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Topic: Curved Screens vs Flat Screens

Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 10-07-1999 05:09 AM

How does everybody feel about their screens? Personally, I like flat screens better due to less distortion. On the same subject, what about AMC's TORUS compound curve screens? I think that they REALLY SUCK! I have never seen such an awful image in my life. AMC was using a 7000 watt xenon on a 50 foot TORUS screen and it was still too dim! Plus the sound sucked, due to no speakers behind the screen.

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Aaron Mehocic
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 804
From: New Castle, PA, USA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-07-1999 02:04 PM

Got to agree with flat screens being better. We have two out of nine curved screens and the distortion is really noticible. Plus, curved screens don't look good when your canging the masking from flat to scope because the masking doesn't bend exactly with the screen. In short, the two curved screens are just pains in our asses!
AMC screens? Don't know much about them. Don't want to either from the reputation they have on this forum!

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 10-07-1999 03:23 PM

I cannot stand curved screens. Every theater I've ever been to with them has had focus problems (which is the main reason to supposedly put them in).

I also don't like the lack of width in the aspect. Take yourself a flat screen and curved screen in identical auditoriums and mask the image perfectly, the curved screen will not appear as wide to the audience...makes flat films look more like a big TV.

The biggest beef I have though is with the distortion associated with them. Anyone see the THX Broadway logo on a curved screen? Suddenly that nice rectangular box becomes a big blue smiley face! A wide shot of New York city looks like the skyscrapers are leaning inwards about to fall like dominos.

And what's up with the poor light dispersion? Some of the larger curved screens in town cannot prevent a horizontal hot spot, depending on where the viewer is seated depends on it's location on the screen. Also, I don't like the "washing out" effect curved screens have on contrast. The left side of the image DOES bounce into the right side and vice versa.

Joe put it nice and blunt: "curved screens suck".

If a new 20 plex was to open boasting "extra long narrow hallway auditoriums", people would flock to see movies there! It's amazing how powerful advertising can be on the general public as opposed to quality. Just look at "stadium seating"!

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Ian Price
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1714
From: Denver, CO
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-07-1999 05:25 PM

The funny thing is that all the lens companies grind their lenses for the flat screen. All modern lenses are specifically made for flat screens. You are supposed to get special lenses for a curved screen. D150 anyone?

Bobby Pinkston told me that one when Larry Jacobson changed all the flat screens at the UA Greenwood to curved screens. Larry Jacobson used to be head of engineering at AMC. Guess where they got all those "suck screens"?

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Bruce McGee
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1776
From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular.
Registered: Aug 1999

posted 10-07-1999 07:12 PM

In the 1980's Atlanta was fortunate to have the Columbia Theater on Peachtree St. It featured the (then) "largest screen in the south." It had a substantial curve to it also. The projector was a Cinemeccanica(?) with 35/70 capabilities. Dont know the model. The lenses were custom ground for the theater. I didn't work there, I just knew the projectionist.
The sound was fantastic, and the screen focus was razor sharp.
I saw Oklahoma! there in about 1983. It was run at 30 fps. The focus and the 70mm combined to look like you were looking in a mirror.

I wish we had some 70 theaters here in Asheville. All 35 here.

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Rick Long
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 759
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 10-07-1999 08:58 PM

Curved screens may be O.K. for a near-zero projection angle, but in all to many cases they are used with relatively steep projection angles.

The result of this, when setting up the masking in preparation for aperture filing, is that while the .690 line (using RP-40 for Cinemascope) is at the bottom centre of the screen, the lower left and right edges of the screen (as viewed from the projection room) "dip" down into the next frame.

The only alternative to avoid negative "flashes" is to set the lower .690 line to
the lower left and right edges. The resultant bottom centre crop loses a lot of picture. The problem is even more pronounced when setting .446 for 1.85).

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Christopher Seo
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 530
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-08-1999 04:43 AM

Wait, Brad... what's wrong with stadium seating? Besides the fact that audience members in the last row of our auditoriums occasionally play shadow puppets with the slides and end titles?

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Erich Loepke
Film Handler

Posts: 43
From: Ft. Worth, TX, USA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted 10-08-1999 05:36 AM

My most recent experience with a curved screen was when a friend and I went to see "The Phantom Menace" at the Regal 20-plex. In addition to the scratched and dirty film, I had to put up with very noticeable image distortion. It was like watching the film through a fish bowl. Gee, I don't have this problem at home with 16mm. Of course, I mentioned the scratches to my friend and he didn't notice them until I pointed them out. There seems to be more emphasis put on sound and sound systems these days than on good quality images. I don't go to the theater just to hear a set of speakers. I can do that at home. I'm sure a lot of moviegoers are taken in by buzzword advertising (Torus compound curve as mentioned above). It sounds good, so it must be!

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 10-08-1999 03:52 PM

Once AMC stops getting box office results from their Torus compound curve screens, perhaps they will try a reverse Torus "pertruding screen". Hey, every gimmick has gotta be tried!

Instead of having "The Screens That Suck" AMC will have "The Screens That Blow".

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-08-1999 07:32 PM

I have always been a fan of curved screens but regretably very few are properly designed let alone installed
To prevent cross reflection the screen must be a high gain (silver)
The projection angle cannot exceed 3 degrees or you will get curved verticle lines(barrel distortion)
Most new lens work fine on a screen curved on the radius of the projection throw. A deeper arc requires deep focus lens and both ISCO and Schnieder offer them
Check out many of the big D150 theatres and notice that the curvalon lens had no distortion with screens arced on 150 degree field of view

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George Roher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 266
From: Washington DC
Registered: Jul 99

posted 10-09-1999 01:04 AM

I love curved screens. You just need deep-curve corrected lenses. The curved screens I've seen in new multiplexes are pretty much garbage, but a giant curved screen set up properly is the ultimate film going experience. It just feels more three-dimensional.

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George Roher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 266
From: Washington DC
Registered: Jul 99

posted 10-09-1999 01:05 AM

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 10-09-1999 03:00 AM

I have found that the more curve is in the screen, the more cropped your picture is. Look at the aperature of any curved screen. The more severe the curve, the more the aperture is carved like a bow-tie.

I just don't like cropped pictures.

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Stephen Jones 1
Film Handler

Posts: 62
From: Tulsa, OK, USA
Registered: Aug 1999

posted 10-10-1999 04:47 AM

Though I'm not speaking for Brad, one reason why he may not like stadium seating is for the following reason:

Pretty much all theatres want to get the maximum seating capacity in their auditoriums, which in turn means the slope of the stadium seating going almost to the top with the porthole about 5 to 10 feet above the last row. Problem is that the roof is not much higher than about 8-12 feet above the porthole if that much. Therefore, many stadium seating theatres have to angle their projectors downward so much that the keystoning can be almost in impossible to focus an anamorphic image. Most of the time with these theatres, the center is focused with the top and bottom very blurry. With flat seating, the projector can be set up to have almost no angle onto the screen; a perfectly straight image on the screen.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-11-1999 11:38 AM

I like flat screens for Academy-format and 1.66 films; neither of these formats looks particularly good on a curved screen. For 1.85 films, I'm sort of indifferent. Some look better on flat screens and others look better on shallow-curve screens. For scope, I like both shallow-curve and deep-curve screens (for different reasons), but that assumes that proper curve-screen lenses are used. Scope just looks better to me when shown on a curved screen than a flat screen.

And, yes, I agree with the comments on stadium seating. I really don't like it--short lenses, steep throw angles, and largeish screens are not a good combination.

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