Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: UA+REGAL+EDWARDS??????ALL DIGITAL????

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Posted by John Eickhof (Member # 323) on 02-06-2001, 09:27 PM:

It apperas that billionaire Philip Anschutz of Denver has purchased the UA circuit for pennies on the dollar, and is now negotiating with Regal & Edwards! He owns a large stock in QWest communications and with their fiber optic network, he may be setting up to serve his new theatre empire with digital data and projection!!! Check out several articles in the LA Times at www.latimes.com dates were
Sunday, Feb 4, 2001, and Wed. Jan. 31, 2001
It may be the result of a billionaire that will get the digital thing going! and not the stingy film companies!!! Money talks......

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John Eickhof President, Chief Slave
Northwest Theatre Equipment Co., Inc.
P.O.Box 258
Wendell, ID. 83355-0258
208-536-5489
email: jeickhof@nteequip.com

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 02-06-2001, 09:50 PM:

I saw mention of that on usenet a while back. It will be an interesting test of the Feds and anti-trust law. If Anshutz is successful in pulling off the technical aspects, he'll be in for some lawsuits for vertical integration of an industry that a lot of companies are interested in. Personally, I think he's received some bad advice.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 02-06-2001, 10:39 PM:

quote:
I saw mention of that on usenet a while back. It will be an interesting test of the Feds and anti-trust law

Not really, that's over. Most of those have gone by the wayside. The best example (& near to what it looks like theatrical exhibition will become) is broadcasting. The feds have chucked all the restraints on "vertical integration" which precluded one company from owning the stations, the distribution network, & production company; that's for TV & radio. There was a court decision which pretty much set aside the restrictions of not being able to own the programming & the distribution components.

As a result, two companies (which due to "relaxation" of ownership restrictions) can control 80% of a market (which usually works out much closer to 100% due to being able to have enough money to buy the stations with the best signal) and offer only programming from their own companies. Why should they pay someone else? And 2 companies, each with a stable lock on 50% of the market, will cut operating expenses to a minimum. It's not like the audience has anywhere else to go for local broadcast; they watch or listen to what they're given.

Radio listenership & local broadcast TV viewing have plummeted in recent years (corporations say "due to complex reasons"' but it's due to poor quality programming, people are voting with their feet). However, profits & (until now) stock market values have been rising, due to cutting programming costs (which include equipment/technical costs).

This is what we're about to see in theatrical exhibition, I'm afraid. I always thoght that Sony would move first, since they had more pieces (hardware, software, & venues). This guy could certainly get it to go, & I'll bet the plan is to get into bed with a "programming provider" - whoah, hooking up with Warner/AOL would be a Nice Neat & robust package of content, distribution & exhibition componentry.

Of course, the studios are more interested in controlling distribution anyway, which is why nobody needs to be shocked if Disney is hyping for electronic distribution & exhibition even if the visual quality is lower & the company may not actually control venues (yet). Remember, Disney created Buena Vista for the exact reason of having distribution control instead of releasing through UA & whoever Disney had before that.

I also was thinking for a while that the "global format" of film would slow down an encroachment of lower-quality bottom-line driven formats, but when an entertainment "module" is offered in only one format, you'll get on the bandwagon or be left behind. Amazing to think that the highest-resolution format may become the formats of countries of a secondary financial tier.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-07-2001, 06:21 AM:

Here's a link to an article on Yahoo:
http://biz.yahoo.com/st/010206/21852.html

Takeover of UA Theatres, Regal and Edwards would give control of 19% of US theatre screens.

------------------
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 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 02-07-2001, 08:06 AM:

I don't see them going all digital because there are not that many digital movies made available by the film companies.

Secondly, Even thought the guy has (pinky finger to mouth) several billion dollars, is he going to:
1) Front the infrastructure cost of laying fiber or whatever to feed ALL of the theatres.
2) Pay to have a network administrator at each theatre just to insure that it continues to work correctly.

With my experience already with the DLP projector, I think the best medium so far is DVD. It is much cheaper to ship (8-10 DVDs) a small box vs 60-90 pounds of film + cans.
Although it does take about 3-4 hours of feeding to the player, having extra players to load during the day and then swap out at night would be ideal.

Paul.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-07-2001, 08:17 AM:

I still say that sending a box of DVDs or DLT tapes via FedEx overnight is going to be far cheaper than fiber for the forseeable future. The high "latency" of physical shipping isn't a problem for movies and the installation cost is zero.

Also consider the fact that a good network administrator will cost the theatre substantially more per hour than the best union projectionist. Even ignoring the equipment issues, this "digital cinema" thing is not going to be the "cheap, easy, efficient, high-quality" thing that TI and Sony and all the other proponents are saying it will be.

Of course, we all know that film will go away eventually, and I will welcome its demise as soon as the quality and convenience of film is surpassed by some other format. Unfortunately, if Anschutz et al. have their way, this point will never be reached, and moviegoers will have to settle for "good enough" rather than "significantly better." This would be a real shame.

I'm also very concerned about what this will do to independent theatres in small towns; many of these places can barely afford splicing tape, let alone red-LED "upgrades" to their soundheads. How are they going to be able to afford $75-400k apiece for a DLP or D-ILA machine? What about repertory houses--will anyone really pay $150k per title to make older films available in this format? It's hard enough to get good prints (at $1-2k apiece) of older titles now...

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-07-2001, 08:32 AM:

Well 19% isn't even the crust on the top of things as far as I am concerned. It is however a good number to start with if this is going to happen. Thats a small enough percentage to be able to learn from and deal with the problems of Digital Cinema, which will certainly have more than its share at first. It is also a good way for these theaters to loose allot of patrons because of the poor quality picture.
John, you forget that T.I. really has the foothold right now with contracts with all the major projection manufacturers. So this is what will most likely end up on screen. These projectors have a long way to go to make the pixels disappear, or to even get it as good as HDTV for that matter. Yes, I also like the JVC system better, but there is an even better more obscure system that is now comming to market that uses a line array that is scanned by lasers and then projected onto a screen. Stop and think.......it is far easier to make an extremely high resolution line array than it is to make an extremely high definition mirror chip. It is also far cheaper. This design has already been licensed to Sony. Not that I like Sony, but the design makes far more sense and it will project better quality for less money. At Jordon Commons here in Salt Lake City Larry Miller, who also has a net worth of many billions, installed DLP projectors in most of the auditoriums. The quality is only fair but it is interesting to see video on the large screens there. The smallest is 42 feet by 16 feet and the pixels are clearly visible from the middle of any of the auditoriums. In this situation I think he made the right decision. He put in both film and video in the theaters. Digital Video Projection like HDTV is still in its infancy and has another decade or so to go to make it right. Standard TV went through the same gestation. RCA had it ready to go to market in 1939, however they still had some problems to solve, but it worked pretty good. With the start of WW-2 RCA had extra time and government money to really perfect Television as it was utilized in the war, to an extent that most do not realize. With this usage and extra time alloted all bugs were taken care of by the time it hit the market in 1946 with the 630TS television set. I have one of these sets and they are quite remarkable, with picture quality far surpassing the quality of todays black and white sets. It actually approaches the quality of a good B&W studio monitor.
Mark @ GTS

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-07-2001, 08:36 AM:

At least if you own the data "pipeline" and you own the theatre, you won't have to pay thousands of dollars per month to someone else for the leased bandwidth -- the money goes in your own pocket.

Because they can easily get "borrowed", DVDs do have serious security issues that require "bulletproof" encryption right up to the projector itself, with no data "in the clear" to be tapped and illegally copied.

Kodak has unique technology for "Digital Watermarking" and encryption of images:
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/corp/researchDevelopment/technologyFeatu res/aboutDW.shtml#basics

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 02-07-2001, 09:13 AM:

Excellent comments from everybody! I'm aware of the BV distribution by Disney, the Sony theatres and production, but I have a gut feeling that this is leading to a full vertical integration from production, all the way down the pipe to exhibition. I can't think of another good reason to waste fiber bandwidth repeatedly sending "movies" when that property can command a much higher profit signal.

Anschutz has to see his venture into theatres as seed money for a bigger strategy. There is no question but Qwest is a much stronger business, and much earlier on the development timeline.

Unless Anschutz plans to use theatres only as a throw away method of increasing traffic over Qwest's lines, and drain profits from one company into another, he'd be foolish _not_ to try for complete vertical integration.

The only reason I think that an anti-trust foul may be called is that there are other multi-nationals, like Sony, that would stand to be hurt by a full VI. Big companies have the lobbying power and money to make big stinks. Where it will be interesting is waiting to see which guy blinks.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 02-07-2001, 10:05 AM:

I have to say for this to work in our future theaters sub par is unacceptable in any case. think of it this way Years ago you had the video disks that used a stylus to proces the information. This was as sub par as you could get in a non-tape format. Then a couple of years later laser discs took hold and the stylus system became obsolet. Laser disc at the time was far better than vhs and offered great sound but sub par on the image do to artifacts. The system however lasted quit a while. Then came the cd-i players the first attempt to get the information on a cd sized disc. Image quality was discusting heavy pixalization. Then came dvd with a sharper less artifacts and great sound. it is now dominating the market. It still has some problems. Don't even think about getting a finger print on the disc. Now look back and what do we have. A large stockpile of obsolete units and people trading in there laserdisc titles for dvd titles. Same will happen with digital cinema. If it becomes wide spread before the best possable system is derived then when one is there will be a hudge stockpile of obsolete units. That is why this should be slowly implemented to avoid huge stockpiles of obsolete units. the current words of good enough does not cut it.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-07-2001, 10:51 AM:

Why does all this discussion of high level corporate takeovers remind me of Rick's words in "Casablanca":

"...little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that."

Posted by John Eickhof (Member # 323) on 02-07-2001, 11:01 AM:

John, you're quote is quite on the money!
Anschutz already has the fiber optic lines laid! (Check out QWest communications) I too think the 'integration' factor will not be an issue as most of the 'film' companies are now 'television' producers and braodcasters!
As for quality, yes it will need more, but if you look at the logarithm of how technology has progeressed during the last 10 years as opposed to the century before that, it won't be long! Also, SMPTE and others still have not established final standards! There are formats aond resolution / pixel numbers out there that are staggering! Again, as the ethyloid fills my veins, I don't want to see this, but I know I can't stop it either!

------------------
John Eickhof President, Chief Slave
Northwest Theatre Equipment Co., Inc.
P.O.Box 258
Wendell, ID. 83355-0258
208-536-5489
email: jeickhof@nteequip.com

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-07-2001, 11:16 AM:

The one thing we CAN all do is to "Do Film Right", and not give anyone an excuse for mediocre digital cinema systems to claim to be better.

And as lovers of the movie experience, we need to demand that Digital Cinema must utimately be better than "Film Done Right", and at an affordable price.

Rick, Ilsa and Victor ultimately DID make a difference in this crazy world, and so can we!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-07-2001, 01:06 PM:

This is the most depressing thread on the forum right now.

Let's see...

~ We can all "do film right" till we're blue in the face, but it doesn't matter, the digital systems are going to take over eventually anyway

~ Little people don't amount to a hill of beans. This means that small theatres will never be able to afford digital equipment, and most of the people in the rural areas of the world will have to get on a plane, or at least take a multi-hour car trip, to see a movie (oops, "enhanced TV" presentation) in a theatre.

~ Quality really isn't number one. If it was, NOBODY would be buying these digital machines yet. (Of course we all know quality isn't number one, "profit" is.)

~ The first "wave" of digital machines will be obsoleted almost immediately (same thing that happened with the "stylus" video disks, which were a stupid idea from the word go). How many companies will go bankrupt because of this, both on the equipment and the exhibition sides of the fence?

What I can't understand is WHY the digital-cinema people don't take a cue from the creators of the music CD? They took a lesson from the Betamax/VHS wars...they developed one world-wide standard and THEN sold it to the public. (OK, they should have made it a more "secure" format, but that's beside the point.) You'd think the computer, digital sound, video, cinema and just about every other industry would learn from that, instead of putting out incompatible stuff that is sub-par quality and lasts a couple of months before being outmoded.

It's just amazing that there's obviously a steady supply of suckers ready and waiting to dump money into an unproven technology in the name of having the "latest thing," even though that latest thing is a step down, quality wise.

Oh well, as a small towner, what happens to me doesn't amount to a hill of beans anyway. Visit me in the poor house, everyone!Probably be more of us in there than you think!

Posted by Mark Mayfield (Member # 729) on 02-07-2001, 02:40 PM:

Random thoughts:
Don't forget that Sony is a Japanese based company, the US Anti-trust laws don't apply. I would imagine the Bush Admin. has an affection for Texas Instruments and any business developments that benefit them.

I have said all along that Digital cinema will create a whole new cast of players in our industry, the likes on Sony, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Qwest, Cisco. It is happening. THEY have the $$$ to make the technology investment and to intergate the theatre experience into a multipurpose "presentation venue", whether that be movies, live sports and music events, corporate presentations, etc. I think we are looking at a major industry shift.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 02-07-2001, 05:19 PM:

These are the last coments I am going to make on this subject for now. This is a depressing thread because I can see myself on a park bench talking to my grandchildren using the word I remember when.

I remember when there were these huge outdoor theaters. They called them drive-ins. You could park your car and watch a movie among other things.

I remember when they used to play movies at the small town theater. Now you have to drive 100 miles to see a movie.

I remember when it was fun to put a movie together and threading a movie up and having everything run perfectly with no problems. Being able to play a film for many weeks without having a single problem or scratches develope.

I remember when it was fun to be able to talk to other people that did the same thing you did and learn a lot from them and the good feelings that you have when you where able to help them with a problem.

I remember when....excuse me grandpa...what is film? Oh thats the way movies used to be and fun to watch....Why don't they still use it? Some rich guy decided that video looked better...well kids are we going to sit around here and talk about the old days or are we going to the digital video plex to watch jaws 10?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 02-07-2001, 08:17 PM:

I say that the advertisers will ultimately pay for the digital infrastructure. It is the biggest pool of money and they have a big interest in getting their message across. If they can control (and control is a key issue in the digection) what is on your screen they can bill appropiately.

I don't see digection happening as fast as many people do because I don't think the money is there. The technology is already passable. VHS teaches the lesson (or even NTSC) that one doesn't have to have the best, just good enough for something to succeed.

As for film 35mm isn't good enough for most screens. I just did a six plex using Schneider and ISCO lenses...the grains in these 12 foot tall pictures was just too large for me. If this industry was interested in quality and selling their customers what they can't get at home, theatres should be going with 70mm until digital is ready for prime-time (both technically and financially). 5/70 was the best format to ever come down the pike (30fps too, 24fps flickers too much).

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-07-2001, 08:42 PM:

Steve said: "As for film 35mm isn't good enough for most screens. I just did a six plex using Schneider and ISCO lenses...the grains in these 12 foot tall pictures was just too large for me."

Graininess is mainly a function of the film format, camera negative film speed, and whether the negative was properly exposed. Certainly a 500 speed negative that is underexposed by three stops will produce a smoky, grainy 1.85:1 image. But a well-exposed, moderate speed 35mm camera negative will produce images with very acceptable grain levels, even on very large screens.

I certainly agree with you that the ideal is to have 65mm camera negative film and 70mm prints. But even Super-35 cinematography (e.g., "Titanic") can look very good with a 70mm print projected on a 30 x 66 foot screen. And a 35mm "scope" print of that negative can look very good on a 20 x 48 foot screen. (Not to say there aren't examples of grainy or unsharp Super-35 ("Size Does Matter on the Fourth of July", if you know what I mean )

A recent 35mm print that I was especially impressed with for grain and sharpness was "The Thin Red Line", shot in 35mm anamorphic.

We all know that a higher frame rate will improve flicker, strobing and motion rendition, especially on large screens. Cinerama and the original Todd-AO had it right almost 50 years ago. Showscan, Super Dimension 70, ClearVision, MaxiVision, and others keep trying. Recall the SMPTE task force study about ten years ago that supported the change. But distributors don't want to pay for it.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 02-07-2001, 09:05 PM:

While it will be sad to see film go away, it will be OK if the technology that replaces it gives the same quality for less money, or gives better quality for the same money. Right now, digital projection seems to give less quality for more money!

I don't think it's completely fair to say that 35mm isn't good enough for most screens. My own feeling is that 35mm's limit is about 50 feet wide (scope.) Obviously, it's somewhat subjective, but if all other parts of the projection system are set correctly, I think the picture more than just acceptable. Personally, I think that many 35mm releases lately are just done poorly- just slightly out of focus. I wonder if some studio-types are saving money on 35mm releases, saying; "Since digital projection is the next thing, we only have to make our 35mm prints look as good."

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-07-2001, 09:25 PM:

John Walsh said: "Personally, I think that many 35mm releases lately are just done poorly- just slightly out of focus."

Another possible reason for less than perfect sharpness is that many pictures have quite a few digital effects or CGI, which may sometimes be done at lower resolution to save money. Or camera diffusion filters may be used to hide wrinkles or makeup imperfections (when was the last time you saw Robert Redford sharply focused? )

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 02-07-2001, 11:04 PM:

quote:
The only reason I think that an anti-trust foul may be called is that there are other multi-nationals, like Sony, that would stand to be hurt by a full VI. Big companies have the lobbying power and money to make big stinks. Where it will be interesting is waiting to see which guy blinks.

I was thinking yesterday about why Sony didn't make the first move on end-to-end programming & exhibition, expecially since they already had so many of the pieces. As was mentioned, Sony is perceived as a Japanese company, & the US is still pretty nationalistic, so Sony would probably dodge lots of damaging bullets by being the *second* verticallly-integrated organization.

Really, they're ready to just jump & even pull out front as soon as the concept does not look strange & dangerous to the US consumers. Let someone else have all the ugly PR & biggest legal bills in their startup costs.

Posted by Ky Boyd (Member # 23) on 02-08-2001, 07:09 PM:

There was also an article in The Industry Standard on Feb. 5th about Mr. Anschutz and his plans. Here's the link:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,21852-0,00.html

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 02-09-2001, 02:55 AM:

From the article Ky linked to:

quote:
"Phil Anschutz has a bug up his butt about this and is convinced he's going to blaze the trail," says Jonathan Taplin.

Oh boy. There goes the neighborhood. Judging by how wonderful a reputation some of Anschutz's other companies have (just do a web search for "consumer opinion" in regards to Qwest), I think it's safe to say this is going to be yet another decrease in the quality of the movie-going experience.

------------------
Aaron Haney
Professional Complainer
Apple Computer, Inc.

Posted by John Eickhof (Member # 323) on 02-09-2001, 11:31 AM:

Yes, it's like I said in a previous post...
Anschutz couldn't run a railroad right...so watch out for his theatres!!!

------------------
John Eickhof President, Chief Slave
Northwest Theatre Equipment Co., Inc.
P.O.Box 258
Wendell, ID. 83355-0258
208-536-5489
email: jeickhof@nteequip.com

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 02-09-2001, 11:43 PM:

Theatrical release at all seems to me to be pointless to the gigabuck set. Just shoot the picture digitally, make DVDs & sell'em. The production money is back sooner, no big screens to worry about, no moronic public to deal with.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 02-10-2001, 12:15 AM:

It is very improtant to remember that it is the theatrical release of a film that generates the interest in buying a DVD or VHS copy of a movie. Even the rental stores base their decision on how many copies of a given film on how well it performes in a theater. If you polled a 100 people and asked them why they bought the DVD they would all say something like I saw this at the local theater or my friend saw this movie at the theater and said it was good. Video distributions biggest advetisers are the local theaters. No one would give a crap about renting or buying Titanic had it not played in theaters. No matter how the film is going to be projected in theaters film or digital video. The bottom line is theatrical distribution of a film is the root of the money tree in the movie industry. Without the root no fruit.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-11-2001, 06:47 PM:

Darryl, I am in total agreement with you (and I'm sure NATO is too) --- "Without theatres as the root, there is no fruit!" (catchy phrase

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