At least for me it was not because I loved CD's as soon as they were introduced. In fact I was one of the first audiofiles to buy the very first CD player Sony introduced. This was when a store like Tower Record's entire CD inventory was able to fit in one small cardboard box. Yes, it used to irritate me too when one of my friend who turned into an audiopile snob kept insisting that CD sound was very cold and not warm like the sound from a LP. When I was told this, I smiled and said to my friend "You are full of s----" and that was the end of the discussion and I have been enjoying my CDs ever since. It is different with digital cinema. Although I have not yet seen digital cinema , I have heard and read enough reports by key theatre technicians say that it is good but film image is still much better. However, I did get to watch the film version of "EP2" and I did not like it because the picture quality was very flat and the color was pale. Because "EP1" was shot on film, it looked great in the theatre and the DVD was fantastic because the images was taken from the digital transfer from the original film source. I have even found the quality of the images I had shot on film and digitally scanned better than the ones I had shot directly with a digital camera.

-Claude

There are relatively few similarties to film here, because much of the appeal of vinyl is in the physical medium; with film, relatively few people purchase or even see or handle the physical item.

At this time, digital cinema is purely a cost-driven issue. If anyone cared about quality, we would be seeing 70mm prints on many screens and that isn't happening now.

 |  IP: Logged

I will instead point out that the Vinyl to CD change is purely a sound issue, and doesn't truly compare to the film vs. digital argument for the simple reason that it is visual, not audio.

As most are aware, film sound has gone digital, and in most cases, we get the film sound on a CD (DTS, thats all I have worked with, not sure of other formats, sorry).

Unlike the CD, where there is one sound format, with digital film sound, we have three current digital formats. They are DTS, DOLBY, and SDDS (by the way I heard a great mix for the movie SIGNS in SDDS two days ago).

There are even extention formats such as EX, for extended surround sound as well.

So as for the vinyl to cd comparison, the film industry has already gone through that phase, with the change to digital sound. Some theaters even have all three formats installed, for various reasons.

The CD was an audible improvement over what most people had. By 1988, better CD players were getting cheap enough for the general public to easily afford.

The film to digital transition is happening in a totally different way. Instead of starting with a resolution that is able to capture everything available on typical film, it's starting with a much lower resolution. If digital cinema had started with a resolution of 4000 by 3000 or better with a sufficient color bit depth, then we could say that the transition from film to digital was like the transition to CDs for audio.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Although digital projectors will still need some maintainance, there will be no need for projectionists as we know it (not even the machine monkeys most multiplexes use today). No need to lace up, ad ads, no late nights breaking the film down, etc etc.

From the distributors point of view the control they will have will probably make todays attempted enforcement seem mild. They will probably take steps to ensure that the films are only shown at the agreed times in the agreed screens. No staff screenings, no unofficial moving a film to make way for a better selling film etc etc.

Add to this the potential to use the apparatus for live 'pay-per-view' events and the ability to insert individual security marks during screenings and probably a host of other possibities and I belive you will see Digital Projection becoming the norm.

Of course either deals will have to be struck or prices drop significantly before we see mass conversion over to digital, but I think it is only a matter of time before running regular film will become as specialised running 70mm or magnetic sound.

As far as quality is concerned, I believe this is not the top priority for the industry. I am sure they are gauging peoples reactions to the few places with Digital Projection and as long as the majority (not the purists) have no problems with it then they will continue pushing to get cinemas converted when viable. In the long term quality will improve I am sure, and exhibitors will take great pains to publicise the fact (as they have done when the put the latest sound system), but sadly most people don't really notice if a film is playing in full 8.1 SDDS or in mono, they simply like the fact that the believe that they are getting something better. After all the public don't seem to mind that most places no longer have curtain or masking, or nice lighting effects, all they are interested in is seeing the latest movie, with the minimum distraction at the cheapest price.

At the end of the day money will win. Sad...but true.

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Martin Dean

I think there are similarities between the issues of vinyl LPs vs. CDs, and film vs. DLP. As Evans said, for the masses, CD was an improvement. But there was always a hard-core audiophile crowd who hated the "sound" of CDs, and some of them probably still do. Is film any different? When talking about film, if we're referring to the AVERAGE (or worse) theater, where film is not done right most of the time, DLP is probably an improvement. Those theaters and their customers are the "masses". DLP will probably be an improvement for them, even with all its current deficiencies. The relatively few who appreciate "Film Done Right", including exhibitors and knowledgeable moviegoers, know that the deficiencies of the current DLP system make it impossible for DLP to beat the quality of film. But just as with digital audio recording and playback, digital "film" will improve, and it's basically a done-deal. The only issue is what will the baseline quality level be (OK, and the cost). Nevertheless, there will always be people who prefer the look of film over digital, partly due to the personal attention and care it requires to do film right. This is not really much different from people who still prefer vinyl LPs.

But that is a faulty assumption. The reason the prices of CD player came down was because the public which quickly became enamored of the quality and ease of use of the CDs drove the market. They bought CD players and the CDs at the entry market price, high as it was. The penetration of this digital system was quick and exponential. That is what brought the price down; manufactures were able to continue R&D by the ever increasing sales at the initially high prices. Yes, the prices were high, but people bought the units anyway. The reason prices were able to come down and make CD dominate the marketplace to the death of the LP was because of the mass market. If only 100 or 1000 people bought the first CDs, the prices would have remained at $1000 per unit (I paid $900 for my first Teac CD player and I thought I had gotten a great deal).

There is no corresponding analogy for DLP -- the consumer market is involved only periferally. The end-users of DLP, the exhibitors, are NOT buying this technology. Technicolor's original plan to install 1000 "free" DLPs to seed the market has gone nowhere. There are less than 200 DLP units in place four years after the first one was used to show STARWARS Ep 1. Those numbers simply are not the numbers needed to reach the critical mass that allows manufacturers to bring down the prices; DLP may not become viable for many years to come and even then, it may have to coexist with 35mm indefinitely, given these economics. Distribution is also well aware that in order for it to continue reaping the ever growing profits from the theatre markets outside the US, 35mm film will have to continue for decades.

And then there is distribution of the movie datastream, which is where DLP purports to be the great money-saver -- no more prints. So far, anyone who is savvy about digital distribution knows that it never comes free. Even today, the theatres that have DLP have to wait for some very high paid technicians to come with the hard discs containing the digital datastream to install them into the server. This doesn't come cheap. And it probably isn't any cheaper than a guy in a truck delivering a print. This idea that eliminating 35mm print distribution is the same as eliminating the cost of distribution is either naive or purposely omissive to make DLP look better than it really is. As it is, they still have not worked out any standards for how the digital stream gets from the transfer house to the DLP in the theatre. DVDs are a possibility but so far, you would need stacks of them to deliver the amounts of data needed for near-film quality images. Satellite transmission seems to be a viable transmission line, but satellite time certainly isn't free -- just ask the TV networks who have to pay big bucks, and they are using bandwidths which are much smaller than what will be needed for quality, uncompressed or at least low compression motion picture data. Then there are the uplinks stations and downlink receivers, neither of which come free or without yearly maintenance and service tweak costs.

Theatre owners are much to smart not to recognize that by switching to a technology that is proprietary, they become locked into whatever prices the owner of that technology wants to set for parts, upgrades, maintenance, and most especially, service. Mr. Exhibitor knows he won't be able to go to any local cinema service company and ask for an emergency service visit at the prices that he now pays for that service in 35mm. Network server troubleshooting and repairs for the same per hour cost that he can get a service tech to replace an intermittent? -- not in this lifetime.

No, there is no comparison between the move from analog LPs to digital CDs and that of DLP and 35mm film. The former was driven by the economics of the mass market where millions of units were purchased at the higher prices which enabled manufactures to bring prices down. DLP is not driven by anything. The end user doesn't want it because it gives him no advantage over what he already has (with CD, the perception of the buyer was that it is MUCH superior to LP technology). Then there is the distributor, yes, he would like to eliminate print costs but he's not the one needing to lay out the cost per screen of the DLPs. And as yet, there is so guarantee that DLP will cost him less to distribute the datastream than it does to distribute 35mm prints.

The real problem is that this hugely expensive new technology doesn't deliver anything better to the consumer, either in reality or in perception, that is not already delivered by the existing film technology and the infrastructure already paid for and already in place.

Asking theatre owners to spend $150,000 (initially -- the yearly operational costs may be much higher) for a piece of new technology in order to get ALMOST as good a picture and sound as he already has in his theatres is a very, VERY hard sell. This kind of untenable situation never existed when CDs went to market.

However there is one example that does match the astronomically over-priced DLP technology with respect to analog LPs. Just before CDs hit the market there was a company that designed a LP playback unit that read the groves with 6 laser beams without any mechanical contact with the record surface. Theoretically this technology would revolutionize the way LPs were played; it would eliminate all the distortion and the wear associated with needle-in-groove mechanical playback. Sounds like a great idea, eh? And one that might have kept the LP technology alive. Only trouble was, the thing cost $15,000. It is still being manufactured and the price is now a bit lower, but not by much. Prices CAN'T come down unless huge numbers of units are purchased at the initial high market price. For the Laser LP player, this never happened. I think THIS is much closer to the DLP vs film analogy. You have a technology that is so expensive that it has no chance of substantially coming down. And when you play an LP with the laser system, you are still hearing an LP -- nothing spectacularly better than what you had....much like DLP -- you get nothing spectacularly better than what film technology already gives you.

Unless something radically changes in either the quality of what DLP can deliver, say IMAX quality and size images, or the economic model changes, DLP is not inevitable nor is the demise of 35mm film.

I seriously doubt if image quality is the REAL reason why the format is stagnating right now. The sad fact is that images from today's digital systems would probably be an improvement over what's being offered in most cinemas today.

I'm not saying that digital is in fact better. I'm saying that a lot of cinemas aren't fulfilling the promise of 35mm film.

Digital Cinema today: "Better than Film Done Wrong."

IMHO, "Digital Done Right" is NOT a "gimme", and will be subject to the same cost-cutting pressures that hurt film presentation today.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

SHINY, ALUMINUM, PLASTIC, AND DIGITAL
by Negativland

Reproduction of this essay is strongly encouraged.

So, why is that new "Oasis" CD so expensive?

In the early eighties, sales of vinyl, cassettes, turntables and cassette players were "flat". This means that sales were stable, not rising or falling. For the makers of all this hardware and software, that wasn't quite good enough. They needed a new angle. A new way to sell music and the stuff you play it on. Luckily, someone at the Phillips Corporation (owner of PolyGram Music and Island Records and one of the worlds top defense contractors) had the bright idea that it would be good for their stockholders and investors if they could get the music consuming public excited about buying music again by introducing a new format and a new machine to play it on (i.e. how can you convince that aging baby boomer to buy yet another copy of DEJA VU by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young when they already have one?)

Thus was born THE COMPACT DISC in all it's shiny, aluminum, plastic and digital glory. It's maximum playing time, about 75 minutes, was chosen because the president of the company wanted something that could play his favorite piece of music, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, all the way through without stopping.

Well, compact discs weren't as successful as they had hoped. For one thing, their price was too high. The higher price was blamed both on the fact that they were mostly being made in Japan and that they had a high defect rate, with approximately one out of every three discs being tossed out before even leaving the CD factory. Early on, the economics of this led to an industry wide decision to continue paying recording artists a royalty rate based on the sale price of vinyl instead of the higher sale price of compact discs. And nobody was buying those new CD players either, because they were just too darned expensive.

But then, in the spring of 1989, something wonderful happened for the music industry. Everything changed! Almost overnight, CD's were everywhere! Suddenly they were a huge success and suddenly it became almost impossible to get anything on vinyl at all..

This change must have occurred because it was what the consumer wanted.....right? We live in a market-driven economy and the market was demanding more compact discs.....right?

Wrong. What actually happened was this - a flexible return policy had always existed between record stores and the seven major distributors, i.e. stores could "buy" something from a distributor, and if it didn't sell, they could return it. This allowed stores to take more chances on new releases or on things they were not so familiar with, because if it didn't sell, they could always send it back. Well, in the spring of 1989 all seven major label distributors announced that they would no longer accept "returns" on vinyl and they also began deleting much of the vinyl versions of their back catalog. These actions literally forced record stores to stop carrying vinyl. They could not afford the financial risk of carrying those releases that were on vinyl because if they didn't sell they would be stuck with them. Very quickly almost all record stores had to convert to CD's. The net effect of this was that the consumer no longer had a choice because the choice had been made for us. High priced compact discs were being shoved down our throats, whether we knew it or liked it or not.

As we mentioned earlier, record labels were paying artists a royalty rate on sales of CD's based upon the $8.98 or $9.98 list price of vinyl (or achieved the same end result by using contractual tricks like "packaging deductions"). As CD's took over and the majors all acquired their own domestic CD pressing plants and the defect rate dropped to almost zero, the cost of manufacturing compact discs dropped dramatically as well. One would have expected the price of CD's to also drop and for the profits to now be split evenly and fairly with the musicians who were making all the music.

This, of course, never happened. CD prices have continued to rise to a now unbelievable $16.98 list price (soon to be $17.98!) while manufacturing costs have now dropped to less than it costs to manufacture a $9.98 vinyl release. A CD, with its plastic jewel box, printed booklet and tray card now costs a major label about 80 cents each to make (or less) and a small independent label between $1.50 and $2.50. Meaning that CD's should now cost the consumer less than their original prices over a decade ago, not more. But the music business got consumers used to the idea of paying the higher price and the labels got used to the idea of their higher profit margin, and record labels continue to this day to pay almost all artists a royalty rate as if they're selling CD's for the list price of vinyl. That extra 4 or 5 or 6 bucks goes right into the pockets of the record labels. It is not shared with musicians. And of course, we all had to go out and buy a CD player (which had mysteriously dropped to a more reasonable price) if we wanted to hear any of the music on this "popular" new format. So, all in all, it's no wonder that the record industry and stereo manufacturers loved the compact disc. In fact the following year (when our economy was in a recession) the music industry had its biggest profits, ever!

If any of this bothers you as much as it does us, then you might be wondering why you've never heard about any of this or why no anti-trust action was ever taken against major labels and distributors. The answer to this is quite simple. Most of the reporting on the inner workings of the record business comes from the music press and the music press is almost totally reliant on the advertising dollars and good will of the business that they're writing about. So, in the interest of not wanting to "rock the boat" or anger the folks who essentially bankroll their publishing ventures, this story would, and will continue to remain, unreported. And with the coming "popularity" of DVD, the music industry looks like it is ready to try the same tricks all over again.

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And the link: http://www.negativland.com/minidis.html

Perhaps the distributors will try some sort of trickery to force theaters to convert to DLP, which would only save them money. Unless of course more and more exhibitors refuse people like Mr. Lucas's product, especially now sice they've learned their lesson... twice...

When you come down to it, IMHO only about 5 percent of the audience even notices the clarity of film to digital.

Economics keep film in the booth right now. It is a matter of a few short years before someone starts selling inexpensive systems and owners start deciding to cut costs.

Here is hoping that film wins.