A HAPPY BIRTHDAY to DIGITAL CINEMA

[Bill Hogan]

On this day 25 years ago DIGITAL CINEMA was born. (June 18, 1999) A month after the film version of
Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace opened a DIGITALLY projected version was shown in Los Angeles
and in New Jersey. The theaters and equipment are shown in the attached photo. Each participant in the
historic event received a wall plaque made by Tom Lipiec now of Moving Image Technologies.
Attached are images that commemorate the occasion. (Photos courtesy of Paul Brink - Disney)

[Bryce Warren]

This is really cool, thanks for sharing!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

That's awesome!

FWIW, T.I was doing test screenings of DLP technology about ten years earlier than this. When I was working on "Home Alone" in early 1990, one of the producers mentioned to me that all this projection equipment soon would no longer be required. He said he had attended a then secret demo of a new system at Texas Instruments that did not require film and the images were projected digitally. Myself and a couple of people from Editorial blew that off as "Oh yea, sure" kind of response. Granted, it took about another ten years to happen, but none the less, it did... Then around 2006 I found myself at a theater in Wyoming installing said equipment....

[Leo Enticknap]

A decade from demonstrating proof of concept to volume/serial production isn't that unusual. I remember as a film archiving student in the mid-1990s hearing a lecture at some conference or other from an industry insider who said that she'd seen with her own eyes proof that the days of film (as a mainstream exhibition technology) were numbered. "Maybe, but the number is a helluva lot bigger than she thinks," was my silent response. The only digital moving image technology in widespread use at the time was Digibeta, which was phenomenally expensive and still only offered PAL or NTSC resolution/color space. Its attraction was not in the image quality, but the fact that it could be edited and copied without generational signal loss. It turned out to be roughly just under two decades (until DCPs were replacing 35mm on a serious scale and in regular theaters).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Well, Hughes Technology had their ILA system too, which it appears that JVC ended up with. This article describes how the technology works, and it can display an incredible contrast ratio range as well as 8k resolution... But we ended up with DLP, and Sony's baloney instead...

[Steve Guttag]

My first stie was the, then Crown Annapolis Mall 11. It was a Christie version of the Mark VII projector (some called them Series-0). Qualcomm and Technicolor were the entities behind the installations. We had to integrate the film and digital systems so they could use either or both, seamlessly. I still remember looking at the picture and thinking "they aren't there yet but they are far closer than I had previously thought." In 2003, we put three Barco DP50s into the AFI/Silver, permanently where they were used primarily as A/V projector but also had a QVIS server and could run the DCinema, of the time. A year later, when the Series 1 2K projectors came out from Barco and Christie, the Series-0 stuff went instantly obsolete. I don't know how many circa 2004 DP100s are still kicking around but it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of the CP2000S projectors are still going.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The first projector I installed was a DP-100... was actually pretty reliable.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The first projector I installed was a DP-100... was actually pretty reliable.

I still regularly service two DP-100. Meanwhile, the entire cooling system inside must have been replaced twice, but one is still on its first light engine and still going strong...

In the last 25 years we mostly switched from 2K to 4K on newer machines and replaced xenon light sources with laser, but the basics have remained pretty much the same.

I remember the first prototypes being based on different technologies. JVC-Huges had a reflective LCD ("digital light valve") based "ILA" projector, NEC had a TI DLP prototype and wasn't there also a CRT-based solution in the early race?

The NEC prototype already used a prism for both splitting the light over the imager and combining it back again, the JVC/Huges that the typical split-RGB setup, like those of the typical RGB CRT projectors.

[Gordon McLeod]

I still regularly service two DP-100. Meanwhile, the entire cooling system inside must have been replaced twice, but one is still on its first light engine and still going strong...

In the last 25 years we mostly switched from 2K to 4K on newer machines and replaced xenon light sources with laser, but the basics have remained pretty much the same.

I remember the first prototypes being based on different technologies. JVC-Huges had a reflective LCD ("digital light valve") based "ILA" projector, NEC had a TI DLP prototype and wasn't there also a CRT-based solution in the early race?

The NEC prototype already used a prism for both splitting the light over the imager and combining it back again, the JVC/Huges that the typical split-RGB setup, like those of the typical RGB CRT projectors.

The NEC prototype was actually the UK firm DLP projection that was the third licensee from TI for cinema it was for a while a Imax company for a while and then NEC bought the cinema division from them

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The NEC prototype was actually the UK firm DLP projection that was the third licensee from TI for cinema it was for a while a Imax company for a while and then NEC bought the cinema division from them

Yes, I remember that happening... The first NEC's I saw were the 1600's and 2500's in Salt Lake City, and they sure were rat's nests, but very reliable. The same chain also had a bunch of DP-100's... Then I remember the Showest, or was it CInema-Con by then, where NEC introcuced their Series 2 stuff that was not at all a rats nest. Like night and day!

[Bruce Cloutier]

There are Series 3 JNIOR out there still in operation and currently in digital cinema applications. Those were originally shipped to Kodak I believe in 2005. By that point Kodak had also taken a serious quantity of JNIOR2 for integration in their preshow systems.

But I am thinking that most of that then was still film and slide projectors. The JNIOR inputs have the ability to receive and decode cue signals from the projector. The relays also are capable of generating those. So all of that was to integrate with the legacy pre-digital equipment.

We all know how well Kodak dealt with digital. I spent 23 years in Rochester, NY (Fairport actually, '76 thru '99) where the two big employers were Kodak and Xerox. I had 8+ years with Xerox. Both have sadly not fared well. The 3rd largest employer was the University of Rochester if you are curious.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I remember the Kodak demo.at Showest, but by the next year Kodak had already abandoned it and was no where to be found... Do you remember if theirs was DLP, Sony or ILA based off hand? I do remember it looked great.

[Pietro Clarici]

There are Series 3 JNIOR out there still in operation and currently in digital cinema applications. Those were originally shipped to Kodak I believe in 2005.

Yes, I actually have a couple of them since I was the first Kodak JMN3000 customer in Italy back in 2007 - I chose them because they were a reliable, world renowned brand, which is kind of ironic and also the reason why I should probably avoid the stock market.

Anyway, I switched to DCP2000s and removed most 35mm projectors when Kodak left the cinema market, but the JNIORs were reconfigured by my integrator and are still up and running. Great product.

[Marco Giustini]

Well, Hughes Technology had their ILA system too, which it appears that JVC ended up with. This article describes how the technology works, and it can display an incredible contrast ratio range as well as 8k resolution... But we ended up with DLP, and Sony's baloney instead...

DILA is amazing but is still an LCOS panel (as Sony's SXRD is), I'd wonder how well they would have worked with the high brightness required for larger screens.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yes, that's hard to say. But the specs are really amazing to say the least. I imagine that through further development that they could have succeded... Hughes Enginerring designed and built some amazing stuff over the years.