Aaron, THANK YOU. You are 110% correct, and I thank you because I was beginning to think that I was the only one on the planet who saw these glarring flaws in DLP, at least at the presentation here in NYC, which was not a demo, but in a real-life theatre showing to the public, not to industry types. I posted this on the 35mm forum, so excuse the redundency, but listening to some of the gushing kudos for DLP has been making me crazy. To be fair, I freely admit that I am not a fan of abandoning film for DLP -- but I purposely went to this screening NOT looking for problems and NOT allowing my bias to color my evaluation -- I am perfectly capable of seeing crap whether it's film or DLP: > Well, I saw the AMC DLP presentation of JURASSIC PARK 3, and I came away with a VERY negative overally impression of the system. If this is what they are passing off as "equal" to 35mm, then either people are blind, or their vested interest in the technology is preconditioning them as to what they are seeing.
Keep in mind that this DLP presentation was in a more "natural" environment than in the tweaked-up demos at the SMPTE conventions and press screenings. This was in a regular multiplex, in the real world, and I saw a lot of glaring blemishes.
The idea that this technology can match 35mm in terms of resolution is simply a joke. Some scenes looked passable in terms of clarity (something akin to anamorphic 35mm through old B&H lenses), some even looked quite good, but many looked so soft that if I were in a booth looking at that kind of an image from a 35mm projector, I would rush over to try to focus it. This happened often enough to make me feel that the resolution was dynamic and not fixed, perhaps based on the amount of movement at any moment (if there isns't much movement from one frame to the next, the compression can drop out lots more redundent information -- just a guess).
The contrast ratio had the same problem -- in some scenes it looked fine, but in some, the contrast was so low that it looked like a haze was over the lens -- particularly when the kid is found in his hide-away, there is a long sequence between the kid and Sam Neill, it really looked like crap all muddy and dull.
Then there was the dynamic range -- for the most part, it was in the gutter. Scenes where there was a bright sky and dark objects in the foreground, the detail disappeared from the dark objects. In one scene where the characters were running across a field against a bright sky, the detail in their hair just evaporated -- it looked like they had globs of flat black paint on their heads instead of hair --they should have gotten the animators at Pixar to add CGI hair back on their heads.
Now for that business about no scratches or dirt....yes, that maybe true, but in many of the bright scenes, the bright areas had specks of white in them. The specks danced around like TV snow. This might not be dirt, but I don't know why anyone would think that this kind of digital dirt is any less objectionable than organic dirt. At least organic dirt can be eliminated (FilmGuard, clean operating practices, etc.) -- but how do you clean the damn white specks off the hard drives?
Then there is that brightness issue. I found it to be ok, but nothing to write home about. I was told that they typically get only 11ft lamberts, not the 16 that 35mm screens can get. But the question I now ask when the DLP drum-beaters brag about how they can get an image "as bright" as 35mm, is, "WHO CARES?!" You get a bright picture but it looks like crap. Who is going to pay $200,000 to buy into that?
Even if those demos where people were walking away oh-ing an ah-ing did look spectacular, what has that got to do with what DLP is going to wind up looking like in regular theatres across the country? If DLP can't consistantly produce the quality of picture that they got in the demos, then it is a seriously flawed system. If what I saw a the AMC Empire in NYC is any indication, then this technology has a LONG way to go before it can ever claim to look as good as 35mm. <
And a last thought: I understand that once they move away from having to bring the film into the theatre on 18 hard drives as they are doing now and physically install it into the server, they will go to conventional transmission. Because transmission systems do not come free, they will be forced to increase the compression ratio higher than what they are using in the demos and the "test" theatre sites. Sure you eliminate the cost of the print and the truck driver, but you STILL have to get that datastream from Technicolor to the theatre. It won't be free.
Frank
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posted 01-16-2002 08:43 AM
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