Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Film resolution vs. HDTV

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-05-2000, 12:35 PM:

Here is a question for John Pytlak or anyone else who might know...

Is there an equivalent or estimate of how many "lines" of resolution a film image has compared to HDTV? I had a customer ask me about this and wasn't quite sure how to answer. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-05-2000, 01:15 PM:

Most experts agree that at least 4K scanning is needed to fully capture the detail in a 35mm motion picture negative. Assuming a full frame camera aperture, this is effectively 4K x 3K or 12 million pixels per frame.

Here are some interesting articles on the Kodak website:
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/stars/kuttner.shtml
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/stars/compare.shtml
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/newsletters/inCamera/oct99/scan.shtml
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/news/theFuture.shtml

------------------
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 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-05-2000, 05:44 PM:

Thanks John.

Posted by Pete Lawrence (Member # 130) on 12-05-2000, 08:20 PM:

This has nothing to do with the question, but I had the opportunity to work with Dave Kuttner when the company I work for did some consulting for him. John referenced an article at http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/stars/kuttner.shtml
Mr. Kuttner is a very interesting and knowledgeable gentleman. They’re doing incredible things with film scan transfers.

Posted by Martin Frandsen (Member # 74) on 12-06-2000, 04:09 AM:

John you say 4k? is that in other words 4000 lines pr. 35mm full frame?

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-06-2000, 06:59 AM:

Yes, 4K is shorthand for 4096 lines of horizontal resolution (2048 line pairs).

Note that the Kodak Lightning digital film
scanner and recorder digitizes a
4-perf "Academy" frame in two seconds, at a resolution of 3656 x 2664 pixels/color.

For comparison, the current DLP-Cinema digital projectors use 1280 x 1024 pixels, less than many laptop computer displays.

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 12-06-2000, 08:04 AM:

John, referesh my memory? Was that comparison of the actual image when viewed as a still frame? I ask, because I've seen a similar figure used for still camera comparisons.

The moving images in motion picture film can suffer from the image moving back and forth along the lens axis during projection from the heat of the lamp, which degrades the quality from those figures given for still images.

I think there is a lot going on at a subjective level in viewing motion picture film. Among other things, the flicker rate of various presentation systems has long been suggested to have an "entraining" or trance inducing effect. Those subjective issues and past experiences affect peoples perception, sometimes in an irrational way.

To give an idea of the actual overall image quality of projected film, I offer this easily verifiable comment. There is no way that anyone can convince me that matte lines invisible on the projected film images can suddenly appear and be obvious on a television dub, unless the image quality of the projected image is somehow more forgiving (and hence in some ways a less accurate representation) than the tv image.
We all know how poor the quality of tv is.

It doesn't mean I enjoy the projected film image any less, it just means I take the religious wars and comparisons of image quality on a frame by frame basis a lot less seriously. To my own eyes, which have to wear glasses, the current crop of digital appears comparable to the average 35mm presentation of a clean print. Yes there are differences, but the digital is clearly superior to any 16mm I have ever seen, even though by the stated figures this should be a more accurate comparison.

Give me an 11 x 14 print that I can view close-up though, and I'll spot the differences every time, even at 4 megapixels.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-06-2000, 08:51 AM:

Jerry:

The figures are for the image on the film. Obviously, if you have poor printing or projection, some sharpness will be lost.

With care, most theatres can achieve 68 line pairs per millimetre of resolution, as measured by the SMPTE 35-PA (RP 40) test film. For the normal 0.825 x 0.690 inch (20.96 x 17.53 mm) projectable area of the scope format, this translates to 1425 x 1192 line pairs, or 2850 x 2384 lines --- still not too shabby. Even for 1.85:1 flat (0.825 x 0.446 inches, 20.96 x 11.33 mm), 68 lp/mm translates to 1425 x 770 line pairs or 2850 x 1540 lines.

My personal experience in viewing digitally projected images is that the lack of sharpness and the pixel structure become objectionable at viewing distances closer than about 2 screen heights. IMHO, I can sit much closer to a well-projected 35mm film image. And most modern theatre designs feature "close up" seating with large screens.

One reason matte lines are sometimes more visible in video is the large amount of "edge enhancement" sometimes used to give the impression of sharpness in video. This sometimes causes objectionable "ringing" of edges, as seen in the recent DVD of "The Sound of Music". No way does the DVD compare to a film presentation for true sharpness, but the video has "sharpened" edges, which make it seem sharp from a distance, but unsharp and "edgy" when viewed closer.

Posted by Rory Burke (Member # 512) on 12-06-2000, 10:14 AM:

Well it might be interesting to note then that the Qbit system has been doing 4k by 4k image testing for IMAX for a while now wihch should raise our hopes that eventually they will reach that capacity of quality with our Digital Cinema world that is comming soon. In escence the promise of Digital Cinema is to not compromise the integrity of quality but to maintain it and therefore improve on it as well.

Rory

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-06-2000, 10:51 AM:

Rory:

If you read the information on the Kodak website, Kodak is part of the "digital revolution" too. But IMHO, today's Digital Cinema is "not ready for prime time" because it doesn't match the quality of "Film Done Right" and is not yet cost-effective. I agree that Digital Cinema can be better than film, but it's not there yet. My real worry is that the same "cut cost to the bone" mentality that hurts film presentation will lead to mediocre digital presentation in many theatres.

Posted by John Schulien (Member # 215) on 12-06-2000, 05:10 PM:

Here's an interesting article about a new digital projection technology called Grating Light Valve that appears to address many of the shortcomings of DLP.
http://www.e-town.com/news/article.jhtml?articleID=3772

There's better information at the company web site:
www.siliconlight.com

If you click on "GLV Technology" and go to the bottom of the page, there are some good white-papers which describe the technology.

The device uses a 1D linear array of micromechanical ribbon mirrors. Ordinarily, the mirrors reflect, but each mirror can be electrostatically deflected. When alternate ribbons are deflected, that portion of the device becomes a diffraction grating. The device produces a single line, which is mechanically scanned horizontally, creating a 2D picture.

Some of their claims:

o Up to 30,000 lumens. (It's made out of mirrors, so it can handle a lot of energy)

o 4000:1 contrast range (Compared to 1000:1 for film)

o Elimination of pixelation

o The system can compensate for a burned-out pixel element.

o Because the image is scanned horizontally, only a single row of pixels is needed, so the HDTV prototype has only 1080 pixels, instead of the 2 million plus needed in a 2D array.
This means that this technology could easily be scaled up to the 4K or so that would be needed to surpass the grain resolution of film.

o And just in case Hollywood needed a damn good reason to adopt this technology, this article points out:
http://www.e-town.com/columns/features.jhtml?articleID=1199

that because the technology allows such fast switching times, each frame can be overscanned up to six times, and apparently this makes it impossible to videotape, (you get vertical bars running through your picture), so the image is camcorder-proof!

Interesting reading.

- John

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-06-2000, 08:40 PM:

Apparently, over at the ETC Lab (housed in what was the Pacific, nee Warner Hollywood Theater) Christie/TI have got 1920x1080 DLP imagers almost ready for evaluation. I think they are trying to have them ready to deploy in time for screening the next Star Wars.

The SMPTE Hollywood Section had a meeting at the lab about a month ago and we got to see the current DLP imager in action on a 50' screen (clips from Braveheart and American Beauty). At least they got rid of the scalloped fixed pattern noise I saw during Phantom Menace a year ago.

Still quite a ways to go to match "film done right" (at least in terms of static resolution) but at least the pixel counts are moving in the right direction. Cost is still another story...

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-07-2000, 08:43 AM:

About John's comment on videotaping movies:

I don't see why anyone would go to the trouble to videotape a movie from a projection screen. I have heard of people trying to take camcorders into theatres to do it, but to me, that's as ridiculous as trying to record music by putting a microphone in front of a speaker in order to record music. There is a tremendous amount of degradation involved and I don't see that anyone could come up with a sellable product that way.

1. The camera would have to be absolutely still.

2. Anyone getting up between the camcorder and the screen would create a silhouette in the image.

3. Perspective distortion would be present in the image.

4. The image would be of extremely low quality anyway.

5. In most regular theatres using film, wouldn't the 48 Hz shutter rate interfere with the 30 frames per second (60 fields per second) operation of the camcorder?

Back to the topic of HDTV vs. film: It is difficult to compare resolution figures when comparing digital images and film images (or even from analog videotape). One medium may have a somewhat lower resolution but lower noise than another medium with higher resolution with greater noise. It would be interesting to take HDTV and film and compare the noise present in an image and then compare a film image taken with a pixel pattern at that same resolution and see how much "noise" there is in the film version.

As I understand, with film, there are grains of a certain density, and the grains can be considered to be randomly distributed on the medium (correct me if I'm wrong, John). Comparing film with digital imaging, to me, seems very similar to comparing non-uniform sampling to uniform sampling. Suppose I sample a scene with 1000000 pixels, and in the first case, I sample in such a manner that my samples are arranged in a uniform grid of 1000 by 1000. In the second case, I sample with 1000000 pixels, but those 1000000 sample locations are randomly distributed throughout the scene. Theoretically, both cases have the same "resolution" and contain the same amount of information, but in the second case I cannot really say that the resolution of my sampling is 1000 by 1000 like I can for the first case, although I can say that the resolution is 1000000 pixels. It would take more resolution than 1000 by 1000 to produce a good reproduction of the second case, and in fact, no uniform x by x sampling will ever exactly reproduce the second case. (No digital scanning device will ever be able to produce a non-loss scanning of film).

Look at it the other way and let's say I start with a uniform 1000 by 1000 sampling and I want to capture it on a non-uniform medium. It would take more than 1000000 randomly-distributed "grains" or samples to capture that information.

There are also the color-depth issues in the film vs. video debate. In short, I think comparing film and digital resolutions are like comparing apples and oranges.

Evans

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-07-2000, 09:54 AM:

Paul Mayer said:

"The SMPTE Hollywood Section had a meeting at the lab about a month ago and we got to see the current DLP imager in action on a 50' screen (clips from Braveheart and American Beauty). At least they got rid of the scalloped fixed pattern noise I saw during Phantom Menace a year ago."

I was at that October 10 meeting too, sitting in about the fifth row, screen center. From that viewing distance, the pixel structure was objectionably noticeable to me.

Sorry we didn't get to say "hello" in person.

Posted by John Schulien (Member # 215) on 12-07-2000, 11:59 AM:

Evans A Criswell makes some excellent points, and asks:

> I don't see why anyone would go to the trouble to videotape a movie from a
> projection screen. I have heard of people trying to take camcorders into theatres to do
> it, but to me, that's as ridiculous as trying to record music by putting a
> microphone in front of a speaker in order to record music. There is a tremendous amount of
> degradation involved and I don't see that anyone could come up with a sellable product
> that way.

I completely agree. It seems insane, yet people do it. Yes, the video quality is terrible. It's not done for the quality.

Basically it's organized crime. These are professional operations that pay to have slick, four-color packaging made to closely resemble legitimate studio product. Then they mass-duplicate the inferior video, and sell it through black-market channels. I've seen copies turn up at flea markets, in the hands of street vendors, etc. A coworker of mine regularly travels to Tiawan, and apparently everything in American theatres is also available in cheap, knock-off VCDs.

Illegal, reprehensable, indefensable, and exactly the sort of thing that copyright law was designed to protect against.

Back to the HDTV vs film ...

I mostly agree with your discussion about uniform vs non-uniform sampling, but I have to question the statement that "(No digital scanning device will ever be able to produce a non-loss scanning of film)." If you scan a frame of film at sufficient resolution, your scan will begin to expose the grain structure itself.

According to this Kodak page:
http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/support/h1/exposure.shtml#structure

the silver particles in developed film range in size from about 0.0002 to 0.002 mm. Given a frame height of 11.33 mm for a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, what sort of resolution do we need so that a pixel is approximately the size as a large grain particle:

11.33mm x 1 grain/0.002mm = 5665 grains

Meaning that at a vertical resolution of 5665 lines, each pixel would be about the size of a large film grain particle. This is roughly in line with claims that 4096 pixel resolution is required to fully capture the information in a 35mm film frame.

Anything more and you're not increasing the image resolution -- instead you're sharpening and defining the appearance of the individual grain particles. In effect, you're oversampling the image -- using a higher resolution uniform sampling to record a lower resolution non-uniform sampling.

At some point, you're going to lose the ability to detect the difference between film, and a digital scan of that film at high enough resolution to capture the grain structure. According to this page:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/visual/home/faq.html

> The resolution at the center of the retina is about 1 arcminute under ideal conditions,
> and this falls off rapidly outside the central 2 degree region. At 10 degrees
> eccentricity, the resolution is about 10 arcminute. A high resolution display with
> 1280 pixels across a 60 degree field of view achieves about 3 arcminutes per pixel.

which implies that when you start exceeding 3-4K resolution, there is a serious question as to whether the human eye can even perceive the difference.

I'm really at a loss as to the color depth issue. I've never seen any comparisons. It's a serious question, & I have no answer.

But here's the basic point I'm trying to make. Whether or not this particular GLV technology can be effectively brought to market as a digital projector:

o Because the imaging element is one-dimensional, It is probably scalable to resolutions that not only duplicate the image, but the film grain structure as well.

o It is claimed to be capable of operating at brightness levels in excess of what film can handle without damage. Hence, it does something that film can't do -- it can be brighter.

o It is also claimed to have a contrast ratio four times that of film, so in theory, it can do something else that film can't do -- it can have better contrast.

o Something I missed the first time around. These devices work so fast, that each frame can be projected six times. But what if instead of projecting each frame six times, you projected six different frames, or performed six-step interpolation between frames. You now have a potential frame rate of 144 frames/second. Film can't do that either.

o This is not going to be the last word in projection technology. If anything, digital projection technology is a highly underdeveloped field. I think that digital projection has the same potential for improvement as hard-drives and CPUs a decade ago. A "big" hard drive was 100 megs, and a "fast" CPU was 20 MHz.

Now, hard drives hold 400 times as much data, and CPUs are 50 times as fast.

My question is:

Given that there is the potential for 1-2 orders of magnitude improvement across the board in every aspect of video projection technology ... i.e. 10 years from now, 1280x1024 will probably appear as quaint and old-fashioned as 16 color CGA appears today:

Over the next 10 years, will "film done right" be able to maintain an edge over "digital projection done right"?

- John

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-07-2000, 12:24 PM:

John Schulien asked: "Over the next 10 years, will "film done right" be able to maintain an edge over "digital projection done right"?"

That begs the question, will distributors and theatres invest in "digital projection done right" any more than they try to "do film right" today? Sadly, I doubt it.

The real danger to theatres is that they will lose audiences to high quality "home theatres" that will use the same digital technology being developed for "Digital Cinema":

For example, from a TI press release 4/27/1999:

____________________________________________

"Signing this agreement with Hitachi is an extremely exciting
milestone in the development of DLP technology," said Bob
England, Senior Vice President and Manager of TI’s Digital
Imaging division. "Hitachi’s choice of DLP for this new High
Definition product speaks volumes about not only how much the
technology has progressed, but also its extraordinary potential for
the future. We’re excited that DLP technology will deliver the
first-ever all-digital display to the home entertainment market."

And from

5/25/1999

Texas Instruments And Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America,
Inc. Announce Agreement To Jointly Develop High Definition
Home Entertainment Display

Digital Light Processing™ technology chosen as basis for new all-digital
rear projection display system

Dallas, Texas - Texas Instruments (TI) announced today the signing of
an agreement under the terms of which Mitsubishi Digital Electronics
America Inc. (MDEA) will use Digital Light Processing™ (DLP™)
technology to develop an all-digital, large screen, high definition (HD)
rear projection television.

"We have been watching the development of DLP technology for many
years and have been impressed with the dramatic performance
improvements that have been made," explained Yoji Otani, president
and CEO of Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc. "Instrumental
to our continued leadership of digital television is the incorporation of a
digital light engine. We are very excited to have reached this agreement
with Texas Instruments."

____________________________________________

Whether it's film or digital ten years from now, I hope theatres "Do it right" and present the best possible image and sound quality. But today, it's much easier and cost-effective to "Do Film Right". If we don't, the "couch potatoes" win and theatre audiences lose.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 12-07-2000, 03:28 PM:

I think you guys are right, esp. JP's comment about if people have high quality HDTV sets, they might just stay home.

And, it's even worse than that. High quality sets give people a reason to stay home. But, poor projection, high ticket prices, stupid ads and high candy stand prices give them a reason *not* to go to theaters.

We are at $8.50 now, which, if the show is put on correctly, is worth the money. But, if it's a poor presentation, is not.

I truly feel that allowing ads in theaters is a short term gain, that will also spell the end for most theaters. People will always want to get out of the house and see a movie on a big screen. But, I think, it will be a special-type event (like seeing a play) and not done very often.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-07-2000, 08:59 PM:

Speaking of poor presentations of film compared to HDTV: I've seen several movies in theatres that were presented rather poorly and my non-HDTV DVD video and sound (Dolby Digital or DTS) blew away what I saw and heard in the theatre. I distinctly remember Prince of Egypt, Toy Story 2, Chicken Run, American Pie, There's Something About Mary, and Dogma as several examples right off the top of my head that looked and sounded better at home than they did in at least one theatre I saw them in (not ALL theatres I saw them in, since some of these I saw more than once).

Evans

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-08-2000, 04:54 AM:

Evans: Please don't turn into a "couch potato"!

I wish more of the theatres near Huntsville "Did Film Right".

"Film Done Right" will make audiences seek out your theatre for the best in picture and sound. "Film Done Wrong" sends them to the competition, or Blockbuster.

Posted by Pat Moore (Member # 380) on 12-08-2000, 07:19 AM:

Great topic and an even better series of comments in this thread.

I'll echo what I think is the bottom line put forward by John and others on this thread, and that is concern about the level of "good enough". Where is it, and how is it established? What is "good enough"?

We've seen this in theatres for years. Film projection is capabale of being much better than what is seen too often in cinemas. The places that do it right -- or very nearly so -- are virtually ignored for whatever reasons, but everyone likes to point out the theatre tests where 4 fL of light were on screen. Pro Digital folks talk as if they will correct such deficiencies in exhibition.

At some stage, digital may well have the capability of being as good as or better than film. It will have the same capacity of screen brightness, for instance. But does that mean that's the way things will be?

That's a little harder call. We have those capabilities now, to do "film right", in just about every instance.

Unfortunately, "good enough" sometimes wins out. I don't exactly know how digital projection will fix such things. The same exhibitor that undersizes lamps with film will probably undersize with digital. It would certainly be a change if digital projector manufacturers somehow had the influence to specify what should be used for the appropriate screen application.

Again, I don't want to take away from the may exhibitors, projectionists and dealers that do "film right". There has been a lot more emphasis on doing it right the last few years, to the point where I really think poor projection is the exception rather than the rule.

Keep it going, guys.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-08-2000, 09:02 AM:

John said:
>Evans: Please don't turn into a "couch
>potato"! I wish more of the theatres
>near Huntsville "Did Film Right".

Well, it really makes me think about theatre sound quality when my friends (mostly technical engineering and computer science types) come over and tell me that my sound system is better than they've heard in any theatre, especially after watching an action or science fiction movie with a lot of surround effects. I've had many different friends tell me that.

Let's see -- I spent a little over $5500 for the specific parts of my system that make the DVD experience work (not counting other components). The $5500 includes:

32" Sony XBR TV (1993)
Yamaha DSP-A1 DTS/DD receiver (1998)
2 JPL HP520 speakers for mains (1994)
Infinity CC3 center speaker (1998)
2 Infinity RS5 speakers for surrounds (1998)
Toshiba 3109 DVD Player (1999)

I only included the most recent components.

As you can see, my system is better than the average Joe's home setup, but is far from perfect. The reason I haven't bought a bigger screen TV is I'm waiting for larger better screens to become available for a more reasonable price. It's not a good time to buy a TV right now. There are some fairly good projection sets out, but a CRT is better for my living room because the projection TVs typically only look good when viewed straight-on.

I guess my point is, if I can spend $5500 for a set of components that will make my friends tell me that my sound beats and theatre they've heard, something is wrong.

I think theatres are really going to be in trouble when large screens become available that are 8 to 12 feet wide that are affordable. Even though DVD is only 720x480 resolution, when displayed in a progressive manner (if the conversion to progressive is done right) rather than interlaced, it is impressive. When people are able to afford systems that will give them a large screen and 5.1 digital sound and the movies in the proper aspect ratio (something I can't even get a lot of the time in the Huntsville Regal theatres), I think theatres are going to see ticket sales drop significantly.

As far as theatres in my area and the "film done right" discussion:

There is one theatre in my area that I consider to have consistent professional-quality projection. The manager of that particular location seems to go all out to keep everything in good working order. I make this statement based on 46 visits there over the past 3.5 years, and many conversations with the management and staff. There are other theatres that have excellent presentation, but they tend to let some of the auditoriums get in disrepair for unacceptable periods of time or have audioriums with 1.85:1-only screens.

For those of you that have been around here a long time, you know about my rating system for local theatres. For those of you who haven't seen them, go to my site at
http://home.hiwaay.net/~criswell/theatre/

and go down to the ratings table. (Many people have seen my site and are not aware that the detailed ratings are there!) The site needs a redesign to make that more obvious. Clicking the theatre name in the table gives a listing of all movies seen, with notes on presentation flaws and a "grade" is assigned to each showing, and the ratings are based on a weighted average of these grades. (I explained this again mainly for people who have only been in the forums for the past 6 months). It will be obvious which theatre I was complimenting earlier. I'm sure any skilled booth person or manager would sincerely appreciate the list of compliments I listed on that particular theatre's description page, expecially since many of the compliments can only be made for that location in my area.

I think the coming of HDTV (if it happens as planned) is going to be very interesting. If those prices come down and screens get bigger, and people at home can get access to movies when they want, I think theatres may be in trouble in a few years.

Evans

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-08-2000, 10:21 AM:

I still think that HDTV is pretty much DOA in the US. The demonstration sets that I've seen certainly look pretty good compared with NTSC, but I just can't imagine spending $6k on a TV set, and I also can't imagine that the prices will drop substantially in the near-term future, since it is unlike that these sets will be manufacturered in high volumes. Besides, it seems that the broadcasters would rather use the extra bandwidth to carry more channels than to provide high-quality pictures.

I don't watch much TV. The reason for this has very little to do with image quality and very much to do with the fact that most TV programming is of little interest to me. Even though I care a great deal about picture quality, I'd rather have better programming than the same old junk repackaged at higher resolution...

I suspect that others probably agree with me, and I believe that I read recently that the amount of HDTV programming in the US is actually lower this year than it was last year, since the TV set manufacturers were willing to subsidize less of it.

This is not to say that theatres aren't going to be experiencing more competition in the near future. The proliferation of cable channels and the easy availability of fairly high-quality sound systems for home use with DVD and VCRs are certainly an issue, and the lack of quality film product from distributors at the moment is also a problem, as is the difficulty of getting quality prints of older films. Movie theatres will not likely disappear in my lifetime (and I'm 24); though the technology will definitely change, people will always have the desire to go "out" to do something, but unless more people know how to "do film right," I agree with one of the other opinions here that high ticket prices, advertisements, and lousy "product" will lead to it becoing more of a special thing and less of a regular occurrence for many people. How many people can afford $50 to take a family of four to a movie and buy popcorn, coke, etc.? That's insane enough to make me glad that I'm single at the moment...

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 12-08-2000, 10:42 AM:

Whenever someone says their sound system is better than that of a theater, I take it with a grain of salt. I have no doubt that their system sounds good, but equipment requirements in a small room are much different than a large theater. And, try running it 12 hours a day- every day- and see how well home equipment will hold up. I won't even go in to the details of trying to EQ a small living room vs. a large auditouriums with odd shapes (left after adding more screens), over hanging balconies, etc. etc.

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 12-08-2000, 11:04 AM:

Evans wrote: "When people are able to afford systems that will give them a large screen and 5.1 digital sound and the movies in the proper aspect ratio (something I can't even get a lot of the time in the Huntsville Regal theatres), I think theatres are going to see ticket sales drop significantly."

Ya know, I've been wondering why you haven't been complaining about the fixed masking on your Sony 32" set...

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-08-2000, 02:59 PM:

John,

I know that a sound system placed in a very small area does not have to be as good as one designed to fill a much larger area. For example, the 5-speaker surround system around my bed (roughly 6ft by 6ft) often "sounds better" to me than my living room system for music, since it is overkill for the 36 sq. ft. that it is filling. I've got my old living room system in there with 5 identical Yamaha speakers. The speakers are far inferior to my main speakers in the living room, but they're playing at a much lower level and sound great. That's why people can duplicate the theatre sound experience in their living rooms without too great an expense. At this time, duplicating the screen is the problem.

To Jerry: Although any TV I ever have in my home will probably have a fixed-sized screen, at least the movies are letterboxed to the correct ratio so I'm not seeing movies chopped to whatever size my screen is, like the Huntsville Regal theatres do. You'd think they could just use a longer throw lens and "letterbox" scope. I'd prefer that to magnifying it more and chopping it. I admit that my TV is by far the weakest link in my system right now, and would love to have a 16:9 set, but it isn't a good time to buy. Prices will come down, technology and standards will improve, and product reliability is not yet known.

Ideally, I'd love to have a 12-foot screen with adjustable curtains (even if I had to move them by hand) across my front wall with a projector with adjustable magnification so I could make the movie image fit regardless of format. With a front-projection system, it would definitely be possible to implement, but now, it would be far too expensive to do so. Brighter, less expensive projectors are needed.

Evans

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-08-2000, 04:38 PM:

I'm one of these "grain of salt" people when it comes to home systems too. Some people I've talked to that rave about home systems, the only thing they talk about is the surround sound, and how they can hear it so much better at home than in the theatre. I think this is often because the home surrounds are just closer to the ear.

I have experimented in the theatre with the surrounds a couple of times....sometimes you can't tell the surrounds are even on, until you turn them off!

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-08-2000, 11:30 PM:

You know, from my last trip out, I made a personal "discovery" if you will.

I recently had a chance to see a "guy's" home theatre set up and it was pertty nice. After that we went to the theatre and went into one of the houses. There was some comment about the difference in the sound.... "Why doesn't this sound as good as it does at home?" I didn't want to get into it with him. He wouldn't understand & I wasn't in the mood...

Upstairs I went, with "tweeker" and Dolby tone in hand... On the next show we went back to the theatre. He liked the sound this time.

Just goes to show that it doesn't take thousands of dollars worth of equipment to keep people from staying at home... just about $4.50 worth of green film and a plastic stick!

Next time I'll show him what I can do with a Swiss Army Knife and a roll of duct tape!