*Laughing at how few runs it took to lay that nice green scratch down the center (great for opening night visits)
*Amazed at all the people not complaining about the show they paid top dollar for
*Realizing digital cinema is going to come a lot sooner than should purely from these type of operations.

Let's face it, over 90% of theaters put on a lousy show. If the projectionist is around and seems to care but doesn't know what he is doing, I'll always try to offer suggestions and help. What about everyone else?

 

Now, Cinemark is the only bear in the woods, except for one independant house and Mercyhurst.
 

Again,shame the public likes fancy lobbies and crap presentations.

--Chris
 

I kept wondering what TI DLP "pixelvision" would look like with all those little squares all over the screen. Hardly anything I'd pay $7.50 to see!!
 

Was the shake random and r e a l l y violent when it shook from side to side? I mean would it have been enough to see the analog soundtrack if the aspect ratio was proper? I've seen this before, but only on certain Christies in a given booth. The problem always follows the gate. Do you know what type of projectors they were using? I'm curious.
 

The side-to-side shake wasn't quite that bad, but I sure noticed it throughout the whole film! It's sort of like the image unsteadiness you get when watching VHS tape, especially on an older TV. The kind where portions of the image are shifting back and forth with respect to one another.

This was the theater that I worked at ten years ago for my first job. If they haven't changed any of their equipment in the booth, that means they are running Simplex XL projectors. Just a few weeks ago, I saw "Sleepy Hollow" on a different screen in the same house, and the presentation was quite good indeed! Good focus, clean film, and rock steady picture. When I saw the VHS-like pictures on the Bond film I said to myself "What gives?"

I almost wonder if this isn't one of those rare occasions where air currents from the HVAC system are causing this effect. It's fairly cold here in Chicago right now.
 

If you look hard enough, you will see it. If you are there to enjoy the show and story, then it is no different than a good presentation with a quality print.

I used "pixelvision" because I saw an LCD video projector at an audio store some years ago. I looked at the picture, and the pixels jumped right out at me. I wasn't even looking for them! I'm not aware of any DLP presentations being run here in the Chicago area, but if anyone knows of any, I'll make it a point to go and see for myself.

What I don't like about all these new digital technologies is they rely too much on compression techniques. Compression is actually a misnomer as what is actually happening is data reduction. "Compressed" data can be restored to its original form. MPEG, JPEG, MP3, and so on are all data reduction schemes that eliminate data based on whether or not it's thought to be useful. Since these are all referred to as compression schemes, that's what I'll call them. I'd bet if CDs had all this compression from the start that we'd still be buying phonograph records. You can bet that compression rates will go up and quality will go down once DLP becomes established. We're seeing uncompressed demos of DLP to get everyone to think this is the greatest thing since the discovery of fire.

Also, the ultimate aim of digital techniques always seems to be "Let's have something that's adequate". Not "Let's have the best", just something adequate. You'll have 1024 X 768 (or whatever DLP uses) resolution, no more, no less. They're admitting film is better when they say "Near 35mm-quality". Why didn't they go for "near 70mm quality" instead? Unfortunately all you need to do these days to convice the masses something is better is just to slap a DIGITAL label on it.
 

Just to let you know, or you can find the thread.
DLP is 1280 x 1024. Compression is 17:1 It DOES NOT use MPEG technology, instead each frame is compressed. Otherwise, I think you would have streaming video type presentation where you would have artifacts because of the differential between each frame. By the way, for all. It took about 34 GB of disk to store Toy Story 2 + trailers (Tigger, Bicentennial Man, Dinosaur, Policy, 2 TI DLP). QU-Bit system uses 4 - 18Gb drives that are mirrored to another 4 - 18GB drives. Incase one drive can't read, then it immediately goes to the mirror.

You will have a showing of Bicentennial man in DLP in Chicago, IL: AMC South Barrington 30.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to see Toy Story in DLP, but like people have said, they cheated because they took it directly from the computer. Bicentennial Man is being done by film transfer so depending on the quality of the original, you will see dirt, etc.

Paul Konen
Cinemark Legacy 24
 

I know where South Barrington 30 is, so I'll keep an eye on the local paper for show times. I don't know if the direct transfer of "Toy Story" is really cheating. Isn't the ultimate goal to eliminate the film completely? Therefore, in the future, everything will be shot with a sort of video camera not using film at all.

At least they're not using MPEG! So movie theaters will still have an edge over home video in the future as well. Digital TV does use MPEG2 for data compression. I tried with little success to make my way through the technical standards for digital television. It talks of "predicted frames" which would not exist in DLP. I'm guessing that the sort of "artifacts" seen on DVD will be a lot less noticeable with DLP for that reason.

My own thought on digital technology in general is this: Digital isn't necessarily better or worse; it's just a different way of doing things with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. It's well suited to certain tasks and wholly unsuited to others. Unfortunately, marketers have convinced the public that "digital whatever" is always the best available. So the public demands digital this and digital that without careful thought.