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This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Author
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Topic: D-cinema...what is everyone thinking???
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-29-2006 05:09 PM
Times change and over the years new technology is available to us. This is a given, but what is the intelligent choice?
When digital sound was starting to appear in the early 90s my stance was that CDS would in no way survive due to the lack of a backup audio track. Then shortly later I firmly pushed everyone to go with Dolby Digital and not SDDS and DTS because I didn't feel that SDDS would last the test of time being on the edges of the film and that getting dts discs could be a problem. I was correct on both, and sadly not a single person listened to me as SDDS and DTS was installed like crazy all over town. Now everyone who installed SDDS has since retired most of their units and had to purchase Dolby or DTS, yet the DTS folks are always complaining about damaged or missing discs. It seems some people never learn.
Now we have D-cinema. I feel that Dolby again has got the better product for D-cinema and my backing goes again to them, but I am surprised at the people jumping on the bandwagon so quickly which is the purpose of my post.
Let's face it guys, D-cinema equipment purchased now will be totally obsolete within a few years. I highly doubt ANY of it will still be running or up to standards 10 years from now. Meanwhile there are 35mm projectors that have been running for decades and will continue to run without failure.
Why are we settling with JPEG2000? It doesn't look THAT good. 4K is a very real possibility in the near future, so I am amazed that people are jumping to quickly to adapt the 2k standard.
Just look at what has happened with computers in the last 10 years alone. In 1996 the system everyone was using was Windows 95. That's a mere 10 years ago! Do I really need to remind everyone what a joke Windows 95 was?
I say let the big boys like Regal or AMC put all of their money into D-cinema. A certain number of years down the road they WILL find that they will need an arsenal of techs to keep things updated and running, plus more and more shows will be lost due to computer glitches. This is just a fact of life with computer equipment as it ages.
Then even possibly as little as 5 years down the road, the big boys who invested now in D-cinema will be stuck with the outdated equipment currently available because they were the guinea pigs for the new technology. As a result the smaller guys will enter the market with better systems which will attract customers in the same thought process that is being used now to convert to digital "as quickly as possible" and the big boys will suffer (possibly again into bankruptcy).
I could rant on, but I think most of the obvious points have already been made elsewhere on the forums, but seriously, what's the rush? Why is everyone in such a panic to spend an insane amount of money to be the beta testers?
Yeah it looks great now, but all of the equipment is just too new to be failing yet. Mark my words, a few years down the road this forum will be littered with people having major problems and lost shows due to this first generation of D-cinema.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-29-2006 06:20 PM
quote: Brad Miller
I could rant on, but I think most of the obvious points have already been made elsewhere on the forums, but seriously, what's the rush? Why is everyone in such a panic to spend an insane amount of money to be the beta testers?
I agree with you here Brad. If we were looking at a situation where films were no longer being released on 35mm prints, as has happened with 16mm, then you would need to either install digital, or close, as previously 16mm venues had to move to either video, or 35mm. That simply isn't the case with 35mm at the moment, and isn't likely to be for at least some years to come. There's a very large number of 35mm cinemas in the World; they couldn't all convert overnight, even if they wanted to.
A few weeks ago Nigel Wolland retired as Chief at the Odeon Leicester Square; I was among a large group who attended an event at the theatre to wish him well, listen to the organ, and have a look at their present equipment installation. This was the first time I had seen 2k digital; it looked good, much better than the first generation 1.3k equipment, but I wouldn't say that it looked better than a good film presentation. There were othere there who disagree with me about this. There were two other digital projection systems in the box that day, one partly dismantled, and I believe that the Odeon has had at least one other in the past few years. This theatre does update its equipment more frequently than most, but they have had five generations of conventional film projetors, plus a pair of Kalee Vistavision machines, since they opened in 1937.
If I was a cinema owner I would not even consider installing digital today, unless there was some special requirement; e.g. to show live events. I would keep an eye on the situation, and maybe in a few years time I might think the time was right, but I don't think it is today. If I was designing a cinema today, I would certainly make provision for the future installation of digital equipment.
New digital cinema equipment is not cheap, and is never likely to be; the production volumes are simply too small, though no doubt the cost will come down. Secondhand equipment is now almost useless, as the studios do not want to support the 1.3k format. Very good rebuilt twenty year old 35mm equipment, which still has many years of life in it, is much cheaper to buy, and will probably outlive the current generation of digital equipment. You will almost certainly be able to buy a better digital projector, at a lower cost, in a few years time than you can today. I'm not saying ignore digital, but for most cinemas I don't think the time is right.
The very small single screen cinema where I have been projecting for the last couple of years is due to have a digital machine installed sometime around November this year, as part of the UK Film Council/Arts Alliance scheme. I was thre when the site survey was carried out earlier this month; the installation will not be easy, and exactly how it will be done has not yet been decided. At the moment removing the film equipment and going totally digital is simply not an option, at least for an art house/classic film type of venue, so the choice is between film, or film plus digital. Have we yet reached the point where a digital only installation is practical for a purely mainstream venue? Other things being equal, a film plus digital installation is better than a film only one, but there are often considerable costs and difficulties involved in adding digital equipment to an existing venue, even where the digital equipment is being funded externally, as with the Arts Alliance scheme. Where the cinema has to pay the full cost, this is very high. We keep hearing that somebody else, the studios, the distributors, the equipment manufacturers etc. paying part of the cost is the answer. I have serious concerns about this; if somebody other than the cinema pays for the equipment, then that somebody is very likely to want a say in the programming policy.
If the distributors were to announce today that they would cease to supply 35mm prints from the end of this year, which is not going to happen, then the effect would not be to make most British cinemas buy digital equipment; it would be to close most of them down.
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-29-2006 07:40 PM
I find most of the reason why people think DLP looks better is because of a lack of DIRT! Obviously other things come into play as well, mainly the lamphouse, screen and lenses. Still, on a properly designed and setup system, those run of the mill high speed 35mm prints are still superior to what I've seen in DLP (both 1.3k and 2k systems). The problem is that with rare exception I don't see what I call properly designed and setup 35mm systems in theaters today, so to most people's eyes DLP does look better because of the detail being given to those installations right now.
So far the best DLP I've seen hands down was a 2k demo at Christie's offices. The Barco I saw at Dolby was not as impressive to my eyes, nor was any other setup. Give it 5 years. There is no reason whatsoever to "settle" for JPEG2000 just because it is here now. Sure it looks pretty darned good, but there are still artifacting and weird motion issues that as of right now can only be aleviated by using film.
Mark, be patient and give it a little time. It won't take long for the higher data rate issue to resolve itself. With you a strong advocate of 70mm back in the day, I am shocked you are jumping on the lower quality current DLP bandwagon. What's the freakin' rush???
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-29-2006 09:03 PM
While I agree that the industry should wait for 4K (even though I haven't personally seen it), the presentations I've seen with 2K have been amazingly good and I have always gone in wanting to hate it. I know many on this Forum hate D-cinema and think it's crap, but I think everyone is going to have to admit that there's a bit of built-in bias because of the perception that professional projectionists won't be as needed in a digital cinema world.
As with any medium, you gain something and you lose something. With digital, you gain consistency of brightness across the screen, no dirt or scratches, no shutter sync problems, a rock-steady image, no print grain and a show that looks the same every time you present it.
You lose some dynamic range in the image and the blacks aren't quite as good, although I recently had occasion to see MI3 and Cars in both 35mm and digital on the same day in the same theatre (but not the same screen) and I really could not see any differences in color, contrast or black levels. And sitting halfway back in the theatre, I didn't see any pixilation.
For a naive audience member, I think the positives outweigh the negatives, especially when you consider how second run prints look today. I've always felt that aside from the expense, D-Cinema is going to benefit second-run theaters more than first run.
The potential of 35mm vs. Digital is not the issue. It's true that at its best, 35mm is pretty great. The problem is 35mm is rarely presented at its best, even in first run large-city theaters anymore - I've seen filthy and scratched prints on the first day of a run. It's like the debate over vinyl LP vs. CD. At its best, a vinyl LP can sound great. But on average, CD sounds far superior. (Not that anyone really cares about audio quality anymore since everyone is listening to compressed music on MP3 players.) Even in the days of the "beloved" 70mm Dolby 6-track and even in NYC, there were only a few theaters that presented with really high quality--I can think of only three: The Ziegfeld, the Loews Astor Plaza and the old Loews Orpheum Twin (before it was turned into a multiplex), even though almost every Manhattan screen had 70mm capability.
I've seen D-Cinema on some pretty large screens. The screen at the Ziegfeld in NYC is 52' and digital there looks fine. There's a 62' screen at the AMC-Loews Kips Bay (screen #10), but I'm not 100% sure if I've seen digital presentations there, but I think I have, so I don't think the 58' screens in Canada would be a problem, but even if they are, the vast majority of screens today are tiny.
One thing we don't know yet is over the long term, will non-professional "projectionists" (i.e. 'the popcorn kid') play with projector settings and screw up the presentations? Will we start seeing the equivalent of "blue screens of death" or total lockups? Once the market is better established, will low-end providers push out crappy projectors with poorer quality or reliability? Once the studios have a ton of features stored digitally, will they start to compress the files for storage purposes making future "copies" of lesser quality or if technology changes, will there be artifacts introduced as one format is converted to another? Watch TV and you'll see tons of artifacts on digitally recorded shows and even live digital shows because of the compression used to uplink.
One of the reasons why chains are adopting now is because I don't think they're paying outright for the equipment. My belief (although I have no first-hand knowledge) is that they are leasing the equipment. If you're leasing and you eventually have to trade up, it's not really a big deal. It's like trading in a leased car every two years - your monthly payment pretty much stays the same.
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