now add to that the idea that this big digital cinema thing is a hoax. Not exactly the best PR.
Whatever you can say about the digital changeover, pro or con, there is no doubt it certainly hasn't been thought out well enough to make it go smoothly, or harmoniously or of benefit to exhibition.
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Mike Perju
Film Handler
Posts: 90
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Nov 2002
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posted 05-01-2007 05:21 PM
Guys,
All Mark is saying is that commercial film projection is nearing it's end...
No matter how much I like film handling, it's a reality we all face (just ask any photographer). I will have trouble letting go, but it dosen't mean it is over... after all, I still enjoy taking 4x5 photos, and even 8x10 when I have the cash.
Yes, digital will cure those scratches. I'm not sure how it will cure piracy though.
However, Mark does have to admit that when film is done right, it still does and will blow digital out of the water (for the forseeable future, quality wise).
So let's encourage film done right.
And remember, once you fix one problem (picture damage), you might discover half a dozen more.
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![[sex]](graemlins/sex.gif)
ing from the film companies. Not to mention kissing most of my profits goodbye by making a lease payment for the rest of my life. My 20 year old booth equipment which I have owned for at least 10 years now looks like the better deal.
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