|
|
This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Sharp Doubles Down On 8K, Literally
|
Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
|
posted 07-18-2015 10:02 AM
I think the 2K projectors are going to last a bit longer than you think. We already have projectors in the over 10-year category and they have a lot of disadvantages being early series 1s yet are still completely viable.
The big thing that will likely continue longevity of the series 2 projectors is the sheer proliferation of them. There are a lot of them and most are 2K (overwhelming majority, in fact). As a business concern, nobody is going to ditch their working 2K if they are not going to ether need to to retain business or increase business. The former being less desirable because you are spending money just to hold your own. It isn't like the presentations are going to get appreciably worse.
Series 2 projectors, by and large, were designed more more with service in mind. So keeping them going will not be so bad. But lets say your light engine goes on one in your complex and you decide to replace it with whatever is current. Your big theatre gets the nice new machine and the old one becomes a parts source for the remaining machines...so if an ICP goes out...you got one...further prolonging the rest of the projectors.
Me personally, I think the series 2 machines are 10-15 year machines. The S2Ks maybe not so long. Barco has tried to keep it serviceable but NEC...on the NC900 seems to have gone out of its way to not care what it takes to get to a part. With the relative cost of the projector being so low...the threshold of repair vs replace is also lowered.
If you are a single or twin, it is probably economically advisable to purchase extended warranty for your projector. All of the DLP companies will get you out to 10-years warranty with the projectors coming with 2-3 years so think of the extended warranty being able to buy the light engine on the 7-8 year plan.
All of this is going to add into these projectors getting closer to the 15-year mark.
Another factor is the life-span of a movie theatre...will the theatre that has these machines even be viable in 15-years? Will some new state-of-the-art theatre open up and make the whole point moot?
2004 is when the first "modern" 2K projectors (Series 1) hit the streets and while I've just retired one, we still have one going strong...just needs lamps, filters, coolant change and now a fan here or there). We are 5 years into the series 2s and while the product lines have been augmented, only Sony has really retired any of their product line (R220 for example). Christie replaced the CP2210 with the CP2215 but it is the same projector with a different lamp power supply to allow a wider range). This is going add into the longevity too...long product production runs. Even if all of the projector companies discontinued their current projectors next year and started up with "Series 3"...we'd still be getting at least 10-years from now or 15 years since the first series 2. I haven't heard anything about canning the current lines. Lasers are too expensive and don't bring anything to the table except if you are a very big screen with lots of light requirements. We'll see if the Blue-Phosphorous laser things take off but that is just a change of light source, not projector...Barco plans for it to be a retrofit even. That would just keep the line going that much longer.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
|
posted 07-19-2015 10:42 AM
Are you talking about the entire conversion or for those this year?
If you are talking about the entire conversion...there are some key pivotal points.
You have George Lucas and his insistence of DCinema back in 1999 that forced the early systems in a handful of theatres (you have to start somewhere). These Mark VII systems (I'm not sure the 1999 systems were Mark VII but the Mark VIIs were out not too long after that) plodded along until 2004 when 2K systems came out. Think about it...we were on 1.3K for about 5 years. There were just a handful of sites that put in these systems from Christie and Barco/Kinoton. The early "players" were people like Qualcom and Boeing and Technicolor.
I'd say the next plateau though a minor one was Chicken Little in 2005. We had barely gotten the 2K series 1 machines and some a-hole got the idea of 3D...it is like a illness for this industry. Showing that the technology never really intended 3D we had to start the compromise. Not enough light and not enough bandwidth so the image was limited to 1920 pixels wide and the light...well...you just to the best you can...it is 3D...people will understand. However, Chicken Little and the 3D thing again put more systems..."modern systems." in the theatres.
I consider the above two steps the necessary ones to really beta test the concept. Nothing ever goes as planned and you don't change an industry overnight.
But what really is the absolute benchmark for what got this industry to covert is really 1-title...Avatar.
When Avatar was a bona fide hit, you have nearly every cinema in the industry wanting ONE DCinema machine in their complex to handle this 3D craze that has come around again. Everyone that played Avatar in 3D did MANY folds better business than anyone else playing most anything. It was way too big to ignore.
And if people didn't get the message...the next season we had the Miley Cyrus movie Hanna Montana that again drove people to the theatre for this "new" fad. Furthermore, people charged a premium for "concert 3D" movies.
So with those two movies, we saw our DCinema system requests really have an up-tick but again, typically just one or maybe 2 systems per complex. Those that bought just one mistakenly put it on their big screen thinking they needed to recoup their investment fast (and they were MUCH more expensive than current systems). I say mistake because a movie is only big for a couple of weeks before the next big movie. Better to lose some business on the opening week than to be stuck with a dead movie for the next 6 weeks taking up the big screen. As such, some of our complexes put in a second system to have a move over house to free up the bigger screen(s) for the current hot movie. At this time you have Carmike putting not just their toe in the water but jumping in (not with both feet as some theatres remained mono and such) but you now have an industry that has to be able to supply most of their content in a DCinema form. This was known as "Phase 1 conversions."
So if you are looking on a graph. The winter 2008 into Summer 2009 would show a distinct change in trajectory upwards.
The the combination of 2 things allowed/forced the conversion. The AMC/Regal/Cinemark (DCIP) "deal" that signaled that about half of the US was going to be converting despite crappy loan opportunities due to VIRTUAL PRINT FEES. Yes, without a doubt, it is VPFs that allowed the mass conversion.
The VPF being available to everyone that met the criteria and was willing to play by the rules, that is what allowed the conversion. Because again, it was a tough sell. You aren't going to increase business by going digital so why spend the money. The DCIP deal would put pressure on competitors but they have money and have no problem defaulting on loans anyway...that is just part of business. Independents don't get that luxury. But with VPFs, independents can get "most" of their investment into DCinema covered by Hollywood and THAT is what drove the conversion.
The deadline, end of 2012, accelerated it a bit and then a couple of other VPF deals like GDCs and Scrabble have also covered most anyone that wanted or could qualify for one.
In the end...it was money...as it always is that did the conversion. Someone else's money stimulated the masses (VPFs).
The ones that didn't fit into the VPF criteria have had a rough time and have had to save every penny and do fund raisers to make the conversion since now film supply is virtually nil.
So the next change in your graph would have been 2010 - 2012 as the VPFs went into high-gear. After 2012 it would start to level off as the biggest VPF deal (Cinedigms) came to a close but the conversion was definitely still going on in 2013. By 2014, in the US you are down to the smaller independents, art, "what to do about drive-ins" type people. In fact, 2014 was the year of Drive-In conversions because print supply had already decreased dramatically. One would have to chose titles based on availability.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 07-20-2015 11:27 AM
quote: Paul Mayer
It'll be fun to see if one of the predictions in the article actually happens - that 8K for theaters and homes will come along so quickly that 4K will end up being a "lost" or "skipped" generation of technology.
I don't think there's any chance of 4K being skipped in the movie theater. I think the person who wrote the article is trying to apply a "Moore's Law" concept to this stuff.
There is a lot of specific advancements that have to be made to make 8K projection possible and practical in movie theaters. Movie productions aren't even ready for it yet. Hollywood studios are currently screwing up, making short sighted mistakes like rendering a lot of their tent-pole releases only in mere 2K, mainly to take advantage of the 3D option, but also to save money too.
Current 4K UHDTV sets are dropping in price, growing ever more attractive to customers. I just came back from a trip to visit my parents in Colorado Springs. During my stay we visited a Costco store to pick up some groceries. My dad really wanted one of the curved 4K TV sets on display there. It had a real native 4K demo reel playing and the video material looked awesome.
If current 4K TVs aren't in the "must have" category for consumers, the coming product lines that support wider color gamma tech (REC 2020, Dolby Vision, etc.) will further boost appeal. OLED-based displays may fall into more affordable price ranges.
All of this stuff will increase pressure on commercial movie theaters to improve their projected image quality. I sure don't like what I'm seeing currently.
quote: Lyle Romer
Can't the same argument be used to say that what you could actually get on screen from film is/was also limited by the optics? With the best case print on the most advanced film stock, how much resolution could you actually get on screen with 5-perf, 70mm film? Maybe that's why, with the exception of the jaggies on text, 2K doesn't really look much worse than 35mm from a resolution standpoint, even on a 60 foot screen. Black level and contrast are another story.
If I recall correctly, most film-based projectors were outfitted with various kinds of prime lenses. The auditoriums and screens had to be configured with certain focal lengths in mind. With d-cinema, nearly all such projection systems have some sort of zoom lens. Zooms aren't as sharp as primes.
When our local Carmike theater was showing 35mm film prints it was pretty common to be able to see film grain on the screen. I never see anything like that with the d-cinema shows. Whether the focus has simply drifted or was dialed to "soft" on purpose elements on text on screen are rendered noticeably blurry. The experience reminds me of watching a movie on an old rear projection HDTV set.
quote: Steve Guttag
I see the future of cinema is with the screen AS the light source and imager rather than projection. It would effectively end the resolution on the presentation side of things. It would be up to the pixel density of the day. It would be scalable based on the screen size itself. Think billboards and stadium video boards.
LED boards have a long way to go to function as a movie screen alternative to projected images. The biggest problem is cost per pixel. It's just too expensive to build a 1080p HD resolution display, never mind something much higher like 4K, in a standard movie theater auditorium.
Maintenance is another issue. Driver boards go bad. As the system ages and different driver boards are switched out the whole display loses its uniformity in color and contrast level. It ends up with a quilted look. Manufacturers like Daktronics have tools to adjust individual tiles to improve uniformity, but making the adjustments can be a real pain in the ass. Wear and tear over of the years affects the alignment of the driver boards. You end up being able to see the seams more obviously. Most of these things last 8-10 years tops.
quote: Scott Norwood
Quality would have to improve significantly, though, for these to be an option for cinemas. The newer ones that are being installed in baseball parks and such are generally pretty high-res (better than HD), but the pixel density is poor and they look quite awful up close. Has anyone ever tried to make a cinema-quality version of an LED scoreboard?
I don't know about cinema quality. Some cruise ship lines have used LED boards to show movies. These are typically outdoor displays mounted in view of the swimming pool and party deck. But I doubt if those displays were of any HD resolution, probably not even 720p.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic