So far it has turned out to be a pretty busy as compared to last years. Attendance seems to be way up.

Not too many new products but a few worth mentioning are the new BACP Dolby Digital Penthouse which looks very, very nice. They are saying it does 1.5 to 2 digits lower error rate than the other leading brand! If you combine it and the new U.S. Labs Analog processor which contains the analog Processor, Crossovers for bi/tri amp, and booth monitor, along with a DA-20 you can have a really nice SRD playback setup and save some bucks whie you're at it.

Big Sky was showing off a new lamphouse and very small touch screen automation unit which also look promising.

Kinoton has a really nice large booth with all the wonderful German made projectors and other accessories.

Megasystems Booth has really grown this year and they have on display the usual 8/70 machine and a 15/70 prototype, but only running at a couple of clicks a second(perhaps not even that fast). Common Steve.....turn up the speeed a bit and lets see what happens!

Oh, and the Oscar that was given to the JBL engineers was also on display at the JBL booth. Congratulations guys! You're well deserving of it. At last there are really great three way screen systems thanks to your efforts.
Mark @ GTS

Yesterday we went to the Kodak digital cinema demonstration. Their 3 million-pixel chips look pretty good. It did help that their source material was from an Imax film. Their demonstration is hard to get in to due to its popularity.

I finally hooked up with Brad at the Trade Show. He was systematically going from booth to booth checking with each and every vendor of projection equipment. We haven't gotten an overall impression of what he thought of the equipment, but I hope he will post exhaustively here when he returns.

We have met all of the usual suspects. Gordon McLeod and Steve Guttag were at the SMPTE meeting this morning. I attended even though I don't understand half of what they are talking about. There was a half an hour discussion of what exactly is the color white.

I ran in to Mark Gulbrandsen, John Pytlak from Kodak, Paul G. Thompson, Dwayne Caldwell and most of the Telluride people who are here this year.

I went to the big breakfast and the MGM lunch. They were pitching Crock Hunter with that crazy Australian you see on the Nature Channel. Bruce Willis was there at the lunch.

Ky was able to find a seat that he likes. The trade show is all of the usual stuff. There doesn't seem to be anything new and exciting from the Trade Show.

Ky likes the Health and Fitness Fair; they give free massages. I had my cholesterol checked (mostly normal), lung function was mostly normal and bone density was slightly below normal.

We had dinner with the Telluride people away from the convention, which was nice. Then we had drinks with Mike Hurley and some people who post at bigscreenbiz.com.

The Film-Tech drink night was enjoyed by at least 50 people or better in attendance in the suite that was provided. I finally got to meet John Pytlak! What a guy...a veritable walking encyclopedia of film technology and absolutley amazing to listen to. John stated that last year Kodak produced over 13 million feet of release film print stock. When asked what they do with all those perfs that are punched out he said they were recycled.......by glueing them all together into usable film . We knew he was just teasing though. But thats alot of film and all agreed that film and digital will coexist for quite a long time to come.

Kodak was also showing off their 3 megapixel ILA based digital projector,,,,,no one could hardly get in to see it though. This had to be THE digital demo to see at the show. Last years chips were only at 1 megapixel resolution. He reported that even the guys from T.I. were there to see that demo. Looks like DLP may be all but obsolete if U ask me.

John said it was 13 billion linear feet of film used last year. It's too bad that film is on its way out. He used that number to show that the "film" industry was very alive and healthy.

That's about 1,300,000 individual movies. Shove that up your multi-plex!

It was really a pain in the ass because each and every one of them came to my table and asked where was Brad Miller. Brad was apparently dinning in Quark's Cafe over at the Hilton’s Star Trek Experience and wasn't available.

It was fun seeing all of those stars from 350 feet away. Thank God for video I-Mag. The pace of the show was slow, most of the stars weren’t aware that the audience they were talking to, were theatre owners and responsible for their income. Most thanked their agents and the marketing department of the studios. The only two stars that made direct comments about theatre owners were Will Smith and Chris Tucker.

The dinner was a filet of beef, a portion of Sea Bass, mashed potatoes, an arrangement of tiny vegetables and salad. I cannot be high enough to describe dessert. The center table arrangements were a film tin with a 16mm reel on top all painted gold. Many people took them home as souvenirs.

It was great meeting so many Film-Tech'ers at the Gathering. Many thanks go to CPI for putting the Film-Tech Gathering together for us this year. We hope to see more of you next year. It was great to meet Brad. We were sorry that Joe chose not to attend. Joe, nobody attacked Brad, no one would have attacked you.

Well, that's it for the show. I must go and pack for England and the Wide Screen Weekend in Bradford. I will not be posting here for a couple of weeks, but here is hoping that the many who were here will comment. I look forward to reading Brad's comments on what he saw while he was here.

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