Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cinemark and Regal Teaming up to Purchase Digital Projectors

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Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 10-25-2006, 09:39 AM:

I heard on monday from a friend of mine that is a Regal projectionist that Cinemark and Regal are to team up to purchase digital projectors. I don't remember the exact count but there were quite a few. Could this be the beginning of the end?

I have stopped spending a great deal on used projection equipment. There is going to be a LOT of equipment available once the digital projectors take hold.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 10-25-2006, 03:10 PM:

If this goes through, is AMC the biggest holdout?

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 10-25-2006, 03:35 PM:

Let's see National Cinemedia (formerly Regal Cinemedia) handles Cinemark, Regal, and AMC for digital pre-show advertising - right? Hmm, could foresee a familiar pattern here. I could even see one giant theatre chain in the next ten years. One in which was formerly made up of Regal, Cinemark, and AMC. Has AMC gone Fandango yet? [Confused]

Posted by Hieu Trung Ngo (Member # 3298) on 10-25-2006, 11:14 PM:

Nope, AMC is still movietickets.com, except for the former LOEWS locations, which are under contract with fandango still. I haven't heard anything about going all digital quite yet, though we do have one DLP here at Boston Common, a Christie CP2000.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 10-25-2006, 11:28 PM:

Right now the only information I know about is in reguards to the 150 screens Cinemark is doing with RealD. No press releases have been made in reguards to any Regal and Cinemark joint ventures in Digital Projection. Right now Cinemark is trying to get everything organized with the Century Deal. That by the way is another 1000 screens.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 10-26-2006, 12:09 AM:

National Cinemedia is, to the best of my knowledge, working on a D-Cinema deal for ALL of it's members. This would include AMC, Regal, Cinemark, as well as smaller regional circuits they provide preshow advertising for (Georgia Theatre Company, etc.)

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 10-26-2006, 07:35 AM:

Interesting about the Fandango thing. AMC is listed as one of the Fandango partners on the Fandango website.

On another note, from IMDB.com news section 10/26/06 today:

quote:
Sony Projectors To Be Installed in Theaters

Sony said Tuesday that it's ready to begin installing its SXRD high-definition digital projectors in theaters across the country. The system boasts 8.8 million pixels, or four times the resolution of systems already in place in U.S. theaters. The 4K systems have recently been tested in 12 Landmark Theater screens. Now, Sony says, it is ready to begin turning out 100 projectors a month beginning in December. Sony said it had received commitments from four major studios to release films on digital files in the 4K format.

Would this have something to do with the Regal/Cinemark/AMC thing?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-26-2006, 01:02 PM:

Maybe AMC perhaps. They do like that Sony stuff.

I'm hoping the new Sony 4K projector works very well. Few, if any other companies at all, are working on 4K projectors. If Sony's model is successful it will help drive movie productions to migrate to the 4K standard for their CGI and digital intermediate work. Theater customers will benefit from the improved image quality.

Hopefully Sony has a 4K projector model that can light a really large screen. Christie's CP2000-X can work on large screens; however, 2K resolution is going to get soft or pixellated looking on something like a 70' wide screen.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 10-27-2006, 11:51 PM:

Below is a snip from the beginning of a Sony press release from Showeast.

quote:
Sony is expanding its line-up of 4K Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD™) digital cinema technologies with a new 18,000-lumen * projector here at ShowEast this week.
Successfully demonstrated as a prototype earlier this year during industry 4K screenings of “The Da Vinci Code,” the new projector, model SRX-R220, will begin shipping to customers in early 2007. Designed for digital projection in a commercial movie theater, the projector is capable of displaying 2K and 4K content on screens 55 feet or larger. The new model joins Sony’s growing family of SXRD projectors offering exhibitors a full range of digital cinema options.

The asterisk that goes with it:
* 18,000 lumens is equivalent to 14 foot-lamberts on a 20-meter screen at screen gain of 1.8

They still don't seem to be at the level of the Christie CP2000 which claims 14 fL on screens up to 25 meter (82 feet). Christie doesn't mention screen gain on the website. I think the CP2000 is 21,000 lumens.

It's too bad that Sony won't provide SXRD chips to Christie/Barco etc. and let them see what kind of projector they can design. It's a bigger shame that TI won't put out a 4k DLP chip. I personally think that based on what I've seen of 2K DLP, 4K DLP utilizing JPEG2000 compression would exceed 35mm quality on screen (including scope) except for contrast. A 4K DLP/JPEG2000 combo (with 4K source material) would probably look as good as a 70mm blowup of something filmed in scope.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 10-28-2006, 01:12 AM:

quote: Lyle Romer
It's too bad that Sony won't provide SXRD chips to Christie/Barco etc. and let them see what kind of projector they can design.

That's a Sony thing.....it goes all the way back to the Betamax and we know what happened to that.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 10-28-2006, 08:16 AM:

After SDDS, none of this will probably matter. The issue here is trust. Louis

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-28-2006, 08:35 AM:

quote: Louis Bornwasser
After SDDS, none of this will probably matter. The issue here is trust. Louis

Their current NIMH battery problem and game station woes are causing far more financial grief and reputation loss than any other baggage from the Sony past including SDDS......

I absolutely love the first line in this article: Sony reported a 94 percent drop in earnings for the three months that ended in September, as it continued to cope with a huge battery recall and manufacturing problems in its PlayStation 3 game console.

The biggest problem right now with the Sony projector is that of light level. The SXRD imaging chips are not capable of sinking the heat that DLP chips are and the new Sony projector is limited to around 15,000 lumens maximum continous according to a Sony rep I talked to at the show... so at least for now they can't use it where it will "shine best".... on really large screens! Their excuse is that they are aiming at the majority of regular size screens and a 100K price tag. I think mentioning that low of price tag is ludicrous! We all know it wil be much higher than that, no one is going to gove more for the same price. 2K DLP projectors are capable of almost double that light level(The NEC can do 28,000). One of the reasons that JVC gave up on D-C was because of heat problems with their version of the same technology chip.

I was told at the DoRemi booth that the data rate to the Sony projector is a maxumum 360 gb per second! Takes 8 HDSDI interconnect cables to connect the projector and server together for 4K playback.

It's too bad that Sony won't provide SXRD chips to Christie/Barco etc. and let them see what kind of projector they can design.

Bobby, I still say you need to go to the Dolby seminar to take in whats really happenning and why as far as DLP projectors and other equipment go..... There is nothing to stop T.I. from doing a 4K version of their chip except higher losses posted on their quaterly reports. Its also possible to do 4K and higher resolutions with multiple DLP chips on the same optical path....

Mark

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-28-2006, 10:21 AM:

Can the existing servers (Dolby, etc.) support a 4k projector, or will they need upgrades to handle the higher data rate?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-28-2006, 03:53 PM:

I don't think the standard servers from Dolby, Doremi and others support 4K. Doremi is doing a lot of work on 4K and has already demonstrated a good amount of equipment.

One troubling thing is how the DCI spec treats 4K material. They don't up the bit rate past 250Mb/s for all that extra image data. Compression is getting increased quite a bit.

For large screens, such as an 82' installation, Christie recommends using the CP2000-X which features two 6,000 watt lamps.

A 4K DLP chip? I'll believe it when I see it. It took Texas Instruments over 5 years to move from a 1280 X 1024 chip to a chip that could display all the pixels of 1080 HDTV. A 4K chip would quadruple the number of those spinning mirrors. The chip would probably have to be quite a bit larger than a 2K DLP chip, making the thing a lot more expensive.

The other thing working against TI even bothering to develop a 4K chip anytime soon is the matter of consumer electronics. There's currently not much need in making that sort of thing for televisions and data projectors. They're not going to make such an expensive chip if it can only be used in movie theater projectors.

I don't see 4K "Super HDTV" even being possible for over the air broadcasts. I don't see cable people even bothering to push it either. The United States is pretty backwards compared to a lot of other countries in terms of Internet speeds. 30Mb/s IPTV is already possible in certain parts of Europe and Asia. But not here. Thank the telcos and cable companies for that.