Bad Projection Is Ruining the Movie Theater Experience

[Leo Enticknap]

The reason the industry is switching to laser and Mark couldn't get answers when he asked was the difference in time and cost. When the SP4K series from Barco debuted, they were cheaper than their Xenon equivalents (and that is on day-1). Operationally, they will be cheaper to operate every day thereafter. That is a game-change type moment. No exhibitors want to cut holes in their roofs and put in exhausts that have their own maintenance issues. All one has to do now is give the Architect the BTU impact and they can factor in HVAC for the booth or pod or whatever.

Agreed. The cost of life-limited laser components does not tell the whole story. If it did, the math would not, at first glance, look very appealing. It is typically claimed that the laser diodes used in cinema projectors are good for around 30K hours maxed out before their output starts to fall. That's about eight years of running shows for ten hours a day, seven days a week. As with anxiety over batteries in electric cars wearing out, you're potentially looking at a very large bill to replace the diode plates once they reach end of life. But as Steve points out, that isn't factoring in the purchase price of the projector, reduced power consumption, and reduced maintenance labor costs.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Marcel,

Which brand did you use for the woven and micro perf screens? This would be a good question for me to ask the manufacturer about "what if" we choose the woven option and have major issues with it? Maybe they are confident enough to say try it and if it doesn't work well, we'll send you a micro perf instead at little to no cost.

For something that will likely be installed for 20+ years, we want it to be optimal. The current screen being replaced is 25 years old and still looks pretty good.

It wasn't Stevertson, I don't think their SAT4K material was even available back then. For our screening room we've used screens provided by Gerriets. They aren't really a household name in cinemas, but offer screen solutions for special venues, including all kinds of audio-treatment solutions for walls, rigging and custom masking solutions. When we wanted to replace our screen to get rid of the visible perforation, they offered us to test a new kind of material, optimized for smaller rooms. It didn't work out, so we switched back to micro-perf, but now with an even smaller perforation.

The structure of SAT4K looks different than that of the screen we had, the Stevertson screen looks more like it has a repetitative structure, the screen we had, looked more like a "traditional woven screen".

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Mark, lasers have HIGHER contrast (much much lower Etendue, which also factors into contrast). Only NEC has found a way to keep contrast low with lasers but they also use Laser Phosphor. For Barco one goes from 2000:1 to 2300:1 on the .98" chip. The 1.38" 4K chip gets an honest 2000:1 when it was closer to 1850:1 before. Even the .69" stuff jumps to 2200:1 from 1850:1 and they have HC lenses to bump those up to 3000:1. Christie, likewise moves up in contrast on their laser projectors.

Am very familiar with Etendue... When I was a tech at Canon and had damaged lens elements to replace in TV camera lenses they suddenly switched to supplying only matched groups. This happened because of the forthcoming HDTV and it had to do with controling a number of specs including Etendue. The only still lenses they did that to were the higher end FD lenses.

[Steve Guttag]

And yet, you still made the statement that laser based projectors had lower contrast!

[Bobby Henderson]

There also is quite a difference in "build quality" between the stuff that's made for outdoor use v.s. the indoor stuff. There are fairly lightweight LED wall constructions nowadays for indoor use, that allow for quite some transparency, not just for sound, but also for light effects. A good example is a live show like this one (bad audio and mediocre video quality ahead), many of the "holo" effects rely on a transparent front screen with another LED screen in the back.

The example in that video is not a real LED video wall. It's a lot of RGB LED sticks connected to the same data feed to show a single image. Coldplay's music video for "Speed of Sound" features an early example of the concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k_1kvDh2UA
Such setups were done mainly to build a huge stage image with a lighter, more portable and lower cost solution.

Real LED-based displays for indoor use have the same solid plastic faces as the outdoor units, but often feature far tighter pixel pitches and greater resolution. It's common for indoor LED boards to have pitches of 6mm, 4mm or even just 2mm. Samsung went a bit farther with "The Wall," creating a pixel grid with a pitch just under 1mm. Such high resolution boards aren't going to be allowing a lot of air or light to go through them.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The example in that video is not a real LED video wall. It's a lot of RGB LED sticks connected to the same data feed to show a single image. Coldplay's music video for "Speed of Sound" features an early example of the concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k_1kvDh2UA
Such setups were done mainly to build a huge stage image with a lighter, more portable and lower cost solution.

Real LED-based displays for indoor use have the same solid plastic faces as the outdoor units, but often feature far tighter pixel pitches and greater resolution. It's common for indoor LED boards to have pitches of 6mm, 4mm or even just 2mm. Samsung went a bit farther with "The Wall," creating a pixel grid with a pitch just under 1mm. Such high resolution boards aren't going to be allowing a lot of air or light to go through them.

I'd say even if you have a wall of fireflies you could individually control and change their color, you essentially do have a video wall.

I've seen the setup up-close. It's not really LED sticks, like in the Coldplay video, but still a somewhat custom solution. Let's call it a LED mesh, the pixel pitch is about 1.5 cm both horizontally and vertically, which is sufficient for the average viewing distance between stage and the audience. It's still referred to as a LED wall and it's operated like one too. Outside of this show, it was being used as a "normal LED wall" and without any light coming from behind the stage, you wouldn't know that it was essentially transparent. It comes in modules too, as it needs to be transportable. Given the size of the thing, it's also not a low-resolution affair either, quite to the contrary. Furthermore, the dynamic range also exceeds that of many "standard" LED walls. The MSG sphere will use a similar setup on the inside, but with a somewhat smaller pixel pitch. The exosphere display will essentially consist of "LED sticks" mounted on a frame in a pretty original sinusoid arangement. It's literally LED sticks, but the whole thing is still refered to as a screen though.

Like indicated, the pixel pitch and when those fuse together to make the space between them invisible to the naked eye is crucial, especially for cinemas, nobody wants to look at a pixel grid for 2 hours or longer. In stages for shows that are recorded or broadcast, there is the additional problem of closeups of those walls, as they often reveal the individual pixels. You also don't want to see the structure of the screen via ambient light, that's why a flat, matte surface would be preferable to some kind of mesh-setup.

It would be interesting to see a study of how much of the sound transmission of your average cinema screen happens through the perforations of the screen itself and how much by the screen acting as an accoustic surface itself. If you look at the average perforated screen, I don't think it would be difficult to replicate a pattern of "channels" similar to that in an average LED wall with a pixel pitch sufficiently dense for normal cinema applications: keep in mind that on a normal, perforated screen, you're also losing "pixels" due to those perforations. But, I'm not convinced that the sound reproduction will be remotely equal to that of e.g. a vynil based, perforated screen, because the average cinema screen will act as a transducer itself to some extend.

[Mike Blakesley]

I’m just spit balling here, I’m no sound engineer, but I wonder if it would be possible to work up something like using the Bose “direct reflecting” method, putting the speakers in front of the screen (maybe angled from above and below), and let the sound bounce to the audience. I’m sure Dolby will come up something that works great and costs 2 million dollars.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I’m just spit balling here, I’m no sound engineer, but I wonder if it would be possible to work up something like using the Bose “direct reflecting” method, putting the speakers in front of the screen (maybe angled from above and below), and let the sound bounce to the audience. I’m sure Dolby will come up something that works great and costs 2 million dollars.

Steve will tune in and will let you know that such a solution can only be awful.

I agree that a solution using the screen as a reflector is somewhat of a last-resort solution. Unless the screen is a perfect acoustic mirror, such a solution will introduce all kinds of distortions. Also, having a honking acoustic mirror in the front of the screen will introduce other interesting problems with sounds coming from other directions e.g. from the surrounds and hitting the screen.

[Brad Miller]

I’m just spit balling here, I’m no sound engineer, but I wonder if it would be possible to work up something like using the Bose “direct reflecting” method, putting the speakers in front of the screen (maybe angled from above and below), and let the sound bounce to the audience. I’m sure Dolby will come up something that works great and costs 2 million dollars.

So you want to bring back the horrendous AMC HITS sound system, eh? (There was a reason it died.)

I'll take mono ANY DAY over watching a movie on a HITS system.

[Mike Blakesley]

I wasn't completely serious. I was never impressed with the "Bose 901" speakers that were such a hot deal back in the day. I figured they probably put just as much money into advertising as they did into sound research.

[Brad Miller]

Agreed. The cost of life-limited laser components does not tell the whole story. If it did, the math would not, at first glance, look very appealing. It is typically claimed that the laser diodes used in cinema projectors are good for around 30K hours maxed out before their output starts to fall. That's about eight years of running shows for ten hours a day, seven days a week. .

Just a quick comment, as we have a lot of theaters that have their light sources on for 12-14 hours a day (thank you preshow companies). That will really add up quicker over that 10 hours a day math.

As with anxiety over batteries in electric cars wearing out, you're potentially looking at a very large bill to replace the diode plates once they reach end of life. But as Steve points out, that isn't factoring in the purchase price of the projector, reduced power consumption, and reduced maintenance labor costs.

I believe I read "reduced maintenance labor costs" there, which I would also interpret as meaning reduced maintenance costs all around (not just labor, but parts too). Personally, I find that sort of statement funny because it is quick to forget what the industry has already been through.

Let us all not forget that 15 years ago buying and maintaining 35mm film projection systems was FAR cheaper and provided better overall uptime. When something did break (quite possibly 5 years down the road), about the biggest possible cost was MAYBE a $1500'ish part, but in most cases it was under $100. Compare that to all of the surprise expenses with digital systems. I'm sure everyone has had boards and so forth fail on their digital machines ranging from $1000-$4000 a pop. If a media block dies in the server, that could easily mean ditching the entire thing and spending another $7000-9000 on a replacement. And how many have been so lucky as to have a light engine fail? On a Christie that could be around $12K-14K or so to replace, but on a Barco that could be $24K-28K for a replacement light engine. (I am ballparking numbers, nobody get in a tissy if I'm a little off, and no I don't recall ballpark NEC part pricing at the moment.)

The point to be made is that everyone blindly jumped on the digital projection bandwagon because they thought it was going to be "perfect" and "runs itself" and "never fail". While it's possible to assemble and design a digital system that is quite reliable, expensive parts DO fail and often cause noticeable downtime. So putting aside the studio's savings on not making film prints, did the exhibitors REALLY save in the switch? Of course not. They made quite likely the single worst decision in the history of cinema exhibition and they will be paying for it increasingly as each decade passes, and there is no possible way to ever go back at this point. Theater's cost of operation has noticeably increased forever and gets worse with each new technology introduced.

Now most people are effectively being forced into buying laser. It makes sense from a manufacturer's goal for profits. Case in point Barco and NEC didn't make any money off of the xenon lamps their projectors used, but if they FORCE their customers to switch to laser by not giving them a xenon option, that now means they are effectively getting the money from all those lost xenon sales since they are in essence making the customer buy a stack of bulbs upfront with the projector (meaning, a laser engine).

Using Leo's example above of a theater that runs 10 hours a day and assuming the laser lasts as long as everyone assumes, 8 years down the road the theater will be starting to see enough of a dropoff they have to start the discussion about replacing the laser. I assure you every exhibitor will delay this as long as they can and in the next 5-10 years we are going to start seeing very dim images as a whole across the industry, which will REALLY start driving customers away from the cinema to explore their other options at home (streaming, etc). Just imagine a big chain that is installing lasers across the board. Those lasers are all going to die at about the same time! Hopefully the chains are smart enough to put money aside each month to buying replacement lasers or replacement projectors for their hundreds or thousands of machines that will all start to suffer at the same time...but I'll bet anything that won't happen.

With xenon, every new bulb puts you back to where you were at the start with brightness, and the payments are spread consistently evenly out over the years instead of paying interest on your bank loan to buy several years worth of those light hours upfront with the projector. Yes the laser projectors run on less energy. Yes the AC systems can be cut back a little bit with laser, but if we are going to discuss things like this, let's include everything such as the extra money the bank makes off of this and all of the new problems that all new technology (laser) brings with it...and we have seen plenty so far.

Let's also take for example a single theater, small chain, or even a large chain that has Barco and has made the decision to install laser "upgrades" to them. If your series 2 Barcos are already 10 or 12 years old and you convert them to laser...will you really get another 8 (or however) many years out of that projector before the projector itself becomes "end of life" and obsolete??? Is that really the best decision at this point vs. continuing to run on xenons for however much longer the projector runs relatively stable and then switching out the entire projector for a new one? It would be interesting to see the math on that because as has been stated "laser" will not sell any more tickets.

So let's jump to 8 or 10 years down the road. Just how many people will say the projector is too old to invest all that money into a replacement laser for their projector that will likely not be too far away from "end of life" status anyway? What will happen is this new laser technology will forever put the exhibition industry into buying new projectors about every 8-10 years, which is of course the projector manufacturer's goal (Barco and NEC that is, since we can't include Christie in that statement since they are the only company that is not forcing laser onto their clients, as they still offer xenon projectors).

Compare that to those old film systems that cost a mere fraction of the purchase price, their inexpensive replacement parts, and how many DECADES AFTER DECADES they would run with only the most minor maintenance and cost.

Since there is no way to go back, my recommendation for people like Mike Blakesley would be to hold onto your current projector as long as possible before buying into any sort of laser machine. Let the manufacturers try and get as many of the "new technology bugs" worked out first. Also don't be afraid of staying with a xenon machine when it does become time to get a replacement projector over the next few years. As Guttag accurately points out, laser is NOT brighter. It also will NOT sell a single additional ticket. Finally from an uptime standpoint, I would put the Christie xenon machines such as a CP4220 or CP4230 as absolutely the most reliable projector as things stand today. In both series 1 and series 2, our NOC's very clear experience has been that the Christie machines have noticeably higher uptime and less repair costs than other series 1 and series 2 machines from Barco, NEC and Sony. And we have also seen that the LASER machines on our NOC have had more problems in their first year of running than any other brand or model of XENON projector on its first year. So if you need to buy right now, I would recommend you stick with a Christie CP4220/CP4230 xenon projector. Give the others time to figure out how to tweak the design a bit here and there and to get as many of the bugs out as possible before you buy into a laser because all that laser machine is going to do for you is to have you buy all of those "laser bulbs" upfront until the point when the machine is too dark to run, at which time you are presented with the crazy cost of buying another several years of "laser bulbs" all at once on an older (at that point) projector.

One last comment for anyone buying a laser, and I am referring to a real (RGB) laser as well as the fake (phosphor) laser from any manufacturer. Pay particular attention to the SIZE of laser you ultimately go with. Since each day that passes the laser's output will be dimmer than the previous day for the entire life of the laser, absolutely make sure you can install the projector on DAY ONE with the power at 50% (or lower) and easily achieve 14fl on screen using a 1 to 1.4 gain white screen. (You will start to see hot spots at 1.8 gain and anything silver is just awful.) If your brand new install cannot do this, then tell your tech company to send it back and bring a bigger model in that CAN otherwise you will REALLY be paying for it down the road via more frequent laser replacements.

So much winning, eh?

[Marcel Birgelen]

The point to be made is that everyone blindly jumped on the digital projection bandwagon because they thought it was going to be "perfect" and "runs itself" and "never fail". While it's possible to assemble and design a digital system that is quite reliable, expensive parts DO fail and often cause noticeable downtime. So putting aside the studio's savings on not making film prints, did the exhibitors REALLY save in the switch? Of course not. They made quite likely the single worst decision in the history of cinema exhibition and they will be paying for it increasingly as each decade passes, and there is no possible way to ever go back at this point. Theater's cost of operation has noticeably increased forever and gets worse with each new technology introduced.

Now most people are effectively being forced into buying laser. It makes sense from a manufacturer's goal for profits. Case in point Barco and NEC didn't make any money off of the xenon lamps their projectors used, but if they FORCE their customers to switch to laser by not giving them a xenon option, that now means they are effectively getting the money from all those lost xenon sales since they are in essence making the customer buy a stack of bulbs upfront with the projector (meaning, a laser engine).

Well, it wasn't that people jumped onto that digital bandwagon entirely out of their own will, just like you mentioned about what's happening with laser, they were forced there by greater forces, in that particular case more by the movie industry itself, because they wanted to get rid of the costs of phyisical prints. Now, it's the supply industry the exhibition industry was forced into, who is forcing everybody to upgrade to laser and to buy into their supply model. It's not like anybody here really has a choice, right now... or do we?

[Steve Guttag]

For the most part, I agree with what Brad posted above. I also made the same claims BEFORE we switched to digital...right down to...if you sucked at film presentations, you'll suck at digital ones too.

As to laser vs xenon. I think the companies switched to laser due to the sales. I've never dissed xenon yet our xenon sales, effectively, went to zero before our xenon options did. We DID put in our last three xenon machines in 2020 but they were bought in 2019 and due to C19 and such, delays on construction pushed that job until holiday time 2020. If that theatre were built today, they would have been laser, for sure. One of the rooms is quite small and we specified a DXL-9BAF lamp (850-watt). Ushio canned that lamp last year. I guess not enough were being sold. So, now we will need to use a 1.2KW lamp, that is too bright and need to mitigate it in other ways.

I bring this up as a tale of things to come. As the industry moves more and more to laser. And, through attrition, retire xenon machines...the xenon choices will likely get slimmer and slimmer. It will start at the extremes as those have fewer sales and who wants to pay for a 6-7KW lamp that doesn't last very long? I'm sure the 2KW - 4KW varieties will be the longest lived.

As for reliableness, Brad and my experiences differ. I've found the Christie xenons to cause the greatest number of show interruptions. Just this past week...TWO CP2220s had their ballast get a flaky communication that presents itself with "unexpected lamp off" which can come from ballast communication, their reliance on electro-mechanical switches for doors and air flows. Their logging is such that often an unexpected lamp off does not give a clue unless it happens a lot (ballast ones DO normally have tell-tale logs). Why, when a door switch (or air flow) that bobbles does the lamp not switch back on? Why must the audience suffer? The other guys don't have these problems and nowhere near the communication issues that the ballasts have.

I'm not saying that the other guys don't have their problems, they most certainly do but in terms of lost or botched show based on installed base...Christie has not done as well as the others for me. They also will straight faced tell you that a critical part will be 3+ months backordered.

I'll give you on the early projector front, the CP2000S and the SB are tanks and second to none in reliability.

NEC, for the S2s...have come out the highest in terms of outright reliability. Early ones had some ballast issues and the power switch for the electronics is bad but we just don't get failures out of them. We also only get about 80% of the light of the others out of them. I like that they had disposable filters (like Christie) as people are more apt to change filters than clean them.

Laser upgrades to xenon machines can make some sense if you catch them in the 6th or 7th year. Cinionic will allow one to extend their warranty out to year 13 with such a conversion so you are getting the conversion at, at least ½ the projector's life to recoup the investment. But in say year 10-12, it doesn't make any sense. If you need a light engine in year 13.5 and you put lasers in year 11, you would have been way ahead of the game by switching projectors or skipping the laser upgrade. Xenon lamps, in the sweet spot of 2KW are incredibly cheap as compared to a laser upgrade.

Switching over to sound.

Mike...no you cannot reflect the sound off the screen with any sort of consistency. JBL makes the CRF2s that are for reflecting sound off the screen In conjunction with placing speakers on the four sides of the screen). The problem is, you cannot make a point source out of that. You are aiming that speaker where? Do you really think it will bounce off the screen and sound like it came from one point? The problem is, every seat gets a different collection of sound coming from many sources. I encourage ANYONE to just walk the room while sound is playing, particularly dialog, and note how it changes from seat-to-seat area-to-area.

[Geoff Jones]

Here are the problems the article reported at "the flagship locations of the two largest cinema chains in the U.S." (and other locations):

• Some neglectful employee has forgotten to remove the 3-D filter from the projector
• a screen that’s creased and sagging
• the picture is trapezoidal instead of rectangular
• torn masking curtain
• an out-of-calibration projector creating oddly colored highlights
• a presentation that bleeds a few inches off the top of the screen
• a screening that was so dark I had to read the movie’s plot summary on Wikipedia just to find out how it ended
• the picture hung off the right side of the screen by a foot
• little flecks of popcorn covering the screen
• dead bugs on the port glass that create shadows big enough to make an entire image darker

Which type of projector fixes these problems, xenon or laser?

[Brad Miller]

Here are the problems the article reported at "the flagship locations of the two largest cinema chains in the U.S." (and other locations):
Which type of projector fixes these problems, xenon or laser?

For that answer I will refer you back to the original Guttag quote, of which yes he did warn 15-20 years ago about:

.If you sucked at film presentations, you'll suck at digital ones too.

That being said, I can't explain why Steve has so many Christie issues. They are almost nonexistent here compared to the other manufacturer's machines. Maybe Christie sends Steve all of their reject machines. Regardless NEC is #2, Sony is 3 and Barco is 4 in our continual findings for reliability. That being said I'll still take a Barco any day over that Sony garbage.

Anyway to be fair, I'll state the part of Steve's post that he failed to mention. The reason why Barco doesn't turn off a lamp with fluttering exhaust is because Barco would rather just let the projector burn itself up. It just ignores the exhaust sensor (that isn't even on their smaller machines) and lets itself cook. Perhaps Steve likes that approach, but it infuriates me. Barco could have easily created a user option to tick a checkbox if we wanted to "ignore failed exhaust and burn up". Granted a bobble delay would be the ideal integration for this sort of thing, but given the choices, I want the thing to turn off if the exhaust isn't working properly. All Barco's approach does is permit the theater owners to ignore repairing the exhaust and to "just keep running it because the picture looks fine" and then the technician has to deal with repairing the projector after it has been abused in that manner.

And by the way Steve, which film projection lamphouses had a bobble delay in their sail switches?