Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Gut feeling - AMC/Regal/Cinemark will go with Sony

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Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 05-17-2007, 07:20 AM:

I don't know why but I have a strange feeling that the AMC/Regal/Cinemark Digital Cinema partnership will end up going with Sony 4k. The situation seems to parallel the early digital sound days. When some chains had started doing large scale installs of DTS and Dolby Digital, AMC held back. I remember when they opened the "Grand 24" and had 6 (I think, it might have been 4) Dolby Digital auditoriums. I remember a boxoffice article where somebody from AMC said that they were ready to install it in all auditoriums but that they would "wait and see" what happens. Soon after that, AMC announced the deal with Sony to go SDDS across the board.

Now you have a similar situation. Some chains (Carmike, Rave, etc) have comitted to large scale 2k DLP deployment but AMC/Regal/Cinemark are for the most part just installing it where they want to do Real-D. None of their new builds are being done 100% (or even close) Digital. Also, a few weeks back somebody from Regal said that Sony's projector was "not ready yet" with YET being the operative word I think. Since that time, Sony has begun live testing of the SRX-220 and the Muvico in Chicago will open with it on all screens in August.

I just have a strange feeling that sometime in September or October, the AMC/Regal/Cinemark partnership is going to announce thier intention to go 100% Sony 4k by like 2010 or something like that. I especially have this feeling because of the timeframe. They have said they will start their deployment in 2008. So, assuming Sony's projector is "ready" by the end of 2007, this lines up perfectly.

I could be wrong but it's my gut feeling.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-17-2007, 07:50 AM:

I'd tend to think that a single-supplier situation would be extremely risky. What happens if AMC installs all Sony projectors and then, a few years later, Sony decides to increase parts prices tenfold? Or what if the Sony units all start to fail after three years of operation due to a design flaw or manufacturing defect?

Selecting a few different suppliers would minimize risk and possibly prices (due to increased competition, even with lower volume for each model). Perhaps they could use the Sony units for larger screens (where the higher resolution would be most critical) and the Christie or Barco 2k units for smaller houses.

I'm still not sure how the economics of conversion make sense for the exhibitors, but I guess we'll see. It will be interesting. I know that I wouldn't want to be the one to finance this, given that many markets are presently over-screened and that the exhibition industry isn't exactly healthy right now.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-17-2007, 08:14 AM:

Conversely...AMC has had a direct experience with what happens when you make a deal with Sony...they bought all those systems and have now been decomissioning them and installing things like...well...Dolby. However, this time it isn't just a portion of their sound system, it is THE thing that allows the feature to run. Putting your eggs in that basket is just begging for disaster.

Sony can't give them away...after all they have to show a profit too, particularly nowadays. In fact, knowing Sony, it probably costs them many more times to make something than a more nimble company.

Diversity makes sense but then again until these systems make financial sense, there is no point in them for exhibitors.

BTW...I recently viewed a MEET THE ROBINSONS Dcinema (Christie CP2000 w/DoReMi server...I was wholy unimpressed. The color space was horrible (I hope it was not calibrated well because this was worse than I'm used to for Dcinema machines), the light was dingy...4-6fL tops (without the glasses) and the 3D was also more annoying than anything (again hopefully out of calibration as there was ghosting depending on the angle of head tilt).

My point is that not that all DCinema is horrible but certainly the mere purchase of it does not guarantee anything. There will be crap DCinema installations just like with film...only the DCinema stuff will cost a lot more and last far less.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-17-2007, 08:28 AM:

I thought the CEO of Regal already announced that it wold NOT be the Sony projector they would be installing. I know I read that somewhere.

Mark

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 05-17-2007, 09:12 AM:

He said (in Nov 29th Article):

"Regal Entertainment Group (RGC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Michael Campbell told the Reuters Media Summit in New York that he would not consider installing the Sony projector on his chain's 6,400 screens until it had been tested more thoroughly ."

He also said:
"We've seen 4K in some lab conditions, it looks really good," Campbell said. "The problem is, at least currently, it's not reliable. It's being tested."

And...
"I think the (digital projection) roll-out ... initially is going to be almost exclusively 2K, and as the roll-out progresses, as 4K technology becomes more tested, as the price of that technology inevitably comes down... you may see a lot of companies including Regal shift to some 4K units as part of that roll-out process," Campbell said. "I don't think it's ready today."

Campbell said the chain wants to encourage Sony to continue testing and rolling out the technology "but at the end of the day it has to be an affordable technology."

These type of quotes is why I have my gut feeling. He seems to be saying that once it's tested (which will begin in earnest in August with Muvico having an 18-plex full of them) and they bring the price down, Regal wants them. Notice that he doesn't say anything about Sony's prior issues with SDDS and support.

It'd also be good marketing strategy against the early 2K adopters. Regal/AMC/Cinemark can say "the guy down the street may have some magic perfect digital stuff but we have 4K truly really purely digital with 4 times the resolution! (and perhaps 4x the data compression but we won't mention that)"

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-17-2007, 10:37 AM:

I won't fault Sony for taking their time in developing their 4K projector. It's better for them to work out the bugs now rather than be dealing with it in the field on products already sold and in use. They also have the luxury of making certain improvements as this kind of technology continues to mature.

Sony can also take their time for the simple fact nearly all digital production in Hollywood is mere 2K. Sony seems very much alone in showing any ambitions to pursue standards well above HDTV resolutions.

The fact most content is just 2K will pose some marketing problems. "The Glory of 4K Projection" will not mean anything at all with 2K source material fed into a 4K projector.

quote: Scott Norwood
Selecting a few different suppliers would minimize risk and possibly prices (due to increased competition, even with lower volume for each model).

Mixing different D-cinema systems together might possibly have some of the advantages mentioned. The 4K systems might be good for larger screens -provided if the image is bright enough and it is actually being fed a video stream with true native 4K resolution (good luck on that one).

DCI-compliant movies should be able to play on numerous makes of D-cinema systems, unlike the situation of digital sound on 35mm where three proprietary formats demanded three proprietary playback systems.

Multiple systems in one theater or one theater chain can be a disadvantage. That means having multiple vendors to come in and service the equipment and provide support for each proprietary software system. You have different lists of parts to track and order.

In Carmike's case, I think it's ultimately going to be a good thing for them to have just 1 brand of d-cinema system in nearly all their theaters. With 35mm, they had a scattering of many different kinds of projectors, platters and all sorts of other gear. That mix of gear certainly had to complicate the issue of fixing problems when they occurred.

quote: Scott Norwood
I'm still not sure how the economics of conversion make sense for the exhibitors, but I guess we'll see.

That's why I believe the movie distributors should be paying for most or even all the bill for this digital projection hardware. They're getting all the money from the tickets sold at the box office. They're getting all the cost savings by using portable hard discs instead of making film prints.

At the very least, equipment leasing would make more sense than buying the gear outright.

OT:

quote: Lyle Romer
I remember when they opened the "Grand 24" and had 6 (I think, it might have been 4) Dolby Digital auditoriums.

Actually, when the Grand 24 in Dallas opened the theater had only two Dolby DA-20 processors mounted on roll around carts. Four projectors had Cat. No. 700 readers installed. All 24 screens did have SDDS.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 05-17-2007, 10:44 AM:

I think the larger screens need the 4k but the smaller screens could probably get by with the 2k. That may be one of the things that will be seen in the future just to keep the costs balanced and manufactures happy. The big question will be if it gets anymore people in the seats. Right now it's hard enough fielding the questions of what's the difference between digital and what you have now. That is the way people ask it to they don't go what's the difference between digital and film. Those are the people who think you are using video tape or DVDs to project your movies.

quote: Bobby Henderson
At the very least, equipment leasing would make more sense than buying the gear outright.

would leasing it from yourself be considered owning it outright? I mean the company that was split off of NCM is equally shared by Cinemark/AMC/Regal. Of course that is still an unanswered question in reguards to how the deployment will take place along with when it will begin a full force rollout and what type equipment will be used.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-17-2007, 10:51 AM:

Somebody correct me if I have this wrong (silly thing to ask), but don't the major airlines NOT standardize on one make, just for these very reasons?

I think I read somewhere that they tend to split their fleets between, say, Boeing and Airbus, so as not to be outleveraged by the salespeople, or held hostage by parts suppliers.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 05-17-2007, 11:12 AM:

Interesting parallel with the airlines. Some airlines mix manufacturers to get better pricing but some go to one manufacturer with massive orders for better pricing.

With 11,000 screens or whatever the 3 combined control, I'm sure they will get the best possible price from a single source. I'm sure any manufacturer would lower their profit margin for an enormous volume.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-17-2007, 11:35 AM:

Interestingly, Southwest Airlines uses only the Boeing 737 (in several variants) on its routes. Supposedly this reduces turnaround time because the ground crews are intimately familiar with the aircraft. It is probably also advantageous to be able to certify all of their pilots on only one type of aircraft and know that any Southwest pilot can fly any Southwest plane.

Obviously, this only works for airlines whose schedules can all be accommodated within the limitations (range, seating capacity) of one type of airplane.

As for bulk pricing, I'm not sure how it would apply in this case, since production capacity for the high-end video projectors is so limited and the potential market size is so small (100k units worldwide, or thereabouts).

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 05-17-2007, 10:12 PM:

So, there's a HUGE difference in reliability between the aircraft industry and the professional (or consumer!) electronics industries. It's hard to imagine this kind of comparison being
legitimate.

I'm kind of waiting to discover piles of D-cinema equipment failing in 15 years because of tin whiskers from lead-free RoHS solders...

Though I suppose it's an issue for the CP650 too?

--jhawk

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-18-2007, 01:36 AM:

It depends on when you bought the CP650...though it is RoHS compliant now...it didn't start out life that way. RoHS was one of the reasons Dolby only offers the CP650 for their cinema processor. The cost of coverting existing products to RoHS can be rather high to ensure compliance.

The long term affects of early RoHS compliance is not likely to be seen right away.

From my experience...when a change is made to have an enviro-friendly substance...often the new product performs notably worse though in some instances, with time, the new products end up not only performing as well as the old but even better though I have not found this to be the norm.

With Solder...if one looks at the alternatives to traditional Tin-Lead (Sn-Pb), they all have their short comings and I remember reading a report that showed the EPA found that 8 out of the 10 RoHS alternative solders had similar or worse environmental problems....just not Lead...the other two did not have a track record yet for the EPA.

Sn-Pb solder does/did not guarantee high reliability either...any technician that has been around just the least bit has seen MANY a solder based equipment failure. Probably the worst offenders in this regard are the wave-solder systems. They can be really good or really bad...it all depends on how they are run and kept up. The solder purity, temperature, you name it has to all be right on the money for it to produce high reliability...the rest produce cold solder joints that start to fail with time. Well done hand soldering (particularly with a good QC program) and solder paste (surface mount) seem to do the best for me.

Unfortunately, only time will tell if lead-free solders will have a large, small, no impact on the reliability of products over the long haul.

As for DCinema...the technology will probably be obsolete before the solder grows wiskers and fail...so we will have nice lead free DCinema equipment in the land fills. Then again, if one were to keep film based projectors...the land fills wouldn't need to fill up as fast since that equipment is seeming kept almost forever (and the film itself is recycled).

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 05-18-2007, 05:23 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
The fact most content is just 2K will pose some marketing problems. "The Glory of 4K Projection" will not mean anything at all with 2K source material fed into a 4K projector.

In marketing, will that even matter? In the real world, outputting 2K material on a 4K projector may not make any difference, but as long as it can legitmately be claimed, won't the marketing departments eat it up, and then feed it to the public? As long as you can put it in print without getting in trouble, marketing will run with it, the actual differences be damned.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-18-2007, 07:58 AM:

quote: Anslem Rayburn
In marketing, will that even matter?

Lying is lying. Marketing people do try to get away with lying all the time. But it only takes a competitor to expose the lie to destroy an unethical marketing scheme.

The idea that it would be just as good to blow 2K material up to 4K is pretty stupid. That's just like someone expecting a 35mm blow up to 70mm to have just as much image detail as something produced natively in 65mm/70mm. Sadly, there's a lot of people grabbing onto that very retarded notion because the image material is "digital." They think because it is "digital" that somehow makes everything more flexible. Something produced natively in 4K with absolutely no 2K bullshit thrown into it at any point will always be better than anything just 2K.

It also reminds me of the occasional fuck-tard I have to deal with in my day job who expects the tiny little low-res JPEG image he grabbed off his web site to look great blown up on a billboard.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 05-18-2007, 09:56 AM:

How would 2K material be handled with a 4K projector anyway? I saw ZOO in digital projection at Landmark's Nuart Theatre a couple of weeks ago (the film was shot in 35mm and the end credits said it used a 2K digital intermediate). I'm assuming the Nuart is using the Sony 4K projector (I admit I could be completely of base about this. Interestingly, the previews were all 35mm and badly scratched with lots of dirt.)

Anyway, is a special server needed at this theatre? Does the 2K have to be re-rendered at 4K for the 4K projector to show it? Or does the projector just upscale the 2K image to 4K? Regardless, I did find the image to be stunning, regardless of the projector used. I noticed no additional sharpness to the image, but at least the steadiness and cleanliness of the image was better than the previews (although I've seen MUCH better film projection than what they had there. The 35mm material was perfectly sharp and brightly lit, but the condition of the previews was not good.)

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-18-2007, 10:31 AM:

I'm not 100% positive, but fairly sure the Sony 4K projector will scale up 2K material in the same kind of manner that a 1080p HDTV will scale up 480p or 720p material.

Aren't DCI compliant 2K d-cinema systems also supposed to be able to down-sample 4K content? I could have sworn I saw a provision for that in the DCI white paper.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 05-18-2007, 11:03 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Aren't DCI compliant 2K d-cinema systems also supposed to be able to down-sample 4K content? I could have sworn I saw a provision for that in the DCI white paper.

Yes, as a matter of fact the Spider-man 3 content is 4096 x 1716 scaled down on the 2k projectors to run at 2048 x 858

Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 05-18-2007, 11:25 AM:

quote: Lyle Romer
I remember when they opened the "Grand 24" and had 6 (I think, it might have been 4) Dolby Digital auditoriums. I remember a boxoffice article where somebody from AMC said that they were ready to install it in all auditoriums but that they would "wait and see" what happens.

The Grand 24 in Dallas opened with:
2 DTS units including readers with brackets installed on 8 projectors (playback and readers were moved as needed)
8 CAT 699s and 2 DA-20s (on roll around racks)
8 were equipped for 8 channel playback.

quote: Lyle Romer
Soon after that, AMC announced the deal with Sony to go SDDS across the board.

That seems to have worked out well for them [evil]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-18-2007, 12:25 PM:

On the subject of acquiring digital cinema equipment, I was wondering if it could work like soda machines. The film companies (in a consortium) would own the DC equipment and just provide it to theatres as a means of "dispensing" their product. If the theatre wanted to use the DC for a non-theatrical thing, like a ball game, the theatre would pay some kind of rental.

I suppose that could work if only the equipment wasn't so expensive.

quote: Bobby Henderson
equipment leasing would make more sense than buying the gear outright.

It would, if the DC equipment would last for 50 years or more like film equipment does. But all this stuff will be obsolete in 5 years or less, so it's a lifetime commitment.

The only "advantage" would be getting new equipment every so often, but I'd really rather have a 25-year-old item that isn't obsolete that I've had paid off for 15 years, than new stuff that I'll have to pay for until I'm dead.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-18-2007, 01:02 PM:

Unfortunately, that's the nature with most forms of digital technology. You have to replace it every few years. It took a long time for people to accept that when it came to personal computers.

Once the digital projectors reach a certain level of performance (image sharpness, level of detail and brightness) then the projectors themselves may stay in service for a decade or longer. The servers are probably going to be switched out a lot more often. 2K is certainly not good enough for the long term. 4K could be, but even higher standards like 6K or 8K could take over by the end of the next decade. In an odd ball way it could actually force movie companies to start shooting on large format film again -but that's only if the movie theaters survive until then.