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Author Topic: Studios agree to pay for digital projectors. Christian Volpi Master Film Handler Posts: 349 From: Arlington, NE Registered: Apr 2004 posted 03-30-2005 12:48 PM                        IMDB News Studios Agree To Pay for Digital Projectors Hollywood's major studios are close to an agreement to finance the installation of digital projectors in theaters across the country, Investor's Business Daily reported today (Tuesday), citing unnamed people in the industry. The agreement would end the years-long standoff between the studios and the theaters over who should pay for the digital projectors. Theaters have long held that they would receive little benefit from the new apparatus (although Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner who also owns the Landmark Theater chain, announced recently that he plans to install them in his theaters in order to present concerts, sports events and other live entertainment). IBD said Walt Disney, Sony and Warner Bros. plan to raise some $3 billion for theater owners to use to buy the digital projectors. There was no mention of the four other major studios in the article. Sony, one of the three studios involved in the deal, may have a special interest in promoting the digital rollout since corporate sibling Sony Electronics has developed the ultra-high definition projection system that Landmark is planning to install in its theaters.  |  IP: Logged Lyle Romer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1400 From: Davie, FL, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 03-30-2005 12:54 PM                     To me "finance the installation of" and "pay for" are two very different things. "Pay for" would mean the studios were going to buy the projectors and give them to the theatres. "Finance the installation of" sounds like a loan program. GM is more than willing to "finance the purchase of" a new car. Remains to be seen which one they mean. I guess the biggest downside if the studios do decide to pay for them is that they will be the ones to decide if 2k is good enough or if a push should be made to 4k. My guess would be that they will decide that 2k is good enough.  |  IP: Logged Dan Lyons Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 698 From: Seal Beach, CA Registered: Sep 2002 posted 03-30-2005 01:04 PM                     I'm guessing this is an April Fool's Day thing, but the dumbass at IMDB News doesn't know how to read his calendar. ha~!  |  IP: Logged Richard May Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1057 From: Floral Park, NY USA Registered: Aug 2004 posted 03-30-2005 01:06 PM                     I will believe it when I see it. I've heard a lot over the years that was just a bunch of .  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 03-30-2005 08:04 PM                    Looks like something of that magnatude would have shown up more when I did various google searches. Nothing brought up an Investment Business Daily artical about the subject. The site does require registering so that may have prevented it. Only thing I got was the IMDB info. No other news sources or organizations matched the exact search terms just random old news. By the way that link is no good now or at least it didn't work when I tried it. I have a feeling there may be trickery when it comes to financing. Someone has to pay it back.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 03-30-2005 08:16 PM                        The main difficulty with this is the promise "that ALL theatres in an area would get the Digital equipment." Light must be a significant problem, judging from the tests that use 35mm=3000 watt versus TV with 5000 watt. Am I to understand that every small and large cinema and drive in will be served on the same financial basis?? Be realistic. No one is really going to spend this level of money across the board. Class action lawsuits will abound if they don't. (And I am not even including weekend resort cinema, monastaries, prisons, etc......in other words some of my customers who are not, how we say, completely commercial.) Other questions: does anyone know if ANY of the installed Digital systems were actually paid for by the customer theatre circuit? Or were these "placed?"  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 03-30-2005 08:22 PM                    I think the ones that cinemark uses were put there by Texas Instruments and were not a cost to the company. They have two in Plano Texas and one maybe two in Valley view Ohio both locations near Texas Instruments facilities  |  IP: Logged Jon Miller Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 973 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-30-2005 08:54 PM                     So the studios are helping finance original installations... Just how do they plan to cover the inevitable obsolescence of the equipment? Even though replacement equipment will cost less than the equipment originally installed, upgrades of digital projection hardware will still cost far more than a major upgrade for film-based equipment, especially when you have to upgrade an expensive projection head or movie server to enjoy a resolution upgrade. Knowing that digital and video equipment gets obsolete very fast (and that film resolution is self-upgrading whenever Kodak and others introduce improved film stocks), I would be leery of replacing a technology with a proven track record (that's film) with something that could very well be a technological fad.  |  IP: Logged Ken Layton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1452 From: Olympia, Wash. USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-30-2005 11:35 PM                     Yeh, what about the constant 'upgrades' that will be required every few months to these video projectors? Who's gonna pay for that? The studios are gonna figure out some way to make you keep paying and paying for these video projectors. Considering that a lot of theaters have film projectors 20+ years old and happily chugging along, how long before you have to throw one of these video projectors away? One year? Two years?  |  IP: Logged Bill Enos Film God Posts: 2081 From: Richmond, Virginia, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 03-31-2005 12:33 AM                     Three billion dollars? That paltry sum won'r make even a small dent in the cost of fitting the thousands of theaters in the U.S. alone  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-31-2005 02:16 AM                        Sure it would. Figuring $100,000 for each projector, and approximately 36,000 screens in the U.S., that's $3.6 billion. Projectors would probably cost less than that if bought in that kind of quantities. As for the question "who's going to pay for it," it's obvious the studios should just shell out. They will be saving the cash, the theatres won't.  |  IP: Logged Alejandro Lopez Film Handler Posts: 22 From: Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña) Spain Registered: Nov 2004 posted 03-31-2005 03:30 AM                     Hi: I work in a TV studio since 1985. We started with 1" Ampex (and then Sony) VTR´s, Ampex and Sony Betacam VCR´s for news. Since them we upgraded to Betacam SP, them to Digital Betacam and, finally? (I don´t think so...) to DV Pro and Avid Non Lineal Edition and PostProduction. All this in less than twenty years... A Digital Betacam recorder costs more than 36.000$ and this is only a video recorder... Due to its youth we can suppose that Digital Cinema will become obsolete every few years and theater owners will have to invest, if they can, a lot of money to update and/or upgrade their digital equipment several times in the first ten years. Presumibly most of independent exhibitors will have to close... Alejandro.  |  IP: Logged Thomas Jonsson Expert Film Handler Posts: 216 From: Bromolla, Sweden Registered: Sep 2003 posted 03-31-2005 05:26 AM                       Exactly! I hope this Digital shit never happens. What scares me most is what happens if the damn thing breaks down on a weekend with the opening of Star Wars Episode 3. How fast can I get a data freak to fix the problem for me - how many shows do I have to cancel? Will the audience happily return after so and so many cancelled shows? I don´t think so. So far, I´ve never had to cancel a show because of technical problems. But with this Digital stuff, I will probably be as helpless as a new-born baby, totally at the mercy of the data freaks. Thomas  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-31-2005 07:33 AM                        Out of curiousity, why would a TV station go from Digi-Beta to DV? That sounds like a pretty substantial downgrade to me....  |  IP: Logged Alejandro Lopez Film Handler Posts: 22 From: Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña) Spain Registered: Nov 2004 posted 03-31-2005 09:28 AM                     Well, as the Engineering chief said to me, Panasonic offered them very good economical conditions for chanching with free maintaning costs for some years. I also think it´s a downgrade. I can even understand choosing DV Pro for news gathering, but not for feature films, series and programs broadcasting. Alejandro.  |  IP: Logged

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