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Author Topic: TI to do 4K: Cinemark to get the new projectors David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 06-18-2009 01:13 PM                        And here we go... Cinemark Plans To Install 4K Digital Cinema Projection Across The Circuit (Official Cinemark press release) As Part of the DCIP Consortium, Cinemark Will Offer Customers the Biggest and Brightest 4K Digital Projection and 3D Presentation Available PLANO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun. 18, 2009-- Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CNK), the world’s second largest motion picture exhibitor, today announced that it has partnered with digital cinema pioneer Barco, DLP Cinema technology provider Texas Instruments and media server provider Doremi to install the industry’s biggest & brightest 4K digital cinema solution in more than 3,000 screens. The agreement also includes plans for Cinemark’s international locations in Latin America, which would bring the overall deployment to more than 4,600 screens. “Cinemark selected the DLP Cinema 4K Barco projector and Doremi Cinema Server solution as we believe it is the best in the industry in terms of projection, quality, reliability and value,” states Alan Stock, CEO of Cinemark Holdings, Inc. “Cinemark will continue to offer our customers the best viewing experience available.” “Barco is honored to be selected as Cinemark’s exclusive digital cinema projection provider,” stated Todd Hoddick, VP for Digital Cinema in North America. “Our goal is to continue providing Cinemark the best viewing experience and customer service possible.” “We congratulate Cinemark on their choice of a solution set that together will put an amazing picture on thousands of Cinemark screens worldwide,” said Nancy Fares, manager of the DLP Cinema business for Texas Instruments. “The Cinemark decision to use DLP Cinema technology reiterates the fact that exhibitors can have both a brilliant bright picture and a low maintenance solution for screens of any size.” DCIP was formed in February 2007 as a joint venture owned equally by AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark Holdings, Inc. and Regal Entertainment Group for the purpose of financing, procuring and deploying digital projection solutions to movie theatre screens across the United States. Cinemark’s best-in-class digital solution will be based on the DLP Cinema digital micro-mirror chip that is used in Barco’s new family of enhanced DLP Cinema 4K projectors.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 06-18-2009 01:22 PM                    Obviously there is a some deal of "vapor" into all this as no 4K product will come until the "second half of 2010". But the anouncement is meant to stop people from thinking Sony is the right way and keeping the 2K line alive. At a reduced price, I guess, and I hope reduced by a lot but pbbly will only be a token amount, while presenting 4K, which should've been the bare minimun in (serious) Dcinema applications to begin with as a "premium" (read, expensive as hell). What really needs to happen: stop wasting money marketing and tooling factories for so many projector models. There is the need only of: a cheap 2K for poor theaters with small screens, and 2 models of (affordable) 4K: one for small/medium screens and one for medium/large. Period. What is going to happen: not that Another important point: the new projectors will finally be DCI compliant, unlike current ones, which ARE NOT. The direct consecuence of all these announcements in the past month for me: I was planning on installing one or perhaps two 3D screens by mid-December, pbbly dual-projection. Now will wait until at least May 2010. If by then studios offer serious VPF deals, will pbbly install 2 3D screens plus 8 digital when 4K becomes available. Depending on the prices, at least 2 would be 4K. Ideally, they'll all be 4K if the price is right. Only 1 screen is really ok with a 2K solution (i.e. it's a small screen in a long-ish auditorium with the first row kind of far). Obviously there is not a direct relationship between the size of the screen and the benefits of 4K resolution against 2K. When saying "2K for a small screen" in reality what I mean is 2K for a budget installation on a small auditorium that seats few patrons, has a small screen and hopefully people are sitting far away from it ....  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-18-2009 01:28 PM                     quote: TI Press Release Texas Instruments will deliver the enhanced DLP Cinema 4K chip to its licensees, Barco, Christie Digital and NEC, which will extend the breadth of products to exhibitors to over 12 projector models. I, too, am skeptical about this announcement. What are the native resolution specifications of this "4K" chip? Does it have 4096 X 2160 pixels of native resolution? Or is TI just doing something sneaky with a standard 2048 X 1080 chip? They did a lot of wobbulation shenanigans with 960 X 1080 chips in RPTV sets. It wouldn't be surprising to find a similar lack of truth in advertising in this case either.  |  IP: Logged Robert Minichino Master Film Handler Posts: 350 From: Haskell, NJ, USA Registered: Dec 2005 posted 06-18-2009 01:28 PM                        The key to using vaporware successfully is actually having the ability to deliver on your promises at some time in the future. No manufacturer wants to cannibalize their current sales (TI's 2k imagers, in this case), but they also have to balance that against potential customers going over to Sony. If the risk is between taking no action and going out of business, and announcing early and taking the chance that you won't be able to deliver the product on schedule, the choice is clear.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 06-18-2009 01:44 PM                    Since 3D is limited by DCI specs to 2K-48fps, I'm not afraid of buying a dual-2K solution for 3D, if the price of 2K is right, even if it sort of sucks when projecting 2D against 4K. With dual projection (kind of a fixed pixel-shift solution), á lá Imax, at least the screen door is better hidden. But for 2D applications, I ain't buying squat until I see the specs for the 4K stuff. If it's a wobbulation solution, it better be priced at exactly $100 over 2K and 50% below Lcos 4K, or I'll be running to Sony's or whoever's door. Can't advertise 4K if the imager is 1/4 (or even 1/2) the amount of needed pixels ...  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-18-2009 02:41 PM                     It's either do it or bite the dust... I would think the 3 manufacturers involved probably put T.I. in a vice and clamped it hard till they relented!!! This is the wequivelent to stabbing Sony smack dab in the middle of the heart... I'd say two years off on any production scale though... By then I'll be retired!!! Mark  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-18-2009 02:52 PM                        So, according to the press release, Cinemark chose to buy a product that does not yet exist because they value its "quality" and "reliability." Huh?!? Either Alan Stock is an idiot, or whoever wrote the press release should be fired. Or both. In any case, a 4K DLP unit would be most welcome, if and when it becomes available. Good thing most theatres didn't ditch film for the soon-to-be-obsolete 2K units. If distributors will start providing 4K material, this could work out very well for all concerned.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 06-18-2009 03:03 PM                    The more I read between the lines, the more it looks like a marketing ploy to sell Wobbulation or, Allah forbid, 2 x Wobbulation as 4K. Oh well. They better reflect it in the price, as the only cost (or difference) between the 2K and this BS "4K" would be a couple of faster (or a couple extra) DSP chips to push the 4K datastream to the DLP's. If someone could please ask Christie for a straight answer to the number of pixels on each DLP "4K" imager, we could save ourselves weeks/months of speculation. If their answer is something along the lines of "they are capable of 4K" or ANYTHING other than 4096x2160 ... then you get bet your @ss they are but 2K chips showing different pixels at different times. If they want to pass for "true" 4K, it would have to flash 4 times, which puts the effective frame rate (refresh) at 36hz, too low for serious applications (minimun equivalent to 35mm two-blade shutter: 48hz). Read: headaches from watching that crap. Until they mention the true resolution somewhere, my bet is with the cheap way out. Otherwise, they would be boasting about it and pbbly the imagers wouldn't be so freely interchangeable between projectors like they seem to be.  |  IP: Logged Lyle Romer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1400 From: Davie, FL, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 06-18-2009 03:19 PM                     The only thing in my mind arguing against it being some kind of wobulation is the light output. Wouldn't you lose light doing wobulation because (I assume) the chip must be dark while the wobulation mirror shifts to the new position? It would be great if somebody with media access could ask TI or Christie/Barco/NEC directly exactly what the physical specs of the chip are. My gut (based on comments a couple of years back from a poster on film-tech) is that there is probably wobulation involved.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 06-18-2009 05:17 PM                    Oh, but the fun! First we had fake Imax. Soon, perhaps, we'll also have fake 4K  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-18-2009 09:26 PM                     I'm trying to look at the bright side. It would be a hell of an engineering achievement to squeeze 8.8 million rapidly spinning mirrors on a small piece of silicon. In that regard I hope TI really delivers the goods. Unfortunately the term "enhanced DLP" in that press release has me more thrown in the negative direction. The word "enhanced" can be taken any number of ways, including being a slick way of saying the DLP chip is enhanced with some extra wobbulation capabilities so it can try to act like a 4K resolution chip without having all the native pixels to do so.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-18-2009 10:19 PM                     The other thing everyone here has overlooked is the price tag. Sony sells theirs to "any cinema" for 83K... in quantities to the chains as we know for slightly under 60K... now even 2K DLP is going to have to get much much more competitive price wise than the present Sony pricing is to stick around... That 4K DLP projector is going to be a quarter of a million dollar projector at the rate the present pricing is staying... Price DOES MATTER in this industry big time. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-18-2009 10:47 PM                     Thats just it...technology wise...TI is in a pickle. 4K cost 4 times as much to make as 2K. There is no way they can make a 4K imager for the price of a 2K imager and Sony is selling their 4K systems in the same ballpark as TI's 2K. If TI could really reduce the price that much, then they would have put forth the efforts in the consumer world as well as the lower-end A/V and done away with single-chip DLP. So...if you are buying a DCinema machine today... Do you buy a 2K DLP when you know that next year (if you believe TI's noise) that 4K will be available? Do you go with Sony's 4K SXRD machine...after all, the "big boys" are going that route...or do you wait? There is no small coincidence that TI's "announcement" comes on the heels of Sony landing the Regal/AMC deal for about 1/3 of the domestic screens. TI wants to slow the bleed...after all, they don't have to deliver. The problem is, TI has already lost 1/3 of the US screens, the announcement won't help that. It makes people wary of pursuing the exisiting technology (2K) so sales are likely to go down on those and people will wait for the day that will likely never happen (DLP 4K) or just go for Sony if they need 4K today. Those that have bought 2K already have a costly update in their future...due out in December, if they plan on DCI compliance (which is actually another 6-month delay as it was due out this Summer, originally). So when are exhibitors (or deployment agencies) supposed to make money on these things? They cost a lot when you buy them, they cost a lot when you own them...and they can be made obsolete or antiquated rather briskly. Steve  |  IP: Logged Ron Curran Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 504 From: Springwood NSW Australia Registered: Feb 2006 posted 06-18-2009 11:58 PM                        For many years, since 1K, digital proponents have been claiming that digital is better than film. Their claim is finally correct because the quality of average 35mm film prints is now inferior to 1K digital. It appears that labs are employing dung beetles working with mud to produce release prints with special light-filtering qualities. I am delighted when I see a good print in our cinema that causes me to cancel orders for new lamphouse and lenses. Concurrently, the quality of features on hard drives has improved of late so that our 16x9 1.3K dlp projector is producing results superior to the 35mm system. I am hoping that the introduction of dci stuff is further delayed here so that film companies might re-think the downgrading of 35mm. For average screens, well set-up e-cinema is fine for flat features, particularly those originating on tape or 16mm. Investing more than $100,000 in a digital projector for these features is like buying a Kenworth to do the shopping. But, until dci stuff is feasible, Scope features should continue to be released on prints which exhibit some of the advances in film technology that have been wrought in the last 50 years.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 06-19-2009 12:06 AM                    quote: Steve Guttag There is no way they can make a 4K imager for the price of a 2K imager Unless, like we are guessing, they are just taking a 2K imager and interlacing the other pixels in time. The they can get sort-of-4K for, basically, exactly the same price as 2K (and the same projector, only change needed is a couple extra $10 dsp chips, as the imager can already move 2x2K information for 48fps 3D, and would only need to double that capability for 2xwobbulation to obtain fake interlaced 4K out of a 2K DLP chip). Just like we finally moved from interlace analog TV to digital (mostly progressive) one, Welcome to the new world of interlaced Dcinema. Sort of. And totally speculating that this is what TI is gonna come out with. But I doubt they'll do 2xwobullation. That would be way too head-ache inducing at the huge light levels they are claiming. Pbbly developed some odd 3K chip and wobbulated only in one direction to 4K. Then they can get away with a single flash, so the effective frame rate becomes 72hz, which is fine for most people to not be bothered by the interlacing).  |  IP: Logged

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