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Author
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Topic: DTS with 35 mm.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 08-12-2013 07:28 AM
Having considered Dolby Digital, what are the implications for DTS?
Getting hold of the discs has always been problematical,but if they are obtainable then when running 35 mm in the future, with old prints, this could be the most reliable system, and with the low cost of the equipment now it's affordable. I have heard of people who have made copies of DTS discs in the past, and retained them in case they booked the same film again in the future and the print arrived without the discs; if this is true, then maybe it would be possible to borrow discs.
For occasional use is there any major disadvantage to the older 6D units? Will they play the discs for later films? Are there any software problems? Parts? Buying a second unit for spares might be a possibility.
Lack of space in the sound rack is a problem, as with Dolby Digital, but not an insurmountable one.
I've seen DTS readers mounted on top of Dolby ones; what hardware is needed to mount them in this way?
Don't worry, I'm not going to ask about SDDS, or even CDS; these are the only two systems which I'm considering.
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Jock Blakley
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 218
From: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Registered: Oct 2011
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posted 08-12-2013 08:24 AM
In an ideal world, of course, you could have both.
We do have both, though our prefered system is SR-D. We've just never been able to get DTS to sound as good (lacking mid-tones, shrill at the top, etc).
DTS does have the advantage, as you've pointed out, that if you have the discs it is the more reliable system in that the timecode is less sensitive to damage and the DTS playback system can continue playing past up to four seconds of timecode damage or complete interruption. This advantage also comes in if you'll be playing older prints - we show a few commonly in DTS now because the SR-D tracks are becoming prone to high error rates and drop-outs simply through wear. You will of course need DTS regardless if you will be showing any recent 70mm release prints.
It is possible to make dupes of DTS discs with very little difficulty, and that's something we've done for a number of titles that we show often or that we expect to show in the future. If you know somebody with a set of discs for a title you need there's even the option of having them make a disc image on a computer for you to download and burn to your own blanks.
I can't speak for the reliability of the older DTS-6Ds. We used a 2008-upgraded one until recently, when one of the CD drives failed and we replaced the entire unit with an XD10.
DTS's timecode offset (delay) is variable and so you can put the reader just about anywhere you can fit it. Exactly how you get it on top of the SR-D reader will depend on the make and model of the SR-D reader and so on. For simplicity though we went for a basement SR-D reader and put the DTS reader on top of the mag penthouse (on an RK-60).
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-12-2013 11:22 AM
I know that this has been suggested and discussed before on F-T, but there should be even less of a problem now with some sort of scheme/program that enables theatres to download ISO images of DTS discs from a central server as and when they need them for use with archive and rep prints.
Now that 35mm releasing for mainstream titles is in the process of stopping altogether and the vast majority of titles released with DTS discs are over a decade old, the value of this IP to pirates is tiny. I mean, no-one is going to retire to a beach in Barbados by selling bootleg downloads of Dante's Peak or Forrest Gump with their audio derived from an illegally obtained theatrical DTS disc. They could rip it from a BD bought for $5 in Target anyway!
I suppose that setting up and operating the server would involve a significant cost, especially as the volume of data involved in making images for every 35 and 70 DTS title released permanently available online is going to be pretty big. Maybe a major, non-profit archive approved by the studios could take on the project and make a cost-covering charge for each set of ISOs downloaded. Further down the line, it could be a valuable preservation exercise. There are dozens of Vitaphone titles from the '20s for which picture elements survive but no audio discs. OK, with DTS the danger isn't as great, because every DTS title was also released with at least one other audio format, and so there is a lot less danger of the audio being lost altogether. I still think it could be a worthwhile project, though.
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