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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Teething problems on first showings
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-12-2019 12:30 PM
As a society we've given up having things work correctly all the time in trade for convenience. All driven by our constant need for instant gratification. The '80s were supposed to be the "me decade," but that decade has nothing on this one.
My old phone was attached to the wall with a wire, but it worked 100% of the time. Cellphone....well, it usually works most of the time, unless a call gets dropped or there's no signal or there's sunspots or whatever.
My old CD player works 100% of the time. MP3 player/iPod...well, doesn't sound as good, sometimes won't connect to the device I want to play it through, occasionally files get garbled, but hey...it's convenient!
The internet. We used to have 100% of our privacy. Now we don't have that anymore, but look how convenient online shopping is.
And movie projectors. No carrying film around, no scratches or splices, but when it breaks, you've probably lost at least one show. But, it's convenient!
You could make a pretty long list of "nice stuff" we have now that doesn't always work when it's supposed to, for no particular reason.
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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God
Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted 02-13-2019 11:07 AM
Bruce, no flames fanned. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
You brought up a very good point, and Mike elaborated upon it.
Those who have been around here a long time know I was (and to a lesser degree, still am) an opponent to the digital movement.
For sure, it has brought about a significant improvement in presentation quality... (But then again, film done right will STILL look as good over the length of an extended first-run), but we STILL have theatres who don't care about presentation, a serious lack of qualified people supervising things, and when a show is dumped it is often not recoverable.
And I still maintain that the only real, fiscal benefit is to the studios, as the theatres have to keep upgrading equipment that has built-in obsolescence, at their expense. (Compare that to a properly maintained film projector that will run for DECADES without a forced replacement/upgrade.)
The benefits were (are) too heavily skewed to the studio's favor for me to ever feel it was the right thing to do.
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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God
Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted 02-13-2019 05:01 PM
quote: Martin McCaffery
I think I read somewhere the average lifespan of a theatre is 15 years. I can't vouch for the accuracy of that number, but it seems pretty close. So who needs equipment that can last for decades when you expect to get all of the money you can out in 15 years?
Well that may be true in the new digital age, but when I was with RCA Service the average theatre age was well over 20 years for all but a few of the 145 screens I serviced. (That era predated the megaplex concept...if you had 6 screens in one building that was a lot back then.)
Point is, if the theatre was in business for decades, odds were great that the projectors were original. Upgrades were mainly sound, screen sheets and seats.
And as for the money, if you were wanting to buy an existing theatre location, and could choose between one with projectors that were 15 years old, but still had at least another 15-25 years of service left in them, and one with ten year old equipment that had to be upgraded, which one is the better choice? (Or if you were the one selling, which one do you think can fetch a higher price, thus recouping more of your investment?)
quote: Martin McCaffery
Keeping in mind that I run a theatre that has been in operation since 1941.
So how old were the film projectors before you made the digital switch? ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 02-13-2019 05:37 PM
quote: Carsten Kurz
I am 50+, I am mostly sarcastic.
I consider sarcasm to be a byproduct of optimistic realism.
quote: Bruce Cloutier
Ultimately though the network ties everything together and can be a critical source of failure. Of course you can fairly inexpensively subnet each screen. Those of you who might be a fan of Battlestar Galactica might remember the issue they had with the networking. There is more foresight in that fictional premise than it may at first seem.
As an engineer, I've learned (sometimes the hard way), that even when you think you covered all bases of failure, it's only your own hubris to believe that you have. There is a merit for time-proven solutions and "functional islands" or "functional containers" are one of them. It's also a common strategy in e.g. aviation engineering, where you try to avoid cross-dependencies between systems with identical or similar functions.
But I've ranted enough about this, so let's keep it at that.
quote: Bruce Cloutier
Okay, what? Here I am the guy who created the JNIOR a "network oriented" I/O device. Maybe you can see some of the rationale that I have in having written the JANOS operating system from scratch and developing an entire product that does not run a single byte generated by any third-party.
I think the biggest advantage of writing something from scratch is, that you intrinsically know how the stuff works. There are no real black-boxes and if you need to extend something, you're not being blocked by the inability of some third-party library or API.
Writing everything yourself can be a blessing, but also be a curse, besides the extra efforts you have to put in. The most difficult part is probably continuity. What do you do when the people that built your system aren't around anymore?
Another is that in some cases, it might not even be desirable to implement your own, because it's almost impossible to get right. One of those things might be encryption. I have, for example, implemented RSA in the past by myself. In hindsight, that was incredibly stupid, because it's almost impossible to do it right, on your own. Although crypto stacks like OpenSSL got some bad press in the last years, it would probably still be safer to have used it in its worst years, than my own implementation.
quote: Martin McCaffery
I think I read somewhere the average lifespan of a theatre is 15 years. I can't vouch for the accuracy of that number, but it seems pretty close. So who needs equipment that can last for decades when you expect to get all of the money you can out in 15 years?
It's also relevant to know what time-span this average is based on and what territories it covers.
The problem for theaters nowadays is that they're now caught up in the flux of the digital age. It's somewhat amazing that 35mm film kept a considerable advantage over digital technology for more than 100 years (a century ago, "digital" wasn't even a term), but ever since digital has "caught up" or has been deemed "good enough", theaters have been exposed to this high flux. While it's even questionable if your current digital projector and server will survive 15 years, it may be questionable if your technology is still "à la mode" by the time it hits that age.
quote: Frank Cox
And the next time I need to borrow an iphone to take a picture of my screen I might be outta luck.
I see a new promotional campaign coming up: Own a recent iPhone? Get a free ticket in exchange for a picture of our screen!
You could combine that with a marketing campaign on one of your favorite social networks.
quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
And as for the money, if you were wanting to buy an existing theatre location, and could choose between one with projectors that were 15 years old, but still had at least another 15-25 years of service left in them, and one with ten year old equipment that had to be upgraded, which one is the better choice? (Or if you were the one selling, which one do you think can fetch a higher price, thus recouping more of your investment?)
Although I understand your point, I think the primary price differentiator will still be location, location, location and how the business has been doing the last few years.
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Bruce Cloutier
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 161
From: Gibsonia, PA, USA
Registered: Aug 2016
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posted 02-14-2019 08:03 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Another is that in some cases, it might not even be desirable to implement your own, because it's almost impossible to get right. One of those things might be encryption. I have, for example, implemented RSA in the past by myself. In hindsight, that was incredibly stupid, because it's almost impossible to do it right, on your own. Although crypto stacks like OpenSSL got some bad press in the last years, it would probably still be safer to have used it in its worst years, than my own implementation.
It can be a challenge to code cleanly and reach a certain level of validation and verification enough to be fully confident in your implementation. The JVM in the JNIOR was written 5 years ago and continues to perform without need for debug or tweak. That has even surprised me.
Did you know that https://honeypot.integpg.com is a JNIOR surviving on the open Internet? It is not running the CINEMA application but a short one that analyzes the access.log and monitors failed Telnet login attempts. It builds a database of infected hosts (by IP address) and presents the map that you see using the Google Maps API and a service for IP address location. I've provided the link to demonstrate the TLSv1.2 implementation (note the HTTPS). Given that it is a small device it is vulnerable to a DoS attack but likely difficult to 'pwn'.
Back on topic, the digital solutions do have their benefits. Most of it was easily achieved. Now though you are pushed to go beyond 2K and beyond 5.1 as part of perhaps some effort to continue to draw revenues from the market. Most theater goers are likely not to recognize the difference in a 4K ATMOS experience. There are those that would pay extra change for it. Seating and other amenities all add to the experience. I suppose in a competitive situation where you have a choice between two theaters for the same content you might have a disadvantage if your theater isn't loaded with the leading edge technology. At least, that is the paranoia used to prompt you to repeatedly part with your box office proceeds.
I don't subscribe to that approach. We created the JNIOR 15+ years ago and work diligently to keep it up to date and available (at the same price) so you can rely on that tool being always available. We could have recreated it every two years and made the older stuff unusable so you would have to buy the latest (and increasingly more expensive) automation. But then again we haven't been able build ourselves into a QSC or Crestron sized organization. Maybe ultimately that is a good thing. I don't know.
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