Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Can digital Scope be modified?

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 07-01-2013, 08:55 PM:

We have reached the point where D-cinema is a mature technology for theatrical presentation. Is it now possible to forget the video origins and upgrade Scope to theatrical quality instead of a masked version of flat?
This would involve both creation and presentation with some financial pain, though not nearly as scary as the original D-cinema conversion.
With apologies to those who believe that flat should be bigger.

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 07-01-2013, 10:47 PM:

Wouldn't that involve swapping out the DLP light engine for a 2.39:1 ratio chip set as opposed to whatever it is now? Last I checked... you're talking $20k per screen just to gain a few fot lamberts of brightness on the screen. What about our lenses? I don't know about the corporate chains, but some independents like me who spent more for two projection systems than I did for my house....I'm keeping what I've got until it won't play anything ever again.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-02-2013, 12:52 AM:

Be easier to have DCP content slightly compressed and slightly blown up then one can use the full area of the chip to get more light out to the screen instead of the 2048x858 DCI standard which uses a part of the chip.

To uncompress the image is to have actual anamorphic attachments that swings out in front of the main lens.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 07-02-2013, 01:35 AM:

I still can't believe zoomed in scope made the DCI standard. It's just so cheap and sloppy for a professional cinema. They should have had anamorphic lenses for scope this entire time.

It's sad that there are some home theaters using anamorphics when actual cinemas are simply "zooming". Ugh. I miss 35mm.

AJG

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 07-02-2013, 01:55 AM:

This discussion has been done before [Wink]

.

I don't think we will see any real change in the near future. The investments in current DLP technologies first need to be paid off.

The best solution would obviously be a DMD in scope aspect ratio. That would not only be a costly upgrade, I'm not even certain it is easy to retrofit existing projectors with it, it would not just require an upgrade to the DMD, but also adjustments to the light path and soft-/firmware, if even possible given the current hardware specs.

Anamorphic lenses are an option right now, but it involves scaling or stretching a 2K image, which does nothing to improve the resolution, quite the opposite, you're potentially adding scaling artifacts.

The best intermediate solution in my opinion would be non-square pixels in the DCP and an anamorphic lens, which currently isn't allowed according to DCI specs. But that way, you would not degrade the resolution (at least as long as the master had sufficient resolution) and you will not lose any light.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 07-22-2013, 07:31 PM:

In the Sony 4K projector, you can expand the 4096 x 1716 pixel scope image to 2160 vertically in the projector, then put a 1.25 anamorphic lens on the projector, but my understanding is that almost no one does it because they don't want to change the lens and because the lens is very expensive.

As others have stated, I'm also bothered that scope is smaller than 1.85, as it is in the home. In fact, every time I go to the theatre and I see the masking make the screen smaller, it bugs me a lot more than it should. The people I go to the movies with think I'm completely nuts.