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Author Topic: Showest 2005 (and Film-Tech Drink info) John T. Hendrickson, Jr Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 889 From: Freehold, NJ, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-17-2005 04:16 PM                     Paul Mayer's comments are right on the money. I don't think you could have a worse scenario than to have a group of theater owners witness a show interruption using digital projection, under optimum conditions, no less. Too bad someone didn't stand up and shout: "WHERE'S THE 35mm BACK-UP SYSTEM???" As to the other disaster that Mark Gulbrandsen mentioned, I guess the engineers figured they didn't need a 35MM back-up print there either!  |  IP: Logged Paul Mayer Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under! Posts: 3836 From: Albuquerque, NM Registered: Feb 2000 posted 03-17-2005 08:24 PM                        To be fair the disruption probably lasted less than a minute all told, and failures can and do happen to anyone using either film or video. Ultimately they did keep going and completed the screening. FWIW the projectors were Christies and the servers were Avicas, and apparently the chain of events began with the primary projector. The picture went to big pixels but the sound continued, so I think the server was OK, at least initially. But it was obvious they hadn't rehearsed or thought much about having to switch over. The recovery attempt was badly botched, replete with double images, out-of-sync sound, and missing channels. They eventually ended up back on the primary projector. What a time and place for this to happen, ey? In Japanese there is a saying, "Bachi ga atta" which can be translated as, "What goes around comes around" or "Serves you right." In this day where less-than-classy public behavior is acceptable, I suppose its fine to run an ad campaign that disses an old-but-proven technology as toy-like, or worse, describable only in terms of four-letter words. But when a proposed replacement technology fails in such a venue, where it's assumed every pain would be taken to ensure against such failures, it must give one pause to wonder just how viable the replacement really is. Even when these video systems work they still don't measure up to the existing system in terms of picture quality (regardless of what some big-name shills have to say), reliability, ease of operation, ease of support, or cost. Not at its present level of implementation anyway. They're still not ready for prime time, but one wouldn't know it looking at those ads. The TV people's hubris came back to bite them this time. Bachi ga atta! And lest anyone think I'm some obsolete old fart afflicted with a Luddite's unwillingness to change, my work history more than amply demonstrates that I'm perfectly willing and capable of learning and adapting to and exploiting new technology. I'm not afraid of being put out to pasture by new technology, not yet anyway. But if I'm going to be forced to use new tools, at least have the class to provide tools that work as well as my present ones without being condescending about it.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 03-19-2005 11:39 AM                     Paul's description of the 'recovery' is basically correct except it took at least 5 minutes. They got the picture back on screen fairly quickly but the sound was messed up (missing channels/no sound at first and then out of sync) for a while. I had to leave the theatre about halfway through the disaster to take a cell phone call and when I got back in everything was fine.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-23-2005 05:48 PM                        Due to the lack of comments (not just on the forums but in the news media in general) I'm assuming there were no huge announcements, groundbreaking revelations, etc at ShoWest this year? Other than the landmark "Star Wars in 3-D" thing?  |  IP: Logged

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