I saw Episode II in DLP at the Century Orleans 18 in Las Vegas. The screen was ~54 feet wide (based on ceiling tiles) and I sat about 1 screen height back (which was the first row of true stadium seating) like I normally do. I'll start with the good.

The Good:
-Very sharp focus
-No Dirt (obviously)
-No Jump and Weave (obviously)
-The sound was great (although the THX "storm" trailer sounds better on my T2 DVD at home but this could be due to the mix or theatre volume setting)

The Bad:
-Color seems a little off
-The screen was way underlit to the point that it was almost created eye strain to watch some of the darker scenes.
-Hello pixels. The stair-stepping on titles (including the DLP logo) was a little annoying). Also, during certain scenes I could clearly see verticle lines between each pixel. This was evident from the very beginning when the starwars logo disappeared into the distance, it seemed to have flickering verticle black lines in it.

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Of course, the DLP projection had the problem with crushed blacks (dark grey, actually)

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That was one of the things which made the DLP show I saw so irritating: the masking at the sides was so much darker than the adjacent picture when it was supposed to be black.

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, but the brightness was there.

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I'm trying hard to think of something comparable. Even the worst educational & industrial 16mm shows I've seen were better - even when the brightness was down, they were usually sharper black & white prints which are more easily "read". The only thing that comes close would be some showings of 8mm movies I've seen. I'm not joking. That thing gave me a headache.

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You *are* joking, or at least exaggerating, aren't you? If not, then there was something seriously wrong with what you saw. 16mm, at its best, can look pretty god, but at its worst, can be really dire; surely the digital presentation you saw wasn't this bad, was it. From what I've seen, I would say that it's at least equal to a *good* 16mm presentation; but very much more expensive. It is not equal to 35mm, and nowhere near good 70mm.

You *are* joking, or at least exaggerating, aren't you? If not, then there was something seriously wrong with what you saw.

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You *are* joking, or at least exaggerating, aren't you?

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No, that's what it was comparable to. I'm not saying that it looked like 8mm projected +/- 40 feet wide, but the low resolution, dim picture was like the mush I remember seeing when over at some other folks houses when they ran dark, poorly shot 8mm on cheap projectors.

And because Stephen was so impertinent & reckless to imply that I might be indulging in hyperbole, I will now torment him with this photograph from the first day on the archaeology site.

I have seen DLP twice, firstly at a normal screening at the Odeon Leicester Square, where the screen brightness seemed somewhat less than normal, and the definition was not as good as 35mm, and then, some time later, at a technical demonstration at the National Film Theatre, where various extracts were shown, on film and digital, derived from both digital and film original material. This time the brightness was better, the screen is considerably smaller, but the resolution was still not as good as film, though it did look better than I expected, from the published resolution of the system. During the NFT event the show was stopped for a couple of minutes for technicians from the suppliers of the system to tweak it, so I believe that what I was seeing that day was the best that the system is capable of.

My assessment of it at the end of the day is that all four possible combinations of film and digital origination and projection looked different, and I think I would be able to tell which I was looking at in each case. Of course, there are further complications when a film source is transferred to digital, and then back to film for presentation. Also, just about any manipulation of the image would be possible while it was in digital form.

I do not consider the digital projection system, as it existed at that time to be equal to good 35mm, and certainly nowhere near as good as 70mm. Some people point out that it is better than bad 35mm, which may be true, but I don't see the point in that argument; I don't choose to watch bad 35mm shows, only good ones, therefore, the compasison is irrelevant to me.

I have seen 16 mm shows from the very worst to the very best. At its best, a print direct from a 7245 camera neg run on a Kinoton projector with several kilowatts of lamp behind in on a good screen, and with stereo sep-mag sound it can look surprisingly good, not as good as 35mm, but certainly not bad, as long as the screen is not too large. I would say that you can get a reasonably bright image up to about 7 or 8 metres.

The DLP which I saw at the NFT was at least as good as the best 16mm which I have seen, and was brighter. It was certainly very far removed from being equal to the worst.

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I saw Episode:2 at the Centry Orleans 18 back in june, it was the first time I had watched a movie in digital. It was different. Im not saying different as in better, it was just different. One thing I really noticed was no film grain and the second big difference were that some of the effects looked dramaticly better than from the 35mm version. The color (to me) looked better than the film version but I have still seen better presentations from 35mm.The screen illumination looked fine and the focus was always sharp. DLP is the way to see Episode:2 but i dont agree with using DLP from a 35mm source.

The flaws I noticed were from the DLP technology itself.Jagged edges were noticeable on some closeup scenes amd almost all title art had the jagged edges. I wonder if using 3 seperate lenses would make a difference instead of using one.

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So many questions.

Is that an original Perspecta integrator I see before me, in the left hand rack, near the top, with its power supply in the same rack, just below the bench?

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