Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Digital Cinema Requirements

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Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 09-22-2014, 09:42 AM:

Quick question. Does a theater have to change from mono sound to stereo in order to get digital movies? No VPF's are involved.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 09-22-2014, 10:08 AM:

No, I don't think so. You will need some device to mix the 5.1 sound down to mono. The many DCI specifications require lots of things - 5.1 sound among them - but they are routinely ignored.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 09-22-2014, 10:16 AM:

Thanks Dave. It's coming out of the D/A converter into a powered 5 channel mixer (no sub).

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 09-22-2014, 12:04 PM:

DCI compliance essentially only covers your playback equipment and if you're going to buy/finance that yourself, it's up to you what you do with the sound. DCI was never designed as a seal of quality, but the primary focus has always been on content security (from the perspective of the studios). I've not yet heard about studios forcing something like a "minimum equipment list" upon exhibitors. Disney is implementing something like that with an "verified equipment list" for their 3D titles, but even that is more like a recommendation and not really a requirement.

But as Dave already put forward, you need something to mix down at least 5.1 to mono, as it will be very hard to get any DCPs in mono or even purely stereo.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 09-22-2014, 01:29 PM:

The USL JSD-60 can do this mixdown.

Harold

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 09-23-2014, 07:27 AM:

As said you just need to mix down the 5.1 to Mono but man get with the times and upgrade to 5.1 surround. Unlesss your an Art House I understand but still. Sorry to sound rude but its my opinion.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-23-2014, 07:59 AM:

Agreed with Jarod. If you're putting in digital going to 5.1would not add that much more to the price tag and your audience will like it.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 09-23-2014, 08:12 AM:

It's a seasonal theater open 3 1/2 months out of the year. He will not switch to stereo. You're not being rude. I have tried to get him to switch. They already spent $150,000 to convert 4 screens to digital. It would probably cost at least another $15,000 even with used equipment.

Posted by Manny Montes (Member # 5639) on 09-23-2014, 06:22 PM:

Wow, converting 4 screens to digital but still playing mono sound I'm wondering what the reasoning behind that would be, financing through a bank could easily get the $ required for sound upgrades.

I'm assuming this plays subrun/indie films?

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 09-23-2014, 06:58 PM:

I guess it's easy to spend other people's money. This is a first run house.

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 09-23-2014, 07:57 PM:

I understand Richard. That can be so frustrating.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 09-23-2014, 08:37 PM:

quote: Richard May
I guess it's easy to spend other people's money.

I get what you are saying but it isn't right to expect somebody to pay first run prices (even if they are below average) and get a sound presentation that is worse than what comes out of a stock TV with no "sound system."

There are theatres closing all the time and dealers that get speakers and amps stripping them and can sell them very cheap.

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 09-24-2014, 01:40 PM:

All you guys suggesting an upgrade to stereo are correct, but as Richard indicated, and as I can attest, this is a very short-season operation in a wealthy area with absolutely no competition--none now or probably ever. Bottom line, if anyone wants to see a current film it's this theater or nowhere, and no matter how nice you make it you're not going to materially increase the audience. Personally I'm somewhat surprised the owner even justified the conversion to digital.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 09-24-2014, 02:18 PM:

Justify? It's a stark choice - convert or close.

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 09-24-2014, 02:55 PM:

quote: Jeff Taylor
Personally I'm somewhat surprised the owner even justified the conversion to digital.

This is a first run theater running film. Which means the grosses are quite good in order to play a first run film due current treatment of playing movies on the break (higher than average guarantees).

I agree with the others on not upgrading the sound too at this point. It should be done. I bet their are many potential customers do not attend this theater due to the sound not being what it should be.

Are the seats old? Broken? Crummy bathrooms, too?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-24-2014, 04:52 PM:

Even with no competition I'll bet there are lots of people--especially young folks under 40--who consider this place laughably behind the times due to mono sound. The owner should really try to convert to 5.1 if at all possible.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 09-24-2014, 09:25 PM:

At least put in three speakers LCR behind the screen.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 09-25-2014, 03:10 AM:

quote: Jeff Taylor
Bottom line, if anyone wants to see a current film it's this theater or nowhere, and no matter how nice you make it you're not going to materially increase the audience

You know, it's a little awkward to judge anything without knowing any of the details, but in my very personal opinion, that's still no reason to treat your customers to a sub-standard experience.

For an art house, well, yeah, maybe, but just maybe. But presenting first run movies in not even 3CH stereo really isn't going to cut it anymore. It didn't cut it anymore about 15 or 20 years back either. With the current tight release schedules, I would really rather wait for the rental than being treated to mono sound, especially if it's being downmixed.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 09-25-2014, 03:52 AM:

One of the things that got me into this business was the amazing impact of CinemaScope and the thrill of stereophonic sound.
When we first started our little cinema it didn’t even have heating but I wanted to install 4 track mag. People in the business said I was crazy and tried to discourage me.
We scrounged used bits, built our own amps and speakers and made it happen.
Eventually, we had proper commercial gear and, over the yers, we had optical stereo, DTS and Dolby Digital, plus ES/EX. Now, of course, we have DCP and 7.1.
I can’t imagine going into a cinema with just mono sound. I suppose my generation still embraces the excitement.
Also, when a theatre screen shrinks down for the feature that’s a real let down for me; I don’t care how big their screen is.

Posted by Manny Montes (Member # 5639) on 09-25-2014, 08:53 PM:

quote: Marcel Birgelen
You know, it's a little awkward to judge anything without knowing any of the details, but in my very personal opinion, that's still no reason to treat your customers to a sub-standard experience.

For an art house, well, yeah, maybe, but just maybe. But presenting first run movies in not even 3CH stereo really isn't going to cut it anymore. It didn't cut it anymore about 15 or 20 years back either. With the current tight release schedules, I would really rather wait for the rental than being treated to mono sound, especially if it's being downmixed.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but even at an art house it's not acceptable. A small town community theater can survive big competition coming into town, in fact a few members here have theaters that have decent competition but still do well. But a theater with only mono sound won't do well, even an art house. There's always someone looking for a slice of the pie, I knew a 5screen art house that I used to work at, 2 auditoriums with digital, 3 with mono. Eventually AMC rolled into town, started stealing the art film bookings(competitive zone) and the customers started going there just because of the better sound (even our senior clinetele noticed). Obviously yes, it is easier to "spend others money" but hey, opinions are like A*holes I guess, everyone has one [Wink]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-25-2014, 09:26 PM:

Mono sound is one of the things that's killing off business at the last theater in my town showing film, the Vaska. It has been the only discount/2nd run theater in town for the past several years. Management has done little if anything to upgrade the image or sound quality there the entire 20+ years I've lived in Lawton. Now they're in a panic over not having any d-cinema capability and so far behind in being able to do any proper conversion. Meanwhile there's several d-cinema equipped theaters operating in small towns in this region. It's interesting how they were able to convert (and even upgrade to 5.1 digital surround) while the Vaska could not.

Shrinking windows between theatrical release and release on DVD/Blu-ray has hurt 2nd run business. Lately digital downloads have been coming available as much as a month earlier than the DVD/Blu-ray release. I think Netflix and Redbox are hurting a lot of discount theaters on the back end.

The Vaska was able to get away with mono sound back in the 1990s when only a couple or so 1st run theaters had 5.1 digital sound here. Now the town has 20 first run screens all d-cinema and 5.1 digital sound equipped. Lots of people have 5.1 in their homes. A theater with mono sound is pretty backward now.

Carmike has a new 13 screen complex under construction on Lawton's west side. I'm not sure what they're going to do with the existing 8-screen theater. They may demolish it, but they might also switch it to a 2nd run theater. I think that would be the Vaska's death knell, if film prints are even still available for 2nd run theaters to book by the fall of 2015.

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 09-26-2014, 02:54 AM:

Great story Ron. You make the choices I would have. I also was hooked on multi-track surround audio the first time i heard it in a theater as I grew up in a town that had Mono for a long time.

I judge I theater more on its sound then its image quality, even though i consider myself a videophile. Theres many dozens of theaters ive attended once and never again due to poor audio. If I can tell the audio has potential but the levels were low or something ill give it one more chance. I always call ahead to each new theater my wife and I visit before seeing a moive to ask about there setups. Most of the time even the manager doesn't even what equipment they have.

The locals at this mono theater must be rich but not discerning. Or kids who don't know the difference.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 09-26-2014, 11:33 AM:

quote: Jarod Reddig
I judge I theater more on its sound then its image quality, even though i consider myself a videophile. Theres many dozens of theaters ive attended once and never again due to poor audio. If I can tell the audio has potential but the levels were low or something ill give it one more chance.

I think I would agree, Cineplex in my area presents their movies at sound levels that are just way to loud. But even their presenations have been going significantly downhill with their scope projection on an open flat screen with no masking.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 09-26-2014, 11:49 AM:

Obviously the theater should upgrade to 5.1 but it will never do that. As was said, this is a seasonal theater that runs during the summertime. 95% of the people who go there are vacationers with small kids. The kids are not there for the sound. When this theater ran film, they were running flat and scope on the same size screen. They filled the screen with both which means they were cutting off half the scope image. They ran this way since the theater was built. Now with digital, it fills the screen with flat. Scope runs with the correct ratio with black on top and bottom. The picture quality is much improved. You can argue all you want about the sound and I would agree if this theater was open all year and in a normal neighborhood, but it's not.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 09-26-2014, 12:02 PM:

How many seats is the auditorium?

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 09-26-2014, 12:18 PM:

120,120,180,48

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 09-26-2014, 07:40 PM:

Guess just must be a speacial situation to be able to get first run films only being open for that short peried. But as said a short but busy season. There some unique situations. I understand what you mean tho many if not most only notice presentation issues if something goes obviously wrong. Still Mono in 2014:eek:? Its the guy calling the shots with budget who needs a reality check and who im directing this towards not you man. Im beating a dead horse sorry so enough said.

Posted by Steve Moore (Member # 4753) on 09-27-2014, 07:11 AM:

If it's coming out of a D-A converter, could you not just get away with a domestic high powered amp, with a discreet 6 channel input and look out for some reasonable sized domestic or "disco/DJ" speakers for the left right etc, but keep the existing centre for dialogue. The size of those auditoriums is not huge, and this could be a halfway house. Sure, you won't have the dynamic range, but at least it would give it a bit of width and depth.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 09-27-2014, 07:27 AM:

What this clown doesn't get is that he makes the entire industry look bad when he puts out such a substandard presentation (picture or sound). Believe it or not...EVERYONE takes a hit when public perception of going to the cinema is something less than it was.

It isn't about "spending other people's money" it is about taking other people's money. People paid to see and hear the movie. The movie was not mixed in mono (except maybe Woody Allen). It isn't for the public to be the scientist in the room to figure out what system the theatre has and how well it was installed.

While it is reasonable for a business to ascertain the right balance of features versus the business (would you want to force an esoteric format like Atmos which is not on every movie and costs several times the basic sound system?). However, DCinema has been defined as a 5.1 sound format, MINIMUM. That is, it is expected that all cinemas playing it are capable of handling 5.1 sound...not 7.1, not Atmos, not Auro or any other new fangled format.

In today's world, as others have pointed out, 5.1 is not a luxury format. It does not require high-tech or even special equipment. There are several cinema format manufactures of "standard" equipment and costs lower than that of previous film processors (i.e. CP750, JSD60 to name a couple but there are more)...or one can skip the cinema industry all together...ANY system capable of AES inputs...including a frakenstein of a D/A to even the previous sound processor...there are hundreds/thousands out there that are all but for the asking so you can have a common volume control.

There really is no excuse for a current cinema running in mono...if you don't do the business to afford that...please close. The world would be better off without you...home cinema does our industry better service than that. You make us all look (and sound) bad. You are not presenting the movie even remotely as intended.

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 09-27-2014, 10:45 AM:

It comes down to this person doing the absolutely minimum to stay in business to remain relevant. It's purely cynical. He's got the market cornered. He probably does not make any money and does not need to. I'm guessing he's wealthy and wants to be seen as the provider of the areas entertainment. I've seen this same scenario in various parts of the country.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-27-2014, 02:03 PM:

I had a number of really tiny operations that I converted to digital. Several of them couldn't even afford to do it on their own and had fund raisers or the funds were donated in three cases. All but one of those customers had really minimal film systems none of which were very good, one was still only center-surround (mono basically). That center surround site is in a town with a population of 1640 people and it is 100 miles from the next major city. Converting to digital and upgrading to 5.1 sound has caused his business to quadruple and he even gets a few first run titles now where with film that was unthinkable. Most recently he has kicked the rental tenant out next door and is going to add a second screen. So it is possible that even the most marginal of operations can improve itself and it becomes known pretty quickly.

Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-27-2014, 03:28 PM:

quote: Richard May
The kids are not there for the sound.

I'm not so sure about that. I think good sound can mean the difference between a little kid coming out of a movie going "That was SO AWESOME!!!" or feeling like he'd just seen a TV show.

A lot of times, people (including little kids) don't know exactly why something was awesome, they just know that it was.

I love it when kids say a movie was awesome, because they always say exactly what is on their mind.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 09-27-2014, 03:49 PM:

What impact did 5.1 have at the Roxy?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-27-2014, 04:54 PM:

I don't know if it resulted in a lot of business that we weren't already getting, because (like the theater in this discussion) we are the only theater in a small town, plus our mono sound was already pretty good. But I do think it has helped maintain the audience over the years especially for those "event" movies that are best on a big screen.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 09-28-2014, 01:15 PM:

I remember an ad in the late 70s that Dolby used to place in the trades in the early days of optical stereo conversion. It was a cartoon that showed two theatres and their marquees. One said i]Now Playing in DOLBY STEREO,[/i] the other just said Now Playing. In front of that theatre were a few patrons at the box office. In front of the theatre that said, Now Playing in DOLBY STEREO the line went around the block. Possibly a bit of wishful thinking by the Dolby marketing team, but certainly history is on Dolby's side.

Good sound is definitely a sale-able part of the presentation equation. One can argue whether or not each of the increasing add-ons to Dolby's original 4.1 optical -- digital 5.1, "circle surround," now Dolby Atmos -- have had a linear, matching increase in customer draw/demand, i.e, a direct cause-and-effect in up-tick, asses-in-seats sales. But certainly the public does appreciate and patronizes theatres that have the very basic ability to present at least full spectrum 5.1 stereo sound, especially a via a system that can deliver clean, gonad-rattling bottom-end and delicate highs and do it effortlessly without distortion; less than that will go noticed.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-28-2014, 03:20 PM:

Up to the point that I did the digital conversion, I had mono sound here. I had 5.1 installed when the digital projector was installed and I then had a lot of people remarking on how wonderful the sound was for the next several weeks.

I still get occasional people saying things like, "The sound in here is so great! What kind of speakers do you have?" and things like that.

I have the impression that people notice the sound quality more than they notice the picture quality.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 09-28-2014, 03:57 PM:

Prior to us going stereo about 2002, people would occasionally compliment us on our sound. Sometimes they would ask us when we had installed digital stereo. I really attribute that to how bad things at the Carmike theatres sounded more than anything else.
Now we only get comments on the sound when it is having problems. As we've got new amps on the way, the problems should go away, and thus, any comments about the sound (unless it is too loud).
We don't do much as far as gonad rattling bass or high pitched death wails. Our audience just wants to hear people speak clearly.

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 10-02-2014, 12:25 AM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
I'm not so sure about that. I think good sound can mean the difference between a little kid coming out of a movie going "That was SO AWESOME!!!" or feeling like he'd just seen a TV show.

A lot of times, people (including little kids) don't know exactly why something was awesome, they just know that it was.

I love it when kids say a movie was awesome, because they always say exactly what is on their mind.

Well said Mike I completely agree.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 10-04-2014, 02:26 PM:

I don't know how a theatre survives just being open a few months a year, but I think I'd rather close the place then invest in digital without having multichannel sound. Even if we only count since the Dolby era, we've had multichannel sound in movies for 37 years. I'm amazed that there are any theaters still operating a mono sound system.

If I walked into that theatre, even just to see some animated feature with my grandkids and I discovered that the sound was mono (unless it was a revival of a mono movie), I'd walk out and get my money back.

If that's a well-off area as claimed, then many of the potential customers have 5.1 or more in their homes and probably fairly large screens. Why would they come to the theatre?

Summer of 2013, I went to a single-screen theatre on Cape Cod. It had digital projection and a quite good 5.1 sound system. Although it was a residential area with probably a fair number of full-time residents, Cape Cod is primarily a summer resort area with a large population only in the summer. If they could do it, I think anyone could do it.

If I couldn't put in multichannel sound, I think I'd try to make it a revival theatre and only show very old movies.

My movie experiences as a kid, seeing such movies as West Side Story and How the West Was Won in first run multichannel sound is one of the factors that caused me to pursue a career as a recording engineer. Don't think kids are so unsophisticated about sound. They might not know the details, but they know good sound and they still have the hearing capability to appreciate it.

I'd at least try to put multichannel sound into the larger screen.