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Author
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Topic: Digital Projectors
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Ben Wales
Jedi Master Film Handler
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Posts: 602
From: Southampton. England
Registered: Jul 99
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posted 02-05-2000 05:29 PM
The Odeon Liecester Square Cinema in London has just opened up this week with "Toy Story2" using the Texas DLP Digital projector with a Christe 4kw Xenon console.There has been quite a debate over here in the UK as a lot of comments made say it looks better than film!, but as this was shot in Digital format any way may well look better, but the real test is transfer from film, that issue I am not sure so far. Can you belive one person on a chat room on the web stated Digital Cinema looks better than a 70mm!, and film is now dead. What's the general feeling out there about eletronic Cinema?, do we now dump those out of date film projectors for a state of Digital projectors which will be them self's out of date within five years or less as there is bound to one improved model made at a lower price tag!.
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Ian Price
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1714
From: Denver, CO
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-05-2000 06:37 PM
Digital projectors made by TI are very good. They are not as good as film, however. There is still a fixed resolution (1280x1024) on the chip. They still require good focus on the Xenon lamp. Toy Story 2 and Star Wars the Phantom Menace were the two perfect films to try out Digital Cinema with because they both came out of computers. The digital Cinema will never look as good as film can look on films with superb cinematography. I can think of a few films that make film look good. Lawrence of Arabia, The Straight Story, A River Runs Through It, and A League of Their Own looked very good on film and I think Digital Cinema would be hard pressed to look as good. It is said that film has a horizontal resolution that is analogous to 6,000 lines. Digital Cinema is up to 1280 lines of resolution. So film has four times more resolution than video. Remember that 70mm had four times more resolution than 35mm and we don’t have 70mm anymore. Digital Cinemas is being driven by the cost of film shipping and handling. The theatre owners aren’t going to foot the bill to convert to Digital. The costs are still much higher than film. Look, the industry still hasn’t switched to reverse-scan sound heads yet and the companies are going to reduced silver film. It is the studios and distributors that are driving the digital cinema thing down the road. If they would put that much effort into maintenance and training, then there would be no big push to go digital. I have $130,000 tied up in film handling systems in my theatre. That money came out of my pocket, and I am not in a hurry to invest another $425,000 so that we can save a little money of film shipping. I would much rather spend another $100,000 in new sound equipment. Digital Cinema is coming, slower than you think. Film will not die as an art form in my lifetime.
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
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Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 02-08-2000 10:33 PM
It's on it's way (there's sure as heck been talk of wanting to go filmless for 30 years or more that I'm aware of), but I don't think it will be in any of our professional lifetimes. Increasing use will likely be seen, and I'm sure new 12's or 16-plexes will begin installing one or two DLPs per location.As it's slowly perfected (that's another subject thread in itself), the price will come down, prompting more installs, the price drops further, etc., etc. The long and the short of it is, in my estimation, NONE of us have anything to worry about for at least 10 years or more. After that, I'll be thinking about retirement anyway! Maybe a ranch out Arizona or New Mexico way...
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Ian Price
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1714
From: Denver, CO
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 04-14-2000 12:01 PM
At the risc of offending the Film Heads, Digital Cinema is very impressive. It's impressive for video that is.The chip resolution for the current generation of digital projectors is 1280 X 1024. This is 4x3. The proper resolution for HDTV is 1920 X 1080. This is 16x9. So you can see that the current chip is not only a little short, but also the wrong shape. The current chips are still being made to support the computer industry. Nobody has made a "film" chip yet.
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John Pytlak
Film God
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Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 04-14-2000 01:31 PM
IMHO, using an anamorphic lens with the discrete pixels of the DLP chip seems to accentuate the visibility of the pixels. When I sat closer than about 2 screen heights (40 feet from a 20-foot high screen), I could see the pixel structure and "jaggies" on edges like subtitles and credits. AFAIK, the demos so far have used the 1280 X 1024 DLP Cinema chip with either a 1.5X (1.85:1) or a 1.9X (2.39:1) anamorphic lens.Many who saw the ShoWest demos (including the press) felt that the flesh reproduction, tone scale and color reproduction were not as good as film, especially in critical scenes like those in "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "American Beauty". Digital material like "Toy Story 2" did look better on the digital projector. I'm sure further improvements are on the way. But the supposed savings still aren't there. Assuming that a typical brand new 35mm print costs about $1200, showing that print for only two months would only cost four dollars per show. (2 months X 30 days X 5 shows per day = 300 shows in two months). It's tough to imagine amortizing the cost of the sophisticated equipment required for digital cinema at a cost anywhere near only $4 per show. And mastering, encoding, encryption, and distribution of digital cinema by satellite or fiber optic or DVD isn't free. ------------------ 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 Fax: 716-722-7243 E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
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