Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: My DLP Experience...

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Posted by Tony L. Hernandez (Member # 3524) on 10-08-2006, 01:36 AM:

Well, much to my surprise, I found upon my visit to The Carmike 10 in Fort Collins, Colorado on October 5th, posters in the lobby announcing the theaters complete conversion to Christie DLP projection. This was my first experience with DLP digital cinema. In fact, looking thru the large port in the auditorium, you could see several Christie 35mm projectors and platters all shoved into a corner in the booth with the new Christie DLP projector glaring down at the screen where the 35mm projector belongs! I would have asked the manager to see the booth for myself but I was with my date.

The movie ("The Guardian") I thought was horrible (and it takes a lot for me not to enjoy a movie as I enjoy most movies I see both new and old) and I don't think it would have been any better on film so I guess I'm kinda a bad judge this time but I must tell you I was not thrilled at all with the quality. I thought it was like watching a DVD (it looked SO digital)and from a customer stand point, I felt that if I wanted to watch a DVD, I'd have saved my money and watched one of mine at home. Normally, I am quite pleased when I go as a customer to see a picture at another theater that is not showing at one of mine. This was a real disappointment...the image was so small and the quality just didn't capture my attention. The images were so cold and lifeless. I know many individuals have stated that "the customers already think that they are watching a DVD." WEll, it does not matter WHERE they think the images is coming from...the are gonna notice a decline in quality and they are not gonna like it. It will only give them one more reason to stay home from the theater and watch a movie on the same format they would see there! Film is film and I don't care how good or expensive the technology is, digital can NEVER look like film!

This experience made me even more frightened of the advent of digital cinema. I also thought that this was much farther in the future. I know one of the theaters I volunteer at already does 40% of its shows on DVD and my other theater is starting to get all excited over digital images. Film is for theaters, digital is for home and the classroom ONLY.

I am sorry for sounding so pessimistic but this is really disturbing to me.

If and when digital cinema comsumes this industry full force, I think we should all get together and hold a nice, big funeral for the already ailing exhibition industry!

~~Tony H.~~

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 10-08-2006, 03:21 AM:

If you could elaborate on your quality gripes I'd be interested. Specifically what about the image was 'cold and lifeless'. Also, what does the 'small' comment mean? Have you seen movies at that theatre/auditorium before? Carmike is NOT replacing screens/screen size for their digital installs. At most a theatre might get a silver screen, but I doubt it would be any smaller than the previous screen.

A film-digital comparison of the same movie would be interesting. I have not seen the Gaurdian but I wonder how much CGI is in it and how well it was/wasn't done.

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 10-08-2006, 06:46 AM:

I remember seeing at cinema Expo the Pirates of The Carribean and Cars on DLP. I was NOT impressed although they have made some very good advancements since 5 years ago. One thing I always say is that it is not worth investing money in something that in a few years is going to be obsolete because the new 12K DLP came out and the 2K projectors can handle movies that are in 12K so throw away all those thousands of dollars you spend in creating the DIGITAL experience at your theater to create an even MORE DIGITAL experience and after you do that, they will say "Oh jeez let's advance the digital format to something that only SONY can do. BluedishRay and whatever the heck they will call it for CINEMA application because there is 2 more pixels at the corner of the image which will bring us CLOSER to the original film negative. NOT GONNA HAPPEN!!!
D

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-08-2006, 08:15 AM:

quote: Tony L. Hernandez
The images were so cold and lifeless.

Humm, exactly what I was thinking when I saw it on film. Cold water and dead people floating around... do you suppose the director was trying to convey that feeling?

Mark

Posted by Jarryd Beard (Member # 2543) on 10-08-2006, 04:31 PM:

Was this movie shot in digital or on film? I didn't watch the entire movie, but my thoughts of what I saw of our film presentation seem similar to Tony's thoughts of the digital presentation. It just didn't seem to have any great cinematography IMO.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-08-2006, 05:17 PM:

quote: Jarryd Beard
It just didn't seem to have any great cinematography IMO.

No but it had a good script, good acting, good effects, and a decent mix. Sad but true that only about 1% of todays movies have good scripts and storylines and this one was one of them.

Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-08-2006, 08:51 PM:

I have stated this before, but I will not be putting up any lobby posters when we convert to digital. After all, our pictures look good now, so there's nothing to sell there.

If the perception among the public is going to be that digital is a "compromise" and "like a DVD" and all that, then I will be more than happy to let people think we're still showing film. I love to trumpet our improvements, but if people don't think it's better, what's the point?

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 10-08-2006, 08:56 PM:

I don't mean to attack you Tony, I'm genuinely interested in the details of your experience. It just seems what you are saying flies in the face of everything I've seen so far with our digital projectors. Heck, I've gotten comments from our cutomers about how nice the picture looks.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-08-2006, 10:44 PM:

Mike,
On your size screen it will look amazing!

Mark

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 10-09-2006, 01:05 PM:

..yea, with that long throw and with a screen that isn't too big. Tons of light being concentrated towards that screen.

You'd definitely would make a pinpoint for Montana - being a small theatre with digCinema installed..

When I saw "CARS" at ShoWest back in March, this was my first digital feature experience, and to make it short, I was duely impressed on the quality, image sharpness - just plain lifelike of a presentation on the screen. Then, when I saw the 35mm presentation when it opened, such a drastic comparison against the digital version where one can fully agree with going to digital is the way to go..

-Monte

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-09-2006, 01:46 PM:

What I gather from comments of others is there's two main variables involved. 1.: dimensions of the auditorium and the relationship of screen to the projector and 2.: the quality of the video stream being sent to the projector.

Many of these "digital cinema looks great" or "digital cinema looks bad" are coming from the same Christie CP2000 model projector. So some other variable must be throwing off show quality.

Movie theaters come in so many sizes and shapes. Even in brand new theaters I'll sometimes see the projector port made way too high so it's throwing its image at a severe angle down to the screen. Many existing theaters feature ports way off to one side or another because two twinned rooms were previously one larger room.

Problems with video encoding quality is another issue. Some early digital cinema releases featuring live action footage from 35mm were marred with problems. There were quite a few complaints about The Perfect Storm. The Guardian has a bunch of that same sort of dark seaborne footage. Apparently this sort of stuff is very difficult to data compress. Even the first DVD release of Titanic was delayed significantly because of encoding problems.

Now one might ask, "why would any of this be a problem when a DCI compliant D-cinema bitstream runs 150 million to 250 million bits per second?" Why? I think some of this stuff is getting compressed and encoded in one hell of a hurry. It may not seem like such a big deal to take a 1.5Gb per second 2K uncompressed bitstream and compact it down to less than 10% of its original size. But something's going to fall apart if you just apply a flat compression rate to that stream and not babysit it through the process. By comparison, some posting houses work for weeks or even months tweaking the video stream for a movie release on DVD. No theatrical production affords that much time between the point when final edit is finished and when the prints have to be sent to theaters.

So, instead of theaters getting 35mm prints that are still wet, they may be getting hard discs or bitstreams via satellite that were rushed in far too much of a hurry. I certainly see the potential for some movies to have "corrected" bitstreams theaters will have to download again while the movie is in release. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that kind of thing has already happened.

The conversion to digital cinema is well underway at our local Carmike as I write this. I'd like to check out the digital version of The Departed since I watched the 35mm version this past weekend and its appearance is still fresh in my memory. Since this theater's 35mm projection was already pretty darned good, I'm hoping the CP2000 projectors can at least get into the same territory. The LPCM 5.1 audio should be pretty good.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-09-2006, 08:50 PM:

Bobby,

You REALLY need to attend one of the Dolby DC Seminars then you'll finally understand whats actually going on. The bit rate to the projector is way higher than you think it is....

A clue er two...

MPEG requires just 1 HDSDI cable between the server and projector.

JPEG2000 requires two HDSDI cables between the server and projector.

Mark

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-10-2006, 12:57 PM:

The bitrate going to the projector is one thing. What I'm talking about is the actual data rate in the encoded media. If the actual task of compressing the data is not handled well at all it will end up looking like ass on the screen regardless of the final decompressed bitrate or what cables or used or if Dolby's glorious brand name is all over the equipment.

The DCI spec for encoded video data is supposed to be between 150Mb/s and 250Mb/s. That's around 1/6th to 1/10th the bitrate of the original material. I haven't seen anything to suggest that compresssion ratio is absolutely mandatory. Who's to stop some studio from compressing the video data a lot further?

The combination of encoding video in a mad rush and the real threat of studios ramping up compression levels to save time/money on shipping hard discs or leasing satellite time can pose some real big problems.

The human element is still very involved in all this digital stuff. It isn't perfect and it can still be horribly infected with that "good enough to get by" attitude of compromise.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 10-10-2006, 01:20 PM:

When the DP 100 was installed in our booth, the Barco tech wasn't too concerned with the 14 degree down angle, but that combined with the 8 ft. off center location it isn't possible to fully correct for keystone on the left side. He wanted to move one of the 35mm machines, but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. The only way to compensate for the keystone is to overshoot enough to fill the screen at the top left. Otherwise, the pic is pretty good.

Posted by David Graves (Member # 4069) on 11-27-2006, 07:18 PM:

I was down visiting family over the weekend, and was surprised that the new Rave 16-plex in Viera had added all DLP houses (Christie 2ks, it looked like, though the manager had, naturally, no clue what I was asking about). The majority of the films showing were in digital, although several, including new ones, were not.

This is a fairly new theater, and is generally well-maintained, so I figured with some time to kill I'd stick my head in a few of the houses. I got some nearly side-by-side comparisons, as Deja Vu was showing 35mm in one house and DLP in another.

I found that consistently, throughout the complex, the DLP auditoriums had a very strange color issue- they seemed slightly washed out, as if you'd clicked the brightness on your TV up one or two notches too high. This was very evident in The Departed, which used a lot of muted tones throughout- the DLP was definitely muddier. Borat looked like total crap, though I figured that may be due to the source material.

The 35mm Deja Vu beat the pants off the DLP. I could see some slight "mosquito noise" during some of the darker scenes, but the shadows and blacks were fine next door.

Then I sat down in my film, The Fountain- DLP, and my jaw dropped. It was rock steady, colorful, and beautiful. Not a scratch, nor a bit of dust, of course. Black blacks, blinding whites, and perfect motion. The sound seemed a lot better as well- it didn't have that harsh compression I usually hear with 35mm.

Of course, when I looked behind me in the booth, I noticed the DLP projector sitting silent, and a 35mm print with a DTS head running.

Maybe one day, but it's just not there yet.

Posted by Steve Maggs (Member # 444) on 11-27-2006, 08:48 PM:

We have a Christie 2k projector in our largest auditorium at the Hawthorne Cinemas in Brisbane, Australia. It was installed in November of 2005. We have a limited supply of digital movies so the original 35mm set up is still in use. In fact we have only had about 5 digital movies in that time.
We have a 56ft curved screen in that auditorium (which seats 510 people) and the digital image looks great. We did have some issues when it was first used with Narnia. A lot of the images were too dark, especially night scenes. This has all been attended too and the image is now excellent.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 11-27-2006, 09:07 PM:

One of the things that has always bothered me when someone comments about how much better digital is than film... is whether the comparison is made between a properly specced, aligned and operated film system and digital, or a projector that has detiorated because the owner knows it will be replaced (or is just cheap). In that event, a new digital projector can not fail to look magnificent. However, it's not a fair comparison in that case, and I can't see how it can fairly be used to justify the conversion.

I don't recall anyone here saying (believably) that they had the best that film could offer, yet their conversion to digital resulted in a quantifiable increase in presentation quality.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-28-2006, 12:40 AM:

I'm not willing to say the picture quality with digital projection is simply better than 35mm. There are variables involved.

If the movie is put through a 2K digital intermediate process in post production, then the imagery is already going through a resolution bottleneck. That would leave 2K digital projection having better odds on putting on the better quality show. If the DI is 4K, a 2K D-Cinema setup could pale against a well maintained 35mm booth.

35mm film done right would beat digital projection handily on image quality if you have something like a movie shot in true anamorphic 'scope and the 35mm prints are derived only from film-based sources. In other words, a print making process without any resolution bottlenecks like those posed by 2K digital intermediates.

In the matter of audio, I do believe D-Cinema has a noticeable edge over the lossy compressed surround formats on 35mm film. The difference is most noticeable on music quality.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 11-28-2006, 05:33 PM:

Australian cinema owners have received a promo package from Skytech systems and I am curious to check out some of its contents.

The main thrust is that DCI at 2K is 2048 x 1080 lines of resolution for $100,000+, while their 1.3K system is 1920 x 1080 for under $20,000.

Further, they contend that those dc systems are sitting idle while a growing number of distributors providing digital files for 1.3K.

Also, they say that they can supply 1920/1080 today and offer DCI compliant upgrades next year.

There’s more, of course but has any other cinema owner checked this out?

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 11-28-2006, 05:53 PM:

I'm not an owner Ron and I'm in the US so I can't really help to much with your specific situation. all I can say is that our medium sized market has had no problem getting plenty of digital content for our 6 Christies CP-2000's. AFAIK, all of said content has been 2K and not 1.3K.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 11-28-2006, 06:24 PM:

Dustin, you raise an interesting issue regarding the take-up of dc of any K. the decision is not made by film makers, projectionists or audiences. So this topic is on Ground Level.

It seems that, as a cinema showing a fair proportion of non-mainstram films, we will become increasingly reliant on digital files. The 1.3 case might stack up for the small exhibitor, with 35mm alongside (just as 16mm prints provided independent film makers with an alternative).

Two things continue to disturb me about electronic cinema.

The capital cost is dismissed on the grounds that increased advertising revenue will result and their native format is 16 x 9. IMHO that is not a theatrical experience.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-28-2006, 08:53 PM:

Just about all D-Cinema movies distributed in the US are of 2K standard, with the trend going to JPEG2000 format.

The Christie CP2000 can show movies in several different layouts. Its 3-chip DLP array has a native resolution of 2048 X 1080. The most common formats are 1998 X 1080 flat and 2048 X 858 'scope. It can play back standard 1920 X 1080 content as well, and do a number of framings within that layout.

When the term "1.3K" is provided, that usually refers to the previous 1280 X 1024 standard of DLP. That old standard is largely no longer supported at all in the United States. The standard "1080p" HDTV format is much closer to 2K than 1.2K or 1.3K. The main technical difference with home HDTV formats is they run at far lower bitrates.

Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 11-30-2006, 01:58 AM:

Ron,

This is just the next step in e-cinema in Australia. There seems to be no incentive in Australia to go d-cinema, as distributors don't seem to want to fund it - and certainly exhibitors cannot afford to go DCI-compliant.

I applaud the move of independent distributors to provide more coverage of distribution by providing digital prints of 'not quite mainstream' films. I am saddened however that, because most exhibitors are using 1.3K projectors, often 1-chip DLP and now often 16:9 projectors of 1365x768 resolution, that this seems to be the upper end of the resolution of these digital prints. We've shown "Sophie Scholl" and "Kenny" this way with print resolutions of 1280x720 upscaled to anamorphic 1365x1024.

What Ray (Derrick) is now doing with his Panamedia HD2000 is to provide the opportunity of making higher resolution servers financially viable - maybe encouraging exhibitors to install higher res projectors. The upgrade path he is providing is to JPEG2000 and DCI compliance if and when local distributors start providing DCI-compliant prints. (Ask Leo Catalano about availability of DCI in Australia.)

Here's my further question. Panasonic now have a 1920x1080 projector at 10,000 lumens. Why, oh why, is that not acceptable to the DCI guardians - except for it not pandering to the security paranoid.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-30-2006, 11:32 AM:

First off...it would need to have 2048 x 1080 capability and it MUST have link decryption for DCI minimum...even the 1.3K projectors had that.

We will see where this DCI business shakes out.

Steve

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 12-02-2006, 07:56 AM:

Digital in Australia: I thought the whole purpose of D-TV is lower freight costs/print costs. Could not 50 D-Cin prints be put into a box and air cargoed to Aussie-land?? We seem to have plenty here in the US and I'm sure planes leave every day. Louis