Are deeply curved LED screens the way to the future for cinema?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Those old B&W pictures show the old booth. Todd constructed a new booth at the front of the balcony as you can see in the previous images, I assume mainly to eliminate keystone, but also because that old booth probably could not take the weight of two DP-70's safely. They had the same issue in the Michael Todd Theater where they constructed a booth in the rear on the main floor and even installed Century JJ's instead because that booth was really cramped. Chicago actually had two other Cinerama theaters. Both of those both started out as 3-Strip and then went to Single strip 70mm as well. Here are a few more pictures..

[Van Dalton]

There is an easier and cheaper way to recover the content: Simply play it on any decent record player the only challenge will be fitting a 16" record on there, but I've got an old German-built record player that could fit oversized records. although I've never seen them.

Load the recording into your favorite sound editing utility, reverse it and if you recorded it at 45 RPM, you slow it down by factor 0,75 and voila... no expensive gear needed. As I said so, you could do this even on the commandline with a tool like ffmpeg.

Lately I've been playing around with AEI Music's (lor AEI Rediffusion in the UK) "Propac 4" cassette format, an strange 4-track mono format running at (nominally, anyways.....) 1 2/5 in/s. All that needs be done is both sides of the cassette be played into Audacity at 1 7/8" on your stereo Technics RS-AZ6/7 or Nak, slow the files down 25% (though most I've done seem to need an additional 2% more) and split them into 4 individual mono tracks.

Then if you want to actually record your own tapes in the format you'd just do all that in reverse and speed it up 33 1/3%. Gee, where have I seen that number before?

About a grand (after shipping and California sales tax) would buy me this, which I could modify to play such a record in 2-3 hours. Although this is no longer in production, used examples appear on Ebay quite frequently. It would be an even easier option, because it can do 60 RPM out of the box. I have the turntable it is a modification of (the Vestax BDT-2500), and the variable speed function is great for digitizing records dating from the 1890s to the period between roughly 1912 to 1925, when 78.16 RPM (60 Hz territories) and 77.92 RPM (50 Hz) became established as the universal standard.

Of course if you wanted to do it the hard way, you'd just have to get hold of an old right-hand drive radio transcription table, play with the speed adjustment and remount the cartridge *backwards* in the headshell. Problem solved. If it's a vertical hill-and-dale disc (like old Muzak transcriptions and virtually all records before the late 1920s or early 1930s were) then you rewire the stereo cartridge out-of-phase.

Well, I mean, AMI Rowe did do the left-hand drive thing in their 45 RPM jukeboxes back in the 1970s and 80s, which played standard clockways-rotating discs, and that was how they did it, so.....

And by the way, everybody, I need to get this out in the open. Please hear me out because it's really bothering me. This misuse of the term "hacker" as a synonym for "pirate" has simply got to stop. As an hacker I find it an affront that you guys are blanket defaming computer scientists, security experts, engineers, programmers and such by comparing them to criminals for no real reason. Yes, I realise you're all just going on what the right-wing owned commercial mass media and Crappipedia have misled you to believe for so many years. It was wrong in the '90s and it's still wrong now.

Remember, when you defame hackers, you're defaming entire groups of people who have worked (some even devoted their lives) to bring the computer and networking technologies you take for granted every single day into existance. Not cool.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Those old B&W pictures show the old booth. Todd constructed a new booth at the front of the balcony as you can see in the previous images, I assume mainly to eliminate keystone, but also because that old booth probably could not take the weight of two DP-70's safely. They had the same issue in the Michael Todd Theater where they constructed a booth in the rear on the main floor and even installed Century JJ's instead because that booth was really cramped. Chicago actually had two other Cinerama theaters. Both of those both started out as 3-Strip and then went to Single strip 70mm as well. Here are a few more pictures..

It certainly is a sad sight to see this theater in this stage of disrepair, but it clearly indicates that it takes some people with vision and the guts to execute to keep places like this relevant and open. Once the visionary disapears, the ship seems to be heading towards the next iceberg...

And by the way, everybody, I need to get this out in the open. Please hear me out because it's really bothering me. This misuse of the term "hacker" as a synonym for "pirate" has simply got to stop. As an hacker I find it an affront that you guys are blanket defaming computer scientists, security experts, engineers, programmers and such by comparing them to criminals for no real reason. Yes, I realise you're all just going on what the right-wing owned commercial mass media and Crappipedia have misled you to believe for so many years. It was wrong in the '90s and it's still wrong now.

Remember, when you defame hackers, you're defaming entire groups of people who have worked (some even devoted their lives) to bring the computer and networking technologies you take for granted every single day into existance. Not cool.

The term "hacker" is used for many purposes and I have since stopped bothering about it, except if the local sciptkiddie who has discovered the latest DDoS tool is called "a hacker".

The line between hackers and pirates is sometimes pretty thin, because it requires some extraordinary hacking skills to get rid of many of the copy-protection schemes that have been employed over the years. Even back in the 90s there was sometimes hard to tell where the world of the release groups stopped and that of e.g. the demo scene started...

The cost (or cost per pixel) is still too high for LED-based screens to achieve mainstream use in cinemas. The expectation is to have a display that sports at least 2K native resolution, if not 4K. Doing that is really expensive.

Keep in mind that a laser projector with a 10 year warranty on the light source also isn't all that cheap and also needs a replacement every 10-or-so years. Also, this technology will replace your screen too, which may cost a fraction of the projector, but is a cost factor too.

We've actually been looking at options for a LED screen in our screening room for quite a while now. It was back in 2018 that I started to gather some offers from several potential supiers. Right now, nobody is providing LED screens that fit the purpose and are also DCI compliant. With the current inflation and general supply shortage, predictions of how a price will evolve have to be taken with a grain of salt or two, but from what I've seen over the years is that with current LED screen technology, the price tends to halve about every two to two-and-a-half years or so...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

It certainly is a sad sight to see this theater in this stage of disrepair, but it clearly indicates that it takes some people with vision and the guts to execute to keep places like this relevant and open. Once the visionary disapears, the ship seems to be heading towards the next iceburg

Both were demolished but the facade's were saved for the new live theaters. It actually looks very nice now.

[Bobby Henderson]

We've actually been looking at options for a LED screen in our screening room for quite a while now. It was back in 2018 that I started to gather some offers from several potential suppliers. Right now, nobody is providing LED screens that fit the purpose and are also DCI compliant. With the current inflation and general supply shortage, predictions of how a price will evolve have to be taken with a grain of salt or two, but from what I've seen over the years is that with current LED screen technology, the price tends to halve about every two to two-and-a-half years or so...

The supply chain problem is bad enough for my company that we're having to quote LED displays from other manufacturers. We prefer using Daktronics for LED-based variable message signs and billboards. But we're looking at delivery times as long as six months. I drew up a couple projects this week with LED displays from Watchfire; they're promising faster delivery times. But the cost is quite a bit higher. A sign company would be playing Russian roulette if trying to quote some off-brand "OEM" type of LED board. There's no telling when you would get the display. And then there's the matter of likely far lower quality and product longevity.

A LED-based cinema screen would have to be extremely reliable and have an acceptably long product life. The display would also need to be designed in a manner where maintenance and repairs could be fast/easy to minimize down time.

LED-based signs, billboards, etc have improved a lot over the past 20 years. The first full color units didn't have great color quality and the refresh rates were low, 30Hz or 60Hz. Today the color quality is far better, the displays can be very bright to compete with ambient sunlight and the refresh rates are extremely fast (anywhere from 400Hz to over 2000Hz depending on the make and model). The cost per pixel has fallen a great deal. In the early 2000's it was common for LED signs to have very coarse, low resolutions. A 35mm pitch from pixel to pixel was common. Around 10 or so years ago prices dropped enough to make 20mm pitch boards more popular. Then 16mm boards became more accessible. Now more customers are starting to buy 10mm pitch displays. Higher resolution boards in 8mm, 6mm or even 4mm pitches are available for outdoor installs, but those cost shit-ton for a display in a properly large size. Hopefully as time goes on the prices for the higher resolution boards will fall. Companies like Daktronics have been phasing out the lowest, most coarse resolution product lines.

Those price drops could correspond to making LED-based cinema screens more practical in terms of cost. Still, a LED display manufacturer such as Samsung, Daktronics, etc would need to develop a product line specific to cinemas. I imagine there could some market bleed-over into other businesses that need large, indoor LED displays. A large screen with speakers installed directly behind it is a pretty specific application.

[Mark Ogden]

Those old B&W pictures show the old booth. Todd constructed a new booth at the front of the balcony as you can see in the previous images, I assume mainly to eliminate keystone, but also because that old booth probably could not take the weight of two DP-70's safely. They had the same issue in the Michael Todd Theater where they constructed a booth in the rear on the main floor and even installed Century JJ's instead because that booth was really cramped. Chicago actually had two other Cinerama theaters. Both of those both started out as 3-Strip and then went to Single strip 70mm as well. Here are a few more pictures..

AS I recall, Todd had the same specification for Todd-AO that Cinerama had: the projectors had to be as close to center axis as possible, which is why there are many mid-century theaters that saw a shift to rear-of-the-mezzanine booths. Where it was NOT possible, you could obtain a so-called "rectified" print of the picture (like Oklahoma!) that in a half-assed way tried to correct for the keystoning on a curved screen, but that was considered sub-optimal.

70mm-Todd-AO_rectified-no_cc.jpeg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Mark, You can see the balcony booth Todd had built on Page two. Originally, the Cinestage had a solid sheet. But when another company took it over in the mid 1960's, they signed a deal to equip it for 70mm cinerama. Hence, the strip screen... The only thing of intrest in.the balcony booth was a 70mm Todd-AO cement splicer that was found by a friend. Oh, you can also see the back of the X-Rated screen and speaker stands...

[Frank Angel]

I believe that Dimension 150 process had a corrective lens that did to a standard image what that "rectified" print process did for the Todd-AO release prints, i.e., correct for the screen curvature and eliminate the bowing horizon distortion. UA Theatres had a Dimension 150 theatre out in Syosset NY. While their curved screen was probably at least 80ft width, the curve was not nearly as severe as Cinerama. It was a mild curve and coupled with the D150 Curvelux corrective lens (not 100% sure if that is the right name for it), it rendered even standard 70mm release prints and even 35mm/flat and scope prints on the curved screen almost distortion-free. Our whole theatre crew would hop in the car to drive out there from Brooklyn -- a good hour trek on the Long Island Distressway -- just to watch a movie in that beautiful theatre. It was a marvelous place to see any movie on a curved screen -- sound system was impressive as well.

When every large theatre on the planet in those days was being chopped and tortured into minuscule shoebox multiplexes, I was grateful that the UA D150 was still standing and operational, but I wondered how that was even possible. I asked the projectionist, how did UA not multiplex this beautiful 1000 seater into, you know...a dozen or more living-room size "cinemas"? He said it was because UA had a headquarters in Syosset (or near by) and the execs wanted to have a prestige, impressive showplace to bring their friends and family for private screenings. Eventually even that bit of snobbery wasn't enough to be able to stave off the inevitable wrecking ball.
UA D150.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Frank, yes they did. I have one of them.here. it's a large very heavy lens. > 20 pounds!

[Allan Young]

UA D150.jpg

You can just about make out the text in the diagram at the top. The middle-sized screen area was for 70mm and the smallest for 35mm 'scope. When D-150 was introduced, the idea was that only films produced in D-150 would take advantage of the full screen area. To that end, the projection lens was only supplied (free of charge) to a D-150 house for the duration of a D-150 film's run.

Presumably the fact that only two features were produced in D-150 (the final one was Patton in 1970) meant that this requirement was later dropped. Either that or in 1978 the Odeon Marble Arch in London broke the rules...

sw_01.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

In Canada and the USA, the lenses stayed at the theater all the time. As it is, D-150 only produced two films in the format and they disappeared into United Artists Theaters, as they had the most D-150 locations. So all of the locations ended up running all 70mm stuff on the full D-150 screen. I would assume a similar thing happened in Europe.

[Frank Angel]

I'll bet, given what we know about Mr. Exhibitor, and given that there were only two films specifically shot for the D-150 system, that those screens which cost a hefty truck load of $$$, were used full sized for lots of titles other than THE BIBLE and PATTON. I can't imagine after D-150 was out of the picture (npi), that most exhibitors running D-150 theatre were any to happy only using 2/3rd of their pricey D-150 screen, especially since they had the Curvelux lens which allowed any format to be presented on the full curved screen. It's reminiscent of when, as soon as the CinemaScope width screen was installed, there wasn't an exhibitor anywhere who was going to show Academy ratio titles after he'd bought and installed a "scope width screen. There were plenty of Academy titles at that time that were already in the can, but no matter, plates were going to be filed and down-sized focal length lenses were going to be install to make that image WIDER come hell or high water, regardless of how it was shot. Mr. Exhibitor sez: "We don't need no stinkin foreheads and chins!" Even the studios realized that once an audience saw the curtains open and open and open wide for THE ROBE, no way were they going to be happy seeing a 1.37:1 image. G. Stevens shot SHANE in Academy, but Paramount released it hardmatted at 1.66:1; I'd love to know how many theatres ran it at 1.85:1!

[Geoff Jones]

Are there any D-150 screens still in operation? Can those "corrective lenses" be used with digital projectors?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Not sure on the first question.. but possibly in Europe Somewhere, and no on the second one. The D-150 lens is like any scope lens. The back is (Usually a 4" O.D. Kolmorgen and the front is the actual D-150 corrective part. I actually tried this lens I have here on a flat 70mm screen once... The back up lens was so long and the image on the screen so small it was difficult to tell exactly what it did to the image. The picture is of my collection of attachments and complete lenses.

[Jim Cassedy]

UA Theatres had a Dimension 150 theatre out in Syosset NY.

Thanks for the memories, Frank! I pulled a couple of "fill-in" shifts at the UA Syossett back in the early
1970's before The Union "permanently" assigned to my own theater. It was definitely a "Class-A" house,
and one of the places that UA kept up nicely- - at least in part due to the fact you mentioned about UA's
Eastern HQ offices being located not too far away. Most of the big movies back around that time had
their NY premier runs on Broadway in NY City, and at The Syossett on Long Island. I'm pretty sure
I recall running "Fiddler On The Roof" during it's exclusive Long Island engagement there.

In those pre- Dolby days, they had one of the better engineered (and maintained!) sound systems. It
was all 35 and 70mm mag sound back then. There were connections to hook up separate mag sync
sound followers but I'm not aware of it ever being done. For some of those big engagements, at least
during the initial opening weeks, they kept both 70 & 35mm prints in the 3 projector booth.
( I think the 3rd projector was 35mm only- - but I might be confusing that booth with another large
theater I sometimes worked at )

I never got to run an actual D-150 print there, although I do recall 'playing around" with the big lenses.
- - and when I worked there they still had those huge water-cooled 150amp Ashcraft carbon arc lamps
that used rotating carbons almost as thick as my thumb which and which put out just slightly less light
than the Sun.

My friend & Union Brother Norman S. worked the Syosset booth for several years, and I'd often
drop in to see him and hang around & 'tech-chat' sometimes. I'm pretty sure it was at the the Syosset
that I first saw (and later operated) my first Dolby equipment. ( CP-200 ) The original audio install was
all Altec/Ampex optical & magnetic (mostly vaccuum tube) pre-amps & amp racks. - If my memory is
correct, the Dolbystuff was installed for STAR WARS. I recall driving all the way out there just to see
it. (The Dolby equipment- - not the movie! I was playing it somewhere else on a big screen, but in
MONO. The theater I was at had been equipped for 35mag sound, so a lot of the 'basic' audio
wiring was in place, but UA & Dolby couldn't get the stereostuff installed before S-Wars opening date)

I also got to pull a couple of shifts at THE CORONET here in SF, which was also equipped for
D-150. I was given some keys & got to go on a 'scavenger hunt' inside before they tore it down
in the mid 2000's. i did pick up a truckload of assorted equipment & artifacts, but unfortunately,
the D-150 lenses were long gone by then. Oh Well....


BONUS CLIPPING: For Many Years, The Syosset D-150 Was Long
Island's "UA Flagship" Theater - - & They Liked To Show It Off
Syosset10281963.jpg
(Source: BOX OFFICE Magazine, Oct 28th, 1963)