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Topic: 3 Strikes

Andrew D'Vrey
Film Handler

Posts: 92
From: St. Paul, MN USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 03-13-2000 03:15 AM

Strike 1: No Dolby Digital
Strike 2: No DTS
Strike 3: No SDDS

So, how many of your theaters list "3 Strikes" as a "Digital" film in their newspaper listings? I guess it's one of my big pet peaves that my theater does every damn time. And I'm not talking about the little logo that says "All Digital Sound" but when they list each film title and say "Digital" after each one even if it ISN'T!

What makes me even more furious is when theaters, like the big "R" in my neighborhood, advertise films like Supernova (which was DTS/SR only) and play it in a theater without DTS and still put "Digital" next to the title on their newspaper listing.

Am I alone? OR do I just whine too much? (Both is an acceptable answer)

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"And the monkey flips the switch."
- Major Don West, "Lost In Space"

Andrew D'Vrey
IATSE Local 219

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

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

posted 03-13-2000 03:58 AM

Actually we're lucky if our newspaper ad gets films that we ARE playing in digital advertised correctly. So fortunately 3 Strikes is not advertised in digital. I checked around and Century Theatres, who usually put the word DIGITAL after every movie, simply put DOLBY after this one. Looks like they have someone there who is paying attention now as well. I didn't notice anyone else's ads.

But I agree. I have seen many ads advertise a movie that has NO digital tracks whatsoever in digital.

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Dustin Mitchell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1865
From: Mondovi, WI, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-13-2000 11:04 AM

Well, our theater earns a C as far as this goes. We have 4 non-digital theaters which of course are never advertised as digital-good. The THX's are always advertised as such, which is technicaly correct even if the print in there is not Dolby Digital (however, I make sure prints in those theaters are always digital). We also have 6 DTS houses, and this is where the errors come in. One of the houses doesn't have a DTS unit at the moment (in the shop for repairs) yet the guy who does the schedule (what the newspaper people go by) keeps marking it as DTS, even though I've told him repeatably it isn't. The other errors that result are when we get non-DTS prints. See, we get our info (length, aspect ratio, etc) on the Monday before a opening. The newspaper people come by on Tuesday for the schedule. Here is the problem: our bookings office doesn't tell us sound formats. So we gotta guess. Since most prints these days come with DTS, its usually a safe bet to just mark DTS.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

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

posted 03-13-2000 11:42 AM

Amazingly, it took me a while to convince management to advertise "only Dolby Stereo in town" (the other theatres had Kintek!)...

I was a bit irked when we where running "Life is Beautiful" in Dolby and the dumpy theatre across town was advertising it as "in DTS digital stereo" (which, of course, wasn't true...there was no DTS timecode on that film and the dumpy Carmike house had only DTS slapped on to their existing Kintek system in their largest screen so that they could advertise "digital sound!" even though it less "listenable" than good mono).

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George Roher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 266
From: Washington DC
Registered: Jul 99

posted 03-13-2000 09:38 PM

One theatre I used to work in constantly got the ads wrong. They'd list the wrong digital formats all the time, and they'd list an SR only print as digital if it was playing in a digital house.

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