Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Wall Street Journal

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Posted by Lance C. McFetridge (Member # 95) on 05-17-2001, 12:02 PM:

Interesting article in 05/17/01 Wall Street Journal concerning the formation of a non profit company that will equip "provide the means for a cash strapped theatre industry to obtain special projectors, servers and other gear and to set quality guidelines that would ensure consistent color and picture resolution".
Interesting reading for us theatre owners.
lance

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 05-17-2001, 12:09 PM:

Do you have a URL were we can all read this? Non-profit organization, huh? Sounds like a scam if you ask me.

Posted by Lance C. McFetridge (Member # 95) on 05-17-2001, 12:56 PM:

Aaron,
I think you can go to www.wsj.com and sign up for a trial subscription. At any rate, it makes me suspicious, to say the least but get the article and see who the players are and how they plan to fund it. It is on the front page in the left column.
lance

Posted by Ky Boyd (Member # 23) on 05-17-2001, 01:49 PM:

The following appeared as an article on www.showbizdata.com

STUDIOS MAY HELP EXHIBS CONVERT TO DIGITAL
Today's Headlines

Executives of four of Hollywood's major studios have held discussions about forming a nonprofit company that would help financially troubled theater chains replace traditional film projectors with digital ones, the Wall Street Journal reported today (Thursday), citing people familiar with the matter. According to the newspaper, Disney, Sony, Warner Bros. and Paramount have been involved in the discussions, with Universal and 20th indicating that they may also participate. "We think the studios need to play a role in accelerating the deployment of digital cinema on favorable terms to theater operators," Phil Barlow, executive vice president of Walt Disney Motion Picture Group told the WSJ. However, the newspaper reported that the chains are worried about giving studios too much control over how films are exhibited.
"Whatever structure is developed has to leave the existing players in the same position as they are today, vis-a-vis the relationships on film booking, control of the projector within the theaters and so on," United Artists Theatre Co.'s CEO Kurt Hall told the WSJ.

I wonder if this is in conjunction with Technicolor Digital Cinema or in competition with it. Either way it again appears on the surface to be yet another way for studios to exert more control over the exhibs.

Posted by Lance C. McFetridge (Member # 95) on 05-17-2001, 02:35 PM:

Ky,
I agree with your statement about Studio control. The full WSJ article mentions that the Studios "are eager to develop a plan that won't spook financially strapped theatre owners". Yeah right!!! I have an idea, .....lower the damn rentals structure.
Personally, If it goes digital, then fine. The quality needs to be better than film, and someone has to pay for all the equipment. If it saves the studio money, then they need to pay for all the equipment, and the maintenance. They also need to reduce the rental, and not charge me per ticket on top to project in a format that they choose, I already bought equipment to exhibit in the format that they chose once, and I continue to upgrade slightly as they suggest to keep my presentation quality at a high standard. OK, Rant mode off.
lance

Posted by Greg Borr (Member # 386) on 05-18-2001, 12:25 PM:

Lance,
Now you know how software developers feel when dealing with Microsoft, Win 98, Win 98 SE, NT4.0, ME, 2000, now Fall of 2001 XP and then "Whistler" For us it is a nessecary evil.

From an exhibitors standpoint, I would not be willing to pay any amount of money to save the studios cash. Maybe the film rental structure for DP should be lower than conventional. If the studios would come up with a film rental structure that would cover the costs of the new equipment and maintenance, in an average payback of two years per auditorium and then the extra savings were additional profit for the theatre, they might be on to something. With this type of agreement both parties would be ahead in the long run.

Greg Borr
Ready Theatre Systems

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 05-18-2001, 02:51 PM:

"Now you know how software developers feel when dealing with Microsoft, Win 98, Win 98 SE, NT4.0, ME, 2000, now Fall of 2001 XP and then "Whistler" For us it is a nessecary evil."

No it isn't. I won't go into the details of a rant, but the "upgrades" serve more to increase the MS profit line and reduce competition for the MS software than they do to add needed features to the systems.

Ticketpro, for example, has used a unix based system and avoided this trap. I've kept my software DOS based for this and other reasons. By following the crowd racing down the Windows path, many software developers are unknowingly on a death march, where the constant drain of having to buy more MS crap and time wasted learning more arcane rules bite into their profit margin and wear down their resolve to compete or keep their software compatible with the latest systems.

That glowing gold of the pot at the end of the MS rainbow is largely fool's gold, reached only through many toll gates on the private MS yellow brick road.

The fascination that humanity has for ever more needlessly complex systems never ceases to amaze me.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-18-2001, 03:34 PM:

By comparison, a projector, a lens and a screen are pretty simple, aren't they? One nice thing about film is that most of the technology improvements actually simplify its use, as well as improve quality.

------------------
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 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
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