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Author Topic: My DLP Experience... Tony L. Hernandez Expert Film Handler Posts: 158 From: Windsor, CO, USA Registered: Dec 2005 posted 10-08-2006 01:36 AM                     Well, much to my surprise, I found upon my visit to The Carmike 10 in Fort Collins, Colorado on October 5th, posters in the lobby announcing the theaters complete conversion to Christie DLP projection. This was my first experience with DLP digital cinema. In fact, looking thru the large port in the auditorium, you could see several Christie 35mm projectors and platters all shoved into a corner in the booth with the new Christie DLP projector glaring down at the screen where the 35mm projector belongs! I would have asked the manager to see the booth for myself but I was with my date. The movie ("The Guardian") I thought was horrible (and it takes a lot for me not to enjoy a movie as I enjoy most movies I see both new and old) and I don't think it would have been any better on film so I guess I'm kinda a bad judge this time but I must tell you I was not thrilled at all with the quality. I thought it was like watching a DVD (it looked SO digital)and from a customer stand point, I felt that if I wanted to watch a DVD, I'd have saved my money and watched one of mine at home. Normally, I am quite pleased when I go as a customer to see a picture at another theater that is not showing at one of mine. This was a real disappointment...the image was so small and the quality just didn't capture my attention. The images were so cold and lifeless. I know many individuals have stated that "the customers already think that they are watching a DVD." WEll, it does not matter WHERE they think the images is coming from...the are gonna notice a decline in quality and they are not gonna like it. It will only give them one more reason to stay home from the theater and watch a movie on the same format they would see there! Film is film and I don't care how good or expensive the technology is, digital can NEVER look like film! This experience made me even more frightened of the advent of digital cinema. I also thought that this was much farther in the future. I know one of the theaters I volunteer at already does 40% of its shows on DVD and my other theater is starting to get all excited over digital images. Film is for theaters, digital is for home and the classroom ONLY. I am sorry for sounding so pessimistic but this is really disturbing to me. If and when digital cinema comsumes this industry full force, I think we should all get together and hold a nice, big funeral for the already ailing exhibition industry! ~~Tony H.~~  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-08-2006 03:21 AM                     If you could elaborate on your quality gripes I'd be interested. Specifically what about the image was 'cold and lifeless'. Also, what does the 'small' comment mean? Have you seen movies at that theatre/auditorium before? Carmike is NOT replacing screens/screen size for their digital installs. At most a theatre might get a silver screen, but I doubt it would be any smaller than the previous screen. A film-digital comparison of the same movie would be interesting. I have not seen the Gaurdian but I wonder how much CGI is in it and how well it was/wasn't done.  |  IP: Logged Demetris Thoupis Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1240 From: Aradippou, Larnaca, Cyprus Registered: Apr 2001 posted 10-08-2006 06:46 AM                     I remember seeing at cinema Expo the Pirates of The Carribean and Cars on DLP. I was NOT impressed although they have made some very good advancements since 5 years ago. One thing I always say is that it is not worth investing money in something that in a few years is going to be obsolete because the new 12K DLP came out and the 2K projectors can handle movies that are in 12K so throw away all those thousands of dollars you spend in creating the DIGITAL experience at your theater to create an even MORE DIGITAL experience and after you do that, they will say "Oh jeez let's advance the digital format to something that only SONY can do. BluedishRay and whatever the heck they will call it for CINEMA application because there is 2 more pixels at the corner of the image which will bring us CLOSER to the original film negative. NOT GONNA HAPPEN!!! D  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-08-2006 08:15 AM                     quote: Tony L. Hernandez The images were so cold and lifeless. Humm, exactly what I was thinking when I saw it on film. Cold water and dead people floating around... do you suppose the director was trying to convey that feeling? Mark  |  IP: Logged Jarryd Beard Expert Film Handler Posts: 229 From: Hellertown, PA Registered: Jul 2004 posted 10-08-2006 04:31 PM                     Was this movie shot in digital or on film? I didn't watch the entire movie, but my thoughts of what I saw of our film presentation seem similar to Tony's thoughts of the digital presentation. It just didn't seem to have any great cinematography IMO.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-08-2006 05:17 PM                     quote: Jarryd Beard It just didn't seem to have any great cinematography IMO. No but it had a good script, good acting, good effects, and a decent mix. Sad but true that only about 1% of todays movies have good scripts and storylines and this one was one of them. Mark  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-08-2006 08:51 PM                        I have stated this before, but I will not be putting up any lobby posters when we convert to digital. After all, our pictures look good now, so there's nothing to sell there. If the perception among the public is going to be that digital is a "compromise" and "like a DVD" and all that, then I will be more than happy to let people think we're still showing film. I love to trumpet our improvements, but if people don't think it's better, what's the point?  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-08-2006 08:56 PM                     I don't mean to attack you Tony, I'm genuinely interested in the details of your experience. It just seems what you are saying flies in the face of everything I've seen so far with our digital projectors. Heck, I've gotten comments from our cutomers about how nice the picture looks.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-08-2006 10:44 PM                     Mike, On your size screen it will look amazing! Mark  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 10-09-2006 01:05 PM                     ..yea, with that long throw and with a screen that isn't too big. Tons of light being concentrated towards that screen. You'd definitely would make a pinpoint for Montana - being a small theatre with digCinema installed.. When I saw "CARS" at ShoWest back in March, this was my first digital feature experience, and to make it short, I was duely impressed on the quality, image sharpness - just plain lifelike of a presentation on the screen. Then, when I saw the 35mm presentation when it opened, such a drastic comparison against the digital version where one can fully agree with going to digital is the way to go.. -Monte  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 10-09-2006 01:46 PM                     What I gather from comments of others is there's two main variables involved. 1.: dimensions of the auditorium and the relationship of screen to the projector and 2.: the quality of the video stream being sent to the projector. Many of these "digital cinema looks great" or "digital cinema looks bad" are coming from the same Christie CP2000 model projector. So some other variable must be throwing off show quality. Movie theaters come in so many sizes and shapes. Even in brand new theaters I'll sometimes see the projector port made way too high so it's throwing its image at a severe angle down to the screen. Many existing theaters feature ports way off to one side or another because two twinned rooms were previously one larger room. Problems with video encoding quality is another issue. Some early digital cinema releases featuring live action footage from 35mm were marred with problems. There were quite a few complaints about The Perfect Storm. The Guardian has a bunch of that same sort of dark seaborne footage. Apparently this sort of stuff is very difficult to data compress. Even the first DVD release of Titanic was delayed significantly because of encoding problems. Now one might ask, "why would any of this be a problem when a DCI compliant D-cinema bitstream runs 150 million to 250 million bits per second?" Why? I think some of this stuff is getting compressed and encoded in one hell of a hurry. It may not seem like such a big deal to take a 1.5Gb per second 2K uncompressed bitstream and compact it down to less than 10% of its original size. But something's going to fall apart if you just apply a flat compression rate to that stream and not babysit it through the process. By comparison, some posting houses work for weeks or even months tweaking the video stream for a movie release on DVD. No theatrical production affords that much time between the point when final edit is finished and when the prints have to be sent to theaters. So, instead of theaters getting 35mm prints that are still wet, they may be getting hard discs or bitstreams via satellite that were rushed in far too much of a hurry. I certainly see the potential for some movies to have "corrected" bitstreams theaters will have to download again while the movie is in release. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that kind of thing has already happened. The conversion to digital cinema is well underway at our local Carmike as I write this. I'd like to check out the digital version of The Departed since I watched the 35mm version this past weekend and its appearance is still fresh in my memory. Since this theater's 35mm projection was already pretty darned good, I'm hoping the CP2000 projectors can at least get into the same territory. The LPCM 5.1 audio should be pretty good.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-09-2006 08:50 PM                     Bobby, You REALLY need to attend one of the Dolby DC Seminars then you'll finally understand whats actually going on. The bit rate to the projector is way higher than you think it is.... A clue er two... MPEG requires just 1 HDSDI cable between the server and projector. JPEG2000 requires two HDSDI cables between the server and projector. Mark  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 10-10-2006 12:57 PM                     The bitrate going to the projector is one thing. What I'm talking about is the actual data rate in the encoded media. If the actual task of compressing the data is not handled well at all it will end up looking like ass on the screen regardless of the final decompressed bitrate or what cables or used or if Dolby's glorious brand name is all over the equipment. The DCI spec for encoded video data is supposed to be between 150Mb/s and 250Mb/s. That's around 1/6th to 1/10th the bitrate of the original material. I haven't seen anything to suggest that compresssion ratio is absolutely mandatory. Who's to stop some studio from compressing the video data a lot further? The combination of encoding video in a mad rush and the real threat of studios ramping up compression levels to save time/money on shipping hard discs or leasing satellite time can pose some real big problems. The human element is still very involved in all this digital stuff. It isn't perfect and it can still be horribly infected with that "good enough to get by" attitude of compromise.  |  IP: Logged Bill Enos Film God Posts: 2081 From: Richmond, Virginia, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 10-10-2006 01:20 PM                     When the DP 100 was installed in our booth, the Barco tech wasn't too concerned with the 14 degree down angle, but that combined with the 8 ft. off center location it isn't possible to fully correct for keystone on the left side. He wanted to move one of the 35mm machines, but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. The only way to compensate for the keystone is to overshoot enough to fill the screen at the top left. Otherwise, the pic is pretty good.  |  IP: Logged David Graves Film Handler Posts: 38 From: Cocoa, FL Registered: Nov 2006 posted 11-27-2006 07:18 PM                     I was down visiting family over the weekend, and was surprised that the new Rave 16-plex in Viera had added all DLP houses (Christie 2ks, it looked like, though the manager had, naturally, no clue what I was asking about). The majority of the films showing were in digital, although several, including new ones, were not. This is a fairly new theater, and is generally well-maintained, so I figured with some time to kill I'd stick my head in a few of the houses. I got some nearly side-by-side comparisons, as Deja Vu was showing 35mm in one house and DLP in another. I found that consistently, throughout the complex, the DLP auditoriums had a very strange color issue- they seemed slightly washed out, as if you'd clicked the brightness on your TV up one or two notches too high. This was very evident in The Departed, which used a lot of muted tones throughout- the DLP was definitely muddier. Borat looked like total crap, though I figured that may be due to the source material. The 35mm Deja Vu beat the pants off the DLP. I could see some slight "mosquito noise" during some of the darker scenes, but the shadows and blacks were fine next door. Then I sat down in my film, The Fountain- DLP, and my jaw dropped. It was rock steady, colorful, and beautiful. Not a scratch, nor a bit of dust, of course. Black blacks, blinding whites, and perfect motion. The sound seemed a lot better as well- it didn't have that harsh compression I usually hear with 35mm. Of course, when I looked behind me in the booth, I noticed the DLP projector sitting silent, and a 35mm print with a DTS head running. Maybe one day, but it's just not there yet.  |  IP: Logged

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