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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Doomsday is just around the corner and teaser titles are no longer allowed: free DLP!
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-17-2004 11:37 PM
quote: Mattias Ohlson
What is the cost of a state of the art 35mm projector bought new with all the extras for smooth operation.
You can put together a 35mm projection setup (not counting the sound gear) for $20,000 to $30,000 depending on the models of equipment you buy.
A good 35mm projector with manned turret, outfitted with some good Schneider lenses will cost at least $10,000. Add to that the cost of the console, power supply, automation, and other gear to make the projector complete. This is not an exact cost quote. I'm sure there's at least a few participants in this forum who can deliver exact figures for specific equipment packages and do so under the broad estimate I provided.
I didn't include sound gear in the total estimate since you still have to buy much of the same audio stuff in any digital projection setup (amplifiers, crossover, etc.).
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 12-18-2004 01:12 AM
And let's not overlook the fact Mr. Exhibitor has already invested heavily in his existing 35mm equipment. Assuming a scenario where the move to video projection reaches a critical mass and the move to it goes exponential with these things just FLYING of the shelves, that would pretty much do it for 35mm projectors. They would be about as worthless as carbon arc lamphouses after xenon took off.
Who's gonna buy a 35mm projector that no one can use? especially when all the theatres in a short time-frame will be looking to unload them? You wouldn't even be able to sell them on ebay! So not only will the theatre owner be forced to reinvest in new technology, but gee, he can't even sell his old stuff that he owns outright.
He didn't so much mind loosing his investment in carbon arc technology because xenon allowed him to run dozens of screens with one salaried projectionist (soon to be replaced with a high school student who he could pay minimum wage) instead of dozens of salaried projectionists. He was giddy with the potential of investing in xenon technology because of the operational cost advantages.
Has anyone ever met any exhibitors that you could call "giddy" over having to invest in video technology? Not when saavy theatre owners know that with the per/hour rate that they are going to have to pay a video technician down the road to service and maintain a not-quite-so-spanking-new video projector, he could have hired a couple of dozens of projectionists and still come out ahead. Video projection is expensive, but salaried people are even more expensive.
Oh, and btw, it is not at all inevitable that video projection technology will come down drastically in price; that happens in the consumer market because of volume; sales of video projectors, even if every theatre in the US retrofited with one for each screen, that still might not be enough to bring down costs. How long since the first DLP was put into commecial use? How many are in use now? And THAT was with Technicolor giving 1000 away free! They couldn't even give those units away. Nothing "mass" about the DLP installion numbers. So this idea that the price of everything must come down is just wishful thinking. Has the price for quality lenses come down? There ya go.
And then there is question I have been asking and getting no answer at all -- just HOW do the nano-mirror modules die? Does the entire module one day just stop? Not likely. Do they get dimmer as time goes on uniformly or maybe not? Possibly, but my gut tells me that those little mirrors sooner or later, one by one, will stop flipping to and fro. I envision a screen with little specks of always on or always off color, and either all white or all black dots that will simply stay there throughout the movie. Either one of these scenarios, or possibly even a combination of both, to me would be WORSE than any scratches a film might have. After all, a scratch or speck of dirt lasts all of 1/24th of a second....yah, it's there, but then it's gone. If pixels remain fixed, that would be MUCH more distracting than film dirt or scratches.
And again, the operational costs present themselves as they enevitably will with all technology; video is no exception. Knowing many exhibitors penchant for letting things go until patrons come storming out of the theatre demanding their money back (for example like when they wait to change xenon bulbs until daylight scenes look like night and night scenes have patrons pulling out night vision goggles), I don't see them changing just because the projector is video rather than film.
How expensive will it be to replace a nano-mirror module? How easy (or not) to install and align it (by that $200/hr TI nano-mirror specialist)? How many "dead" pixels do you think management will tolerate before they spring for a new unit and a technician to come on buy? Betcha those modules are not cheap either. And how many TI-trained techinicans will there be all around the country that you can get one of them like "yesterday?" Will they all live in Texas or the west cost? Will folks on the east coast have to fly these guys out and pay them for travel time?
How come you never hear the DLP video guys talk about how these things age? Take a guess. I've seen enough pixelated displays here in NYC on Times Square, and I can tell ya, they're not a pretty site when they get old.
[ 12-18-2004, 02:16 AM: Message edited by: Frank Angel ]
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-18-2004 01:35 PM
quote: Mattias Ohlson
What does 35mm equipment cost new not used.
Mattias, I gave you NEW costs, not used. Here's one specific price quote from American Cinema Equipment in Portland, OR: Kinoton PK60D Projector Kinoton PK60D Projector w/ man Turret D/A Reverse Scan: $8,995.00. I found a number of other Century and Simplex models that cost even less.
If you want to shop for used 35mm equipment, you can put together a 35mm projection system for well under $20,000 --maybe even under $10,000.
quote: Mattias Ohlson
I am sure the price of dlp systems can come down dramatically. The servers will likely be advanced fault tolerant linux boxes running shows as a "professional" grade htpc. Servers could be really cheap.
Don't hold your breath. The prices are going to remain quite high for the forseeable future. All digital projection setups are in essence an enterprise level computing setup. You're talking about highly proprietary and very expensive hardware.
Even if the data storage and playback systems could be greatly simplified, improved and reduced in cost, you still have the piracy thing to consider. If the hardware is cheap enough then just about any computer nut could afford to have something similar. Hollywood is not going to sit back and allow something as simple as a Linux-driven PC operate the show. Even if you could have something as simple as a plain vanilla PC playing a movie, the system still has to be hooked up to a projection lamp house, power supply, console, etc. not too far different from a film projector in design. In the end, you're still not beating 35mm film projection on hardware cost.
quote: Mattias Ohlson
Selling million of dlp products to the homes will let them take a small hit on the cinema side such as replacing dmdīs that break down.
This is a fundamental area where I believe digital projection is a very very bad idea. Commercial movie theaters and home theater equipment should NEVER feature the same hardware/components. It poses a marketing nightmare to theaters. If a home user has the exact same picture quality as the commercial movie theater, then why should the consumer spend upwards of $10 per ticket to go to a commercial movie theater? Commercial movie theaters must have exclusivity on being able to show something a home viewer cannot recreate in his living room. The theater must have not only a bigger picture, but a sharper and much higher resolution picture as well.
quote: Mattias Ohlson
Why canīt dlp/digital and film coexist? You could have four film screens and one digital screen. The digital screen would allow you some subtitle/audio flexibility as well as alternative content.
What you pose does not make any sense from a dollars/cost standpoint. Digital projection does not do any better job at all than 35mm film projection, but the hardware costs several times as much. Profit margins are very slim for movie theaters these days. The four "digital" screens you mention would cost upwards of $1 million to install. How in the world is the theater going to recoup that giant investment? How are they going to do that when the same D-Cinema fans wind up gloating about how their HDTV at home shows a picture of better quality? If a neighborhood multiplex is going to spend $1 million on something, they would be better off installing an IMAX system.
quote: Mattias Ohlson
It sound like the people running theaters donīt spend a dime if they donīt have to. That is why film is made to look sub standard sometimes. That is why dlp gets any attention.
No, DLP and D-Cinema in general gets its attention because there's still enough people out there all too quick to be hoodwinked over that "DIGITAL" buzzword. There's still a lot of analog things that remain better.
When you talk about people not wanting to spend a dime -point that accusation over to the film distributors themselves. They're the ones promoting it. And I think it is a scam. They want the exhibitors to foot the bill for all those digital projection systems while they're the only ones looking to gain any cost savings from it. The only purpose for "D-Cinema" at this point it to eliminate the costs of 35mm film prints. Nothing more. The way I see it, if the distributors want all digital projection in movie theaters, then they need to pay for it.
quote: Mattias Ohlson
I see great promise in scanning the camera negative at 8k and storing at 4k. Then the whole process is done at 4k. Eventually the release print is printed at 4k and then projected.
That won't be happening for quite some time. Most DLP systems are still of the puny 1024 X 768 pixel variety. Most CGI stuff and digital intermediate work is still completed at only 2K, just a minor step above 1080 HD resolution.
With many movie productions costing well over $100 million (and doubling the cost to promote), the most sensible thing to do is shoot the movie on better quality film formats (VistaVision and 5/65mm). A project that turns into an enduring classic can be scanned at higher and higher resolutions as technology improves over the decades.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-18-2004 06:25 PM
Ah, 1 digital screen. I thought you said four, my mistake. Still, an exhibitor must be able to get a healthy return on investment. With current digital projection systems not fundamentally any better than 1080 HDTV, there just doesn't seem to be anything special about it posed for customers. Like you said, one could make remarks about higher levels of video compression on home formats, but most customers wouldn't care about that. They're only going to count pixel layouts and think their home setup is equal.
The 1024 X 768 was also a typo. But 1280 X 1024 is not much better, and well below the 1080 HD and 2K CGI standards. Even the new 2K DLP chips are not really good enough to give commercial theaters any kind of competitive edge.
A 4K digital projection system might be nice. Unfortunatly, the giant cost of product development for something like a 4K DLP chip would force electronics companies to sell the same components into the consumer electronics and computing industries, thus removing any kind of "exclusivity" on the technology for commercial movie theaters.
Digital intermediate processes will have more room to improve, thanks to big advances in computer hardware and other related technology. We've seen graphics horsepower multiply at least 8 fold in the last four years. Current moves by Intel and AMD in "dual core" main processors will finally make symmetric multiprocessing computing a very mainstream thing and quicken the pace of advancement.
But what happens in regard to those advancements? How are they used? Most of us want to see large format film origination and higher standard for CGI and digital intermediate work. We want the 2K standard abandoned and move to 4K and even higher standards. Unfortunately, the movie industry is a business before anything else. More than likely, the industry will take those improvements in computing technology and use it to speed up de-facto 2K standard work, thus making it cheaper and giving more flexibility to release schedules. It will be tougher to make them go to 4K or more expensive rendering standards. 4K and above would deliver much greater quality to the screen in CGI and DI work. But is Hollywood willing to pay for it?
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Steve Kraus
Film God
Posts: 4094
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: May 2000
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posted 12-19-2004 10:39 AM
For the foreseeable future it would be difficult to imagine someone investing in the infrastructure of an auditorium including the building, HVAC, seating, flooring, screen, proportional amount of lobby, concession, and restroom capacity, plus the audio B chain (amps, speakers etc.)...all that money...putting in a digital projection system and not also installing 35mm film projection. Especially when with decent used gear you could do so for, what, maybe under $20K. I think this will remain true even as more and more films become available in digital versions. It's just such a small price to pay for tremendously increased flexibility and we won't even talk about backups.
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![[dlp]](graemlins/dlp.gif)
system cost not much more than a state-of-the-art 35mm setup, it would still be way too pricy over the long run when you factor in the relatively high obsolescence rate of any computer-based system.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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