quote: Lyle Romer

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I remember a while back reading that Sony will shut down SDDS. If somebody wanted to, can they still buy a new SDDS processor?

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Sony Cinema Proiducts ceased to exist sometime in 2001.

That answers the second part of your question.

SDDS units can still be FIXED however, by Sony Consumer Repair in Fremont CA (awful service, IMO), or (my high recommendation) by Robbie Hidalgo at Cinematech, who also provides awesome customer service and technical support for those of us still stuck with Sony cinema products!

-Aaron
 

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-21-2005, 03:35 PM:
 

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen

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Those with Sonys are lucky that they still even print it on at least some films.

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Make that "nearly all films". If you check the Reel-ID section randomly, you will find that whatever movie you click on, it still has the tracks. Also all movies I randomly checked in the field in the last months had the tracks.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-21-2005, 06:41 PM:
 
Michael,
You mis-understood me. What I meant was that we are lucky they are still being printed because the labs would rather do away with the SDDS stuff on their printers. Anything that slows them down ys know..... and this one is obsolete to boot. If they had their way we would only be getting SRD and DTS tracks. Quite frankly that wouldbn't bother me one bit either. I will laugh when that day comes along for I have not sold one stinkin Sony system in my career .

Mark
 

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 05-21-2005, 06:52 PM:
 
Michael,

When I was projecting it was a mixure of mainstream and art house stuff. I always made a point of looking to see what tracks were on the prints which passed through my hands, even though we were not equipped with any digital system. If we forget about the classic films, which obviously wouldn't have any sort of digital track on them, unless they were new print from a re-recorded negative, I doubt if one film in ten had SDDS, probably more like one in twenty. Even most of the mainstream-ish films, maybe 75%, didn't have it.

I know of very few cinemas over here which were ever equipped for it, and I think I've only ever actually heard it once.

The projectionist at Bradford was quite enthusiastic about it, but few other people seem to be.

Other than eight channels, which most films weren't released with, and most cinemas weren't equipped for, did it have any real advantage over SR-D and DTS? The greater redundency in the recorded data didn't seem to result in greater reliability in the real world.

When released, it was the most expensive system, it was the last of the major systems to be released, by which time both the Dolby and DTS systems were already becomming established. Was there ever really a market for two different digital sound on film systems? It didn't just need to be as good as the competing systems, it needed to offer some real advantages, which I don't think it did. I'm quite surprised that it lasted as long as it did, rather than going the way of the CDS and LC Concepts systems.

If I was a cinema owner, what real reason could you give me why I should install SDDS rather than one of the competing systems?
 

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 05-21-2005, 07:18 PM:
 
SDDS is possibly attractive right now because it's possible to get used equipment really cheap and the US prints of mainstream movies still carry the tracks, at least for the time-being.

They're probably figuring on going with SDDS until they can afford an eventual upgrade once SDDS is finally dead and gone or when these "buy it used" systems burn out, whichever comes first.

Never enough time or money to do it right, but always enough to do it over...
 

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-21-2005, 07:24 PM:
 
If not for AMC choosing it, SDDS might just be a footnote in the history of cinema sound now.

Regal Cinema World 8 in Eugene has (had? I don't know if they ever use SDDS now) all 3 digital sound formats. I saw Episode 2 there twice, in SDDS and DTS (they opened it in SDDS but it was dropping out at the end of reel 1 so they switched to DTS after the first day). Also LOTR2 and Spider-Man, the latter in SDDS-8. Those SDDS shows were the best-sounding movies I ever experienced. It was probably a setup fluke, but their SDDS sounded audibly better than either DTS or SR-D to me (that is, as Mark would say, "When it worked").
 

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Posted by Bernie Anderson Jr (Member # 410) on 05-21-2005, 07:44 PM:
 
The 3000 series worked very well and in my experience where reliable. Jersey Gardens was opened about 4 years ago with them and they all still work.

Bernie
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-21-2005, 07:49 PM:
 
Bernie,
I have no quams about the 3000 units either. I've not had to repair a single one of them. The main problem still exists and thats the track susceptability to extremely quick wear(as compared to SRD and DTS) and then not playing back reliably, or at all. How quickly the track becomes non-playable depends on what projector you're running and how well maintained that projector is. Weather you have a 2000 or 3000 unit the track wear problem is there and thats where the real problem lies. Prolonging track life is one place where Film-Guard really shines . Its just sometimes difficult to convince every SDDS customer to use it.

Mark
 

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-21-2005, 09:06 PM:
 
Stephen - my experience in Germany mirrors your observations. SDDS never really happened on a larger scale in Europe.
As Manny pointed out, most releases in the US do have the tracks on them.
I worked with SDDS a lot and I loved it. It is the only one which sounds noticeably better. There was a time when it could have ruled the cinema audio world because a lot of the earlier bugs still in the 2000 series had been worked out, but then Sony made their historical mistake and dropped the format.
Another problem was that a lot of installers did not understand the system fully. I have often seen improperly installed and aligned systems in the field. Even though SDDS had some really excellent support technicians, they were always spread out too thin. Sony apparently never understood what it takes to establish such a system in the real world of cinema. They could have learned a lot from Dolby and their outstanding support and transparency, but they refused to do so. I mean Sony as a corporation, not the technicians.
The issue of track wear is often misunderstood. True, some projectors were nicer to the tracks than others, and abusive projectors would of course contribute to the problem. The main problem, however, was and still may be bad printing quality. I have seen properly done tracks on prints which were trashed into oblivion, and the SDDS track still played fine with very low error rates.
While the ruggedness of a playback system and its ability to withstand damage are obviously important factors, I have often resisted to accept living with these since those lab problems also affected the visible image quality and the other sound formats as well.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-21-2005, 09:19 PM:
 

quote: Michael Schaffer

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They could have learned a lot from Dolby and their outstanding support and transparency, but they refused to do so. I mean Sony as a corporation, not the technicians.

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quote: Manny Knowles

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SDDS is possibly attractive right now because it's possible to get used equipment really cheap and the US prints of mainstream movies still carry the tracks, at least for the time-being.

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But if it get dead, then you may throw it away!

Also I was serching used SDDS for fun and I didn't found anyone, except some Sony analogue DCP1000 but broken.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-06-2006, 01:03 PM:
 
The Kodak/ORC Cinema Digital Sound (CDS) was the first commercial system to put the "bits" on the film in 1990. It deliberately chose to put the digital information in the analog soundtrack area of the 35mm print, so the track would not be abraded or damaged by the projector gate or sprockets. Although the goal of virtually no wear or degradation of the CDS track was accomplished, the lack of an analog backup track was the system's undoing when hardware failures occurred.

Ron Uhlig led the Kodak effort to develop Cinema Digital Sound and prove the concept of recording very high digital bit rates on film. Howard J. Flemming led the effort at Optical Radiation Corporation, developing the reader and electronic hardware.
 

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Posted by John Eickhof (Member # 323) on 04-06-2006, 03:21 PM:
 
John, Were you in Hollywood for the CDS premier / demo? I enjoyed it well and thought that digital sound was really something to be reckoned with! Plus I had my 1927 ERPI Vitaphone machine on display in the Lobby next to the CDS modified Century JJ! I remember my Wife turning to me during the demo and saying "they need to quiet that baby down in the rear corner of the auditorium" Just about that time she realized it was the demo! and the sound was coming from a left rear chanell!! I also remember during the field testing when Bob Goulding owner of the Marysville Drive -in theatre (now both he and the drive in are deceased) calling me on a Friday nite in a panic because the print he received that day had only 'static' on the optical track!! The exchange sent out the wrong print!! those were the days..eh??
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-06-2006, 08:13 PM:
 
But the 70mm CDS track wouldn't last very long if the projector gate and shoe wasn't converted over to narrower bands!
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-06-2006, 10:42 PM:
 
We just completed replacing all SDDS units for one of our customers with more reliable equipment. Expect a glut of 2000's on E-bay soon.....

Mark
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-07-2006, 09:31 AM:
 

quote:

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John, Were you in Hollywood for the CDS premier / demo? I enjoyed it well and thought that digital sound was really something to be reckoned with!

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I was not at the premier.

Ron Uhlig and I worked together for decades in the Motion Picture Product Development Group at Kodak. Another Kodak person who helped "make CDS happen" was Tom Kuhn, who is now with Deluxe Labs in Hollywood. My current supervisor is Frank Ricotta, who was Technical Manager at Technicolor when the first CDS prints were being made.

CDS may not have been a commercial success, but it did pave the way for today's digital sound systems.
 

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Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 04-07-2006, 12:08 PM:
 
Didn't somebody from Kodak that worked on data on film technology also go to Dolby and work on Dolby Digital? I thought they told me that when I interviewed there (but it has been almost 10 years now).
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-07-2006, 12:28 PM:
 

quote: Lyle Romer

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Didn't somebody from Kodak that worked on data on film technology also go to Dolby and work on Dolby Digital? I thought they told me that when I interviewed there (but it has been almost 10 years now).

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