I believe that if large screens for home become affordable, theatres will be hurting. At my home, I often have movie get-together nights and have a group of say, 5 friends over. We watch movies on DVD or Laserdisc, most of which are in Dolby Digital 5.1 and sometimes DTS 5.1 . I have a Yamaha DSP-A1 receiver that can decode DTS and Dolby Digital. My main speakers are JBL HP-520s, my surrounds are Infinity RS-5s, and the center is an Infinity CC3. They're not all the same brand, but nearly every person who comes to my house to watch movies tells me that my system sounds better than any theatre they've been in. Some of my friends tell me they prefer watching movies on DVD or Laserdisc at my house to going to the theatre, which I find both amusing and sad at the same time.

The weak link in the home theatre now is the screen. I'm still using a 32" Sony XBR CRT. It's a terrible time to buy a new TV, though, because the ones that are really good are too expensive, while the cheaper ones have HDTV resolution but are 4:3 rather than 16:9, or don't really support all of the formats (some convert everything to 1080i). In a couple of years, I'd hope that there will some sort of affordable screen that can be placed in the front of my living room. Even though 740 by 480 does not sound like much resolution, DVD movies can sometimes look better than in theatres because theatres often have a lot of problems, such as misframing, focus problems, scratches, insufficient screen brightness, jitter, etc, that a home theatre would typically would not have.

I love watching movies in theatres, but nearly every time I go, there are elements of the environment that detract from the experience, such as crying babies and kids, cell phones, and seat kickers. I really wish theatre managers would just stop allowing kids under the age of 5 and not let people in if they have a cell phone on them. Seat kickers are harder to control because most people don't realize that by resting their feet on the back of the chair in front of them that they're sending vibrations through the entire next row.

For many movies, I prefer to go during the week when attendance is at a minimum. Sometimes, I have the entire auditorium to myself as a result. For comedies, however, I tend to like to go on Friday or Saturday night, since a crowd seems to make those better.

Evans

IMHO, you have to take unsteadiness on a case-by-case, feature-by-feature basis, and not make a blanket statement about any particular lab (e.g., many on this forum felt "Sixth Sense" release prints were unsteady, and they were not done by Deluxe). Also, several labs may be involved in the production of a movie, with some doing the "front end" work, others doing the effects, and still others doing the release printing.

Kodak is partnering with the labs and equipment manufacturers to improve printing technology.

One known factor is that continuous contact printers are optimized for printing a "short pitch" (BH-1866 perforation having a pitch of 0.1866 inches) negative to a "long pitch" (KS-1870 perforation having a pitch of 0.1870 inches) print stock. All camera originals are short pitch and all release prints are long pitch, so contact printing produces good steadiness and minimal slippage for direct prints. Unsteadiness often creeps in when continuous contact printing is used for the intermediate stages (master positives and duplicate negatives), because slippage occurs when the short-to-long pitch printing relationship cannot be maintained. Much slower pin registered printing should be used for at least one of these intermediate stages, but production time constraints often preclude it.

Irwin Young of DuArt labs presented an excellent technical paper on the subject at an SMPTE conference a few years ago. The Kodak web site also has a discussion of the relationship of film dimensions and printing technology:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/sizes.shtml
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/printing.shtml

There is also an excellent discussion on this very subject in the section "Continuous Contact Printers" of the book "Motion Picture Film Processing" by Dominic Case of Atlab in Australia (Focal Press Media Manual 1990, ISBN 0-240-51243-X, TR886.2, pages 100-101).

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

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For example, a $5000 home theatre system with an anticipated life of 5 years costs about $1000 per year. If you watch one new movie a week, that's about $20 per show to pay for the equipment, plus the cost of buying or renting the DVD. I can buy quite a few theatre tickets for $1000-plus a year. And the vast majority of working families cannot afford a $5000 home theatre system anyway, not that they wouldn't like to own one.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

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Evans

There's no way I can justify the time and money it would take to see a movie 4 or 5 times (or more) in the theatre anymore, and I'd rather have the disc for multiple viewing anyway.

People I once knew are turning over in their graves!!

As happens every so often in history, home technology is catching up to theatres!

Video tape was once lamnented as the death of theatres!! As it turns out, it only renewed the interest in movies. Grosses soured!

Product sucked this year, plain and simple.

Assume that you are Gordon's daughter here for a minute! (No offense, Gord)

I just bet that his rec room has the latest technology available in the free world!!!

Do we really want to watch a movie with our parents? Or do we want to go out?

Me? I want to go out!!! (Again, no offense to Gordon).

We are (and always have been) at the mercy of the product provided to us.

I would rather play "ET" in mono than "The Art Of War" in Dolby EX!

Exhibition (collectively) is paying tons of money to be current. Manufacturers are turning out respectable equipment!

The movies just suck! I'm sorry, I try to be eloquent, but it's true.

After all the inventories and print moves on a Thursday night, I can remember being excited about viewing the new film.

Now, I just think about going to bed. They usually start the films before I am finished.

You do what you can, but in the end, you need product.

BRAD!! We need to start a "Running Screen Play!!"

Expand this sight to include screen writers!!

Regal and some of the other majors actually had a decent formula going! Unfortunately, they relied on the "un-ending" stream of product to draw patrons.

Cows do fart!!! Should one do so, I am equipped to play it back perfectly! Whether it be recorded in SRD, or DTS, if you hear it here, you will hear as the cow intended!!

A decent movie would be good too.

Russ

Continuous contact printers are designed to print short pitch (BH-1866) negatives to long pitch (KS-1870)prints. I can print a short pitch (BH-1866) camera negative to a long pitch (DH-1870) master positive, but then what? Contact printing long pitch originals is a no-no.

Printing that long pitch (DH-1870) master positive to a short pitch (BH-1866) duplicate negative should be done on a slow pin-registered printer. But in many cases, time constraints force labs to contact print short pitch to short pitch, which is where slippage and unsteadiness can creep in. The final release printing is a short pitch (BH-1866) duplicate negative printed onto long pitch (KS-1870) print film, so slippage is minimal.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

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