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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Have you ever had the public object to a proposed theater?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-24-2015 01:04 PM
Large movie screens are a sell-able item. If they were pointless to the public the movie theater chains and technology companies wouldn't be able to get away with marketing fake large format theaters and the premium price attached to them.
quote:
Theaters and studios still occasionally promote "See it on the BIG screen!", especially for revival showings of older movies, but I always laugh at that- WHAT BIG screen? We don't HAVE any more BIG screens here!
The really sad thing is that, now with "digital," there is no valid reason to see the movie on a huge screen. The movie's image, with its fixed grid of pixels, is actually going to look sharper on a more modest sized screen. With digital, when the image is blown up big it ends up being big and BLURRY.
At least with film projection you could see the texture of film grain if the projector was in proper focus, even on some really big screens. That would at least tell you if the projector was working properly even if the movie had some crappy cinematography.
Lately I've seen more and more 4K UHTV displays in stores, and more of them are playing native 4K demo content. I gotta tell you that stuff looks a hell of a lot sharper, more detailed and overall better than anything I've seen in any d-cinema theater. This is despite the super high price of all that d-cinema gear.
IMHO, various cinema product manufacturers have gotta make some damned breakthroughs with the designs of their projectors, projection lenses, screens, etc. It's not going to be long before UHDTV is fairly ordinary thing. It's already in the "affordable" price range now, even with the lack of native 4K content. Wide gamma (REC 2020) TV sets will be out soon. TV manufacturers are working feverishly to bring down the costs of OLED production or exploring other alternatives. Some of those new TV sets may carry Dolby Vision branding. Meanwhile a commercial movie theater has to spend a ridiculous fortune to install a Dolby Cinema screen.
quote: Jesse Skeen
I haven't seen any logical reason to have cable for more than 20 years now- it started out promising but is now largely more of just the same crap as regular TV, and with just as many (and sometimes MORE) commercials, even though you're PAYING to see them.
Commercial breaks on cable TV channels are routinely longer than the breaks on broadcast TV channels. I've seen commercial breaks on cable go longer than 4 minutes. Cable channels like AMC can take a 2 hour movie and stretch it into 3.5 or even 4 hours with all the lengthy, frequent commercial breaks. This has made watching TV shows on my DVR an annoyance. You have to fast-forward through all that ad crap and sometimes over-shoot the break and then have to rewind. If rewind too far then you gotta go forward and -well, it can end up being a pain in the ass. When you watch a TV show on Netflix that hour episode is done in about 42 minutes, with no interruptions and no need to hit any buttons. Hell, the next episode will start without having to hit a button. Binge watching a TV series totally kicks ass.
Cable TV is over-priced and frequently inconvenient.
quote: Justin Hamaker
As an aside, someone mentioned earlier in the thread that many smart phones have resolutions comparable to cinema projectors. Makes me wonder if there is an maximum ratio of screen size/throw for optimal resolution. The main auditoriums at my theatre have a ~39' screen with about a 55' throw. I have never been able to see pixels - or the screen door effect - when watching movies. I am only able see this when I'm standing within a couple feet of the screen - usually while working on screen files where I have a test pattern on the screen.
Much of this depends on the imagery being shown. More technical or geometric looking objects can reveal the pixel grid. Thin diagonal lines can do so too. Type and/or graphics objects are really prone to revealing the pixel grid. In my experience the projected images have been a little too much on the blurry, soft-focused side to do any of that. I have a feeling at least some theaters may be dialing their projected imagery slightly out of focus to hide what would be a large and coarse looking pixel grid. They could be doing that to fight moire. Then again, the softness could simply be due to limitations with the projector's optical performance and/or how good/bad it pairs up to the theater screen.
FYI, my new Samsung Note 5 phone has a 5.7" OLED screen with 2560 X 1440 native resolution. That's better than 2K and 1080p HD. It's 4 times the pixel count of my last phone, a 3 year old HTC Evo 4G LTE with a 1280 X 720 resolution screen. A few other Android phones have that resolution, while 1920 X 1080 is very common. The latest iPhone models (6/6s & 6+/6S+) have 1334 X 750 and 1920 X 1080 resolutions respectively.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-24-2015 11:17 PM
A great sound system can make a huge difference in a movie theater. The problem is I haven't heard fundamentally really great sound in a commercial movie theater in a long time, but that's just me. The GCC Northpark #1 screen had it. The theater I visit in Oklahoma City's Bricktown to see movies in Dolby Atmos isn't bad. The surround panning and positioning capability in that theater is great. The downside is it lacks the chest thumping bottom end and some other EQ details I badly miss from the Northpark theater.
Modern big chain movie theaters, IMHO, install under-powered surround sound systems. They'll sort of try to do things better than usual in an auditorium that includes a premium charge on the movie ticket. Too many standard price houses are run with dynamics not much better than the speakers in a damned TV set.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Yeah and who's got the gobs and gobs of money it would take to buy all this stuff? Wait till we get the original revolution paid off, willya?
Most theaters don't have the money to even buy into this first generation of laser-based projectors. Hell, I don't think the IMAX company has the bank to put their new dual 4K laser-based setup into more than just their top tier theaters. Nevertheless, nothing will stop consumer electronics companies from raising the quality bar on the products they're selling. Image quality in home theater is going to keep getting better and better. Commercial movie theaters may be playing back better quality movie files than what is available to consumers. But the soft focus presentations I've been seeing really undermine the perception of that higher quality.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Get a TiVo. It automatically backs up a certain amount of time when you come out of FF. The amount of time it backs up depends on how fast you're FF'ing. Even if you're on the fastest FF, when you see the show you're watching come back on, just hit play and it automatically backs up enough to where you are at the beginning of your show. I'm sure quite a few other DVRs have the same feature.
That does sound good and I'll probably look for that when/if I upgrade my Dish Network DVR -that is if I don't disconnect the service.
Still, it's even easier and cheaper to use services like Netflix. No fast forwarding needed. It's no wonder why those services are so popular with millennials and younger.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 10-03-2015 10:48 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Even really high end installations, like Dolby Cinema, are marred by things like fake scope on a common width screen.
I've been to the AMC Empire 25 NYC new Prime Dolby Cinema screen (#6) twice now (for "MI5" and "The Martian"). It was formerly the ETX screen. While it's still fake scope in that it's not anamorphic, the 2.39 presentation is completely filling the screen. I haven't seen a 1.85 presentation there yet, but 1.85 trailers are presented common height. I was really surprised by this, but it looks like Dolby did this right. The only problem is that there's no masking. But 2.39 definitely fills the entire screen. I'm not a big fan of 3D, but mainly because it's usually so dim. Would like to see a 3D movie there, but they did not present "The Martian" in 3D. It's not perfect, but I think it was worth paying the extra bucks to see movies there. It's now my screen of choice, even though it's not the largest screen in the City.
Overall quality I have to admit is quite good. Projection quality was quite bright. Sound is good except that, at least on those two films, I'm not hearing much Atmos activity in spite of the fact that the screen is equipped with 16 overhead speakers, 10 left surrounds, 10 right surrounds, 6 rear surrounds, and 2 rear woofers. I don't know if they added back the two extra screen channels LC and RC, although it didn't sound like it. It also has D-Box (or the equivalent) in all seats, although I wished there was a switch to shut it off. Lounge seating. Only 232 seats. I think it originally had about 450.
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Jesse Skeen
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1517
From: Sacramento, CA
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 01-21-2016 12:29 AM
Well, efforts to save the old theater have pretty much failed as Monday was its last day of business and it's said that demolition will happen next Monday. Two TV stations covered the closing and one invited me to come out and appear. Links with video:
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/01/18/sacramento-century-dome-theater-shows-final-film-as-developer-gears-up-for-demolotion/
quote:
After almost 50 years the Century dome theater in Sacramento County is about to go dark.
The historic building showed its last film on Monday, and demolition crews are expected to get to work in a couple of weeks.
By the fall, the theater will be gone and instead there will be an expanded Howe ‘Bout Arden shopping center that will include a brand-new 14-screen theater. The first domes were demolished last summer, despite efforts to keep the mid-century modern architecture.
A petition failed to stop the developers, but organizers like Jesse Skeen aren’t giving up.
“I would implore anyone to go back to the drawing board and see what these theaters were like when they were brand new, not what they are now, and give us the modern equivalent of that,” he said.
“This would be a huge mistake to lose these domes,” said Martin Anaya with the Sacramento Film Festival. “This is an iconic piece of history. it’s a piece of Sacramento history and it’s something that needs to be preserved and protected.”
Many of the moviegoers tonight didn’t know it was the last night until they saw the signs and realized the only thing coming soon was a new theater.
Cathy Stricklin saw Star Wars in 1978 at teh theater, because it was one of the few theaters to show it in a 70mm format.
“It’s like you were in the movie you were experiencing that movie,” she said.
The new theater is slated to open in October.
http://fox40.com/2016/01/18/monday-marked-final-day-of-movies-at-century-domes/
quote:
The Century Theater domes on Ethan Way in Sacramento are now closed.
A portion of the theater complex was demolished in June. The remainder stayed open though Monday night, and will soon be torn down to make room for a new Century multiplex.
The Ethan Way domes date back to the 1960s.
A change.org petition to preserve and restore the domes gathered more than 700 signatures in recent months, but developers opted instead to build a new multiplex from scratch.
A sign on the lobby window reads:
"Attention Valued Patrons: We regret to inform you that this will be our last week of operations. Our last day of business will be on January 18th 2016. We would like to thank everyone for your patronage over the last few decades. We are excited to open our new state of the art theatre in late fall. This new complex will have fourteen screens, featuring leather recliners, wall to wall screens, state of the art sound and much more! Again we would like to thank you for all your patronage and we will see you in the fall."
The final movie to play at the domes Monday night was a 10:45 showing of "Joy."
I'm very happy that they including my naming the new theater "The Mistake". I had also said that at the final city planning commission meeting which approved the new theater despite those who showed up opposing it (not a single person came to support it.) I will check it out when it opens and retract that if by some miracle it actually turns out to be as good as these old theaters used to be, but I doubt that will actually be the case.
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Jesse Skeen
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1517
From: Sacramento, CA
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 01-22-2016 01:17 AM
The plans for the new theater are horrifying- they are cramming 14 screens in a space barely big enough to fit the two original domes, and seat count will amount to about 120 per screen- most likely they'll all be top-masked as all their other new theaters have been. They will have one "XD" auditorium which will carry a premium price, but no guarantee of the screen being even as big as the two smaller un-split domes were. That was the main reason why I decided to shake things up- I'd welcome a new theater if it were a real improvement, but it's a step backwards. Just more reasons for me to stay home instead; gonna get a bigger 4K TV and Atmos sound system soon I hope!
One idea I had for the property after tearing down the old theater was to build a new theater that was a tribute to all of our city's fallen movie palaces- have a central lobby but have each auditorium designed to duplicate that of old theaters that were torn down. Say, one or two big domes built to modern standards, but also a replica of the Alhambra (which was torn down more than 40 years ago but many here STILL hold a grudge against that!) and others- it would be like a big block of classic theaters brought back to life. But no, we get a generic cracker-box.
Brad- actually the broadcast did have an awesome bug on it, but it's not on the online video (and of course online isn't in the right frame rate.) I loved KTXL's close-up on my eyes, but they ruined that on the air with a bug on the left side; there's a small bug overlayed at the top if you watch it online but I stole it and uploaded it to Youtube with no bug at all.
KCRA did a report yesterday that I wasn't part of- there's no text for me to quote here, link goes to a video and nothing else (and there's a ton of text and graphics over the picture) :
http://www.kcra.com/news/new-changes-coming-for-sacramentos-howe-bout-arden-shopping-center/37541308
Though they tried to keep it positive by focusing on the new stores coming to the property and talking mainly with people there to shop, they STILL got one person who said it was "sad" to lose the old theater and something should've been done to keep it.
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