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Irish Cinema Set to Go Digital First 282

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-they-don't-need-to-ship-their-single-malts dept.
LocalisationDude writes "The BBC is reporting that Ireland will be the first country in the world to have their traditional 35mm film projectors replaced with digital projectors. An American company is installing digital projectors in 500 cinemas to replace the traditional film projectors. Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost."
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Irish Cinema Set to Go Digital First More

Irish Cinema Set to Go Digital First

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  • Piracy boom? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cypher_soundz ( 845523 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:40AM (#11990482)
    Am i the only one who thinks that piracy quality will increase now?

    • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Saven Marek ( 739395 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:43AM (#11990504)
      > Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the
      > latest releases

      I'm thinking now there'll be 500 notices served on irish cinemas by the RIAA for movie downloading!

    • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by m50d ( 797211 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:52AM (#11990550) Homepage Journal
      Yes you are. Anyone with access to the booth was able to make near-enough perfect rips anyway. The average person can't tell the difference between 35mm and digital projection. And camcorder-between-the-seats is not going to be any better just because the projection is digital. Piracy might get easier, but the quality won't be any better.

      • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:5, Informative)

        by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:16AM (#11990659)
        The average person can't tell the difference between 35mm and digital projection.

        You certainly can! For starters, the image doesn't have any scratches or floaters on it. It also doesn't jitter around or flicker like film. Oh, and the colors tend to be considerably brighter. The downside is that when the screen goes totally black, it's actually a very dark grey (more of an illuminated black).

        • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by neoform ( 551705 )
          35mm film also has a very dark grey, you can always tell when the projector is on with a black image.

          The main advantages to Digital vs. 35mm is are:
          -Impossible to scratch the image
          -Sound quality is WAY better (8.1 digital)
          -No Flickering (the shutter runs at 24fps which is low enough to notice)
          -The image is completely stable, when watching credits the words scroll up VERY smoothly. (to see image stability, walk right up to the screen while it's running and you'll see just how much the image really is moving

          • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:3, Informative)

            by AmunRa ( 166367 )
            Note: although there are only 24 physical frames every sec, the shutter actually runs at twice this speed (i.e. each frame is displayed twice), so the shutter speed is 48fps. A shutter speed of only 24 fps, projecting on such a large arc of vision would look terrible!

          • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:3, Informative)

            by Apotsy ( 84148 )
            -Sound quality is WAY better (8.1 digital)

            That is not specific to digital cinema, and there is no reason why 35mm cannot meet or beat anything any other system comes up with. DTS has succcessfully separated the sound and picture in 35mm (as well as 16mm and 70mm) presentations. Their latest processor, the XD10, has support for 10 channels.

            -No Flickering (the shutter runs at 24fps which is low enough to notice)

            There aren't many, if any, theaters running single bladed shutters. A double-bladed shutter

        • For starters, the image doesn't have any scratches or floaters on it. It also doesn't jitter around or flicker like film. Oh, and the colors tend to be considerably brighter.

          Film doesn't flicker - it has been projected in cinemas at 24 frames per second for over 70 years. It this was a problem for film-goers, I think it would have been noticed by now. Problems like scratches are due to poor handling on the part of projectionists. Dim and muddy-looking pictures are usually because cinema operators don't

        • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:3, Funny)

          by steeef ( 98372 )
          Yeah, and don't forget the cigarette burns/reel change markers [film-tech.com]. Thanks to Fight Club, I notice them all the time.

          Wonder if they'll keep the recent addition of those damn red dot patterns [filmrot.com] to "thwart" pirates...

        • Re:Piracy boom? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <wrosecrans AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday March 20, 2005 @01:49PM (#11991924) Homepage
          No, the "average person," certainly can't. I can. I deal with video compression a lot, so any artifacting is very obvious to me. But, most people will look at any motion picture and not notice any problems. Most don't notice the brown dots designed to screw with pirates, or the cigarette burns, or the random motion of the frame when projected.

          You see, you and I are what are called "enthusiasts." We care. We can see it. My dad just wants to watch the presentation, and wouldn't notice anything but the most horrible projection, unless it was a side-by-side comparison.

          My dad thinks he is getting HiDef Satellite right now because he has an HD capable TV. He thinks it looks very good, and bragged to his friends. I don't have the heart to tell him you have to pay extra for the HD channels. I don't have the heart to teach him to spot the horrible MPEG artifacts around every crisp edge. He thinks he has great quality, and it looks good to him, and ho doesn't have to pay extra for the HD channels he wouldn't really notice...
      • piracy will actually be harder as it will be far easier to digitally watermark the movies so that each theater will have their own unique markers with the projector being used to actually insert extra watermarks for determining the exact date and time of the screening...
      • I hate to tell you this, but the people with "access to the booth," are 16 year old kids. Theoretically, sure.. they can make near-perfect copies. But in reality, there are managers and a distinct lack of specialized equipment for transfering the film to digital.
    • Piracy might become easier, but it'll also be much easier to crack down on it. I don't believe for a minute that there won't be some sort of watermarking to uniquely identify each copy of the movie that's distributed to individual theatres. The content providers wouldn't allow digital distribution without something protecting them. It's almost certain some sort of watermarking will be used to enable tracking down "pirates".

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zebra_X ( 13249 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:40AM (#11990487)
    Irish cinema operator busted for distribution of l33t 0-day filmz!

    • Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

      by The Ultimate Fartkno ( 756456 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:07AM (#11990626)
      Cinema operator? Naah, think bigger.

      Digital system + trojan + bittorrent = "Irish cinema -projector- busted for distribution of 133t 0-day filmz!"

    • Hmm, I wonder if we'll see a growth of cinemas that actually pirate themselves, swapping or buying cheap digital copies rather than shelling out for the original stuff? Who would know, after all?

      Anyone know if these new cinemas include a DRM system that would prevent this?

      • Hmm, I wonder if we'll see a growth of cinemas that actually pirate themselves, swapping or buying cheap digital copies rather than shelling out for the original stuff? Who would know, after all?

        The movie distributors, perhaps? "Hi, I see you're advertising that your theatre is showing Robots, but we're the exclusive distributor in Ireland and we don't have any record of you purchasing it. The police will be shutting down your establishment in 3... 2... 1..."

        Anyone know if these new cinemas include a DR

  • Input (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:41AM (#11990492)
    Will these be able to take normal digital video input?

    Could they play DVDs, for example?

    Or Quake...

    • Re:Input (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mcknation ( 217793 ) * <nocarrierNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:49AM (#11990540) Homepage
      I would imagine so...however "normal" dvds probably would not have the resolution required to look "normal" on a movie screen.

      mck

    • Many movie theaters in norway already have this as an available service. Pay $100 an hour, bring your home console etc and play for a day. While the movies themselves are shown on regular old school projectors, the ads (movies, still images) are distributed in digital form and shown on regular, high quality digital projectors. This goes for most modern cinemas, at least. :)

      • Re:Input (Score:2, Funny)

        by ThJ ( 641955 )
        609 kroner timen? Er du rusk?

  • Why is it taking this long? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:41AM (#11990493) Homepage Journal
    I can't understand why it's taking so long to move from regular projection to digital projection. I'm hoping someone with more experience here can fill us in on what's going on.

    Are they waiting on standards or a big change in the industry? Are they waiting on a new file format, DRM, or aspect ratio? Is the distribution network missing? Where is the bottleneck in getting this rolled out in more places?

    I would hazard a guess that they could make an LCD attachment for existing projectors that would allow digital projection to take place at a cheaper rate, kinda like the transparent LCD screens you can get for regular overhead projectors. This being the case, is the distribution network the problem?

    The amount of money that would be saved in distribution and replication costs, as well as having the ability to show more films at more times, would surely overcome the cost of upgrades. Or is it all down to being wary of change?

    • Re:Why is it taking this long? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by johnhennessy ( 94737 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:50AM (#11990542)
      I'm guessing that the projector technology is probably only now getting cost effective.

      If you look at most consumer grade projectors, they usually support 1024x768, or if you go for really expensive ones, maybe the next size up. I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that its currently considered at production level to edit films at 4K pixels (not sure if thats horizontal or vertical, but guessing 4K pixels vertically) so as you can see a consumer projector (which can normall costs thousands to begin with) just wouldn't cut it.

      As the technology moves to LTPS (low temperature poly-silicon) - which it has already is the Asian market, the resolution will go up.

      Just think of it practically: if I pixel is 0.5mm x 0.5mm on the projector, how big is that pixel going to be on the "big screen".
      • It's horizontal. 4k is 4k x 2k pixels. However, the 'smaller' digital cinema projectors use relsolutions as low as 1280x1024 with anamorpic lenses to stretch the whole image over the 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 screen.

        Over here in europe, even that is much better than the average copy of conventional film, since the focus is adjusted just once and stays essentially perfect, and you can't scratch a digital movie, or neglect to service the projector so bad that the image is vibrating as if the projector was run by a tw

    • Re:Why is it taking this long? (Score:5, Funny)

      by The Ultimate Fartkno ( 756456 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:02AM (#11990589)
      The major hurdle is that there are about 35,000 cinema projectors in the country that need to be converted to digital at about $100,000 a shot. Add in the cost of the satellites, storage, retrofit for data, etc. and the average multiplex is looking at an investment of well over $1,000,000. Sure, the investment will pay back in ease of distribution and whatnot, but where does the million come from? The studios sure aren't going to pay for it - the razor-thin margins they give back to the theaters are why popcorn costs $28 a pound. And theater owners know that Joe Public won't stand for a ticket price hike when most people wouldn't notice or appreciate the jump in quality.

      Basically it's a case of which comes first - the chicken or the egg? Or the cart before the horse. Except the chicken is a $100,000 digital projector and the horse is a $28 bucket of popcorn.

      And somehow the egg is Orrin Hatch.

    • I think one of the biggest problems with digital projection is the fact there is no standard for the digital storage media for theater-quality digital projectors.

      Interestingly enough, the development of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray optical disc technology could solve that problem. Imagine scaling up a Blu-Ray disc to something about 300 mm (12") wide (about the same size as a Laserdisc); the result could be storage capacity approaching the one terabyte range, which (using standard MPEG-2 compression) could store pro

    • I can't understand why it's taking so long to move from regular projection to digital projection. I'm hoping someone with more experience here can fill us in on what's going on.

      Forgive me if someone already posted this, but I don't see it in any of the comments modded up... I'm guessing a major hurdle (in the US anyway) is going to be whole support structure surrounding film theaters. There is a whole industry dedicated to producing the parts and consumables in film reels, and the labor that goes into dup

  • Satellite Hacking? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by n0dalus ( 807994 )
    Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost.

    Will this mean that we will start to see screeners with higher quality than DvD's? I'm sure it won't take much money to convince a middle-manager to release some of that sweet sweet digital content.
    And best of all, the movie would have to be downloaded possibly days before it's actually played.
  • to just download the torrent :)

  • Consider security... (Score:4, Funny)

    by irritus ( 789886 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:44AM (#11990509)
    Can you imagine how terrible this could go if they don't use adequate security? Someone could conceivably hack the source and replace a film with a horrific piece of fanfiction. Movies will now have a chance of not only being terrible, but not even the terrible movie you paid to see in the first place.
    • Yeah, imagine if that mediocre fanfic Star Wars movie that was recently on slashdot got substituted for Episode III... My god, that is a wonderful idea! I'll get started right away. Thanks for the suggestion.
    • That would be too obvious. The best thing to do would be to take the original film and insert a few frames of pornography here and there, and see anyone notices.
  • This makes me laugh...Ireland is behind several european countries when it comes to ADSL rollout with regards to cost and speed and yet we're going to have sat links so cinemas can get movies?

    Is this there way of trying to stop piracy over the net? :)
  • From a cost perspective this was probably only a matter of time, regardless of the country.

    I hope the cinemas and the studios also take this opportunity (since distributing films worldwide will now be alot easier, and cheaper!) to start releasing films at the same time rather than their current practice (well, mostly) of delaying releases in different countries.

    As an afterthought - where do I get me one of those projectors, a 4K film projector would be pretty nice for the living room!
    • It certainly must be good from a cost perspective. Limerick city in Ireland only has one cinema (read monopoly) so we have ticket prices of about €8 (~$10.50) as opposed to the national average of about €5.60 (~$7)

      Think the ticket prices will go down? Yeah RIGHT!

      Bunch of blood-sucking money-grabbing capitalists.

      I hope they get infested with rats and the building condemned. Like the previous cinema did.

  • The real goal (Score:5, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:50AM (#11990541)
    was to stop projectionists from emulating Tyler Durden's insertion of pr0n frames into family movies.

  • Belgium has had this for a while.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Granted not in all movie theaters, but the mayor cinema group has been showing digital movies for more than a year now.
    Check out the 'Hoe werkt digital cinema..' link on the following page:
    http://www.kinepolis.be/index.cfm?PageID=2043 [kinepolis.be]

  • SIGH: Another reason not to go to the cinema (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:53AM (#11990555)
    I fear that this trend will lead to the use of image compression for movies. I find the MPEG compression artifacts in most digital video (e.g., TiVo, DVDs, and digital cable) to be obnoxious -- digital quality is often an oxymoron due to aggressive compression.

    Digital video may avoid analog noise and be capable of perfect copies, but if the sender uses too high a compression ratio (and you know they will to save on bandwidth and storage) then the image is permanently corrupted. And if film makers switch to digital video that does not use loss-less compression during filming, then all is lost.

    I can only hope that falling prices for bandwidth and storage will let companies ease off the compression ratio sometime in the future.

    • Re:SIGH: Another reason not to go to the cinema (Score:5, Interesting)

      by johnhennessy ( 94737 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:05AM (#11990611)
      Totally agree.

      The bandwidth and size of these films are probably not trivial - so if someone was even thinking of ripping the sat streams you'd better take a few things into consideration:

      PAL is 720x576 (normal TV size in Europe). If you were to take an hour of video from a DV tape (even with a high end DV camera) you'll get 20GB worth of data. And this is at crappy TV resolution. Cinemas will need resolutions much much higher than this (I hope anyway).

      Before I get blown away with people screaming about compression - DV is slightly compressed, but its intended to be be as closs to uncompressed quality as possible. The quality of the end result (if encoding multiple times) is always going to be directly related to the quality of the original footage.

      This really gives the cinemas two options - (1)lots of storage (I'm thinking at least 1 or 2 TB here) - which when you think about it, isn't that expensive and (2) major compression.

      It will all come down in the end to marketing - do the cinemas think they'll get away with a lower grade product (i.e. crappy quality) - I don't know.

      • It will all come down in the end to marketing - do the cinemas think they'll get away with a lower grade product (i.e. crappy quality) - I don't know.

        Thats the beauty of switching all of the theaters in the country (nearly) at once. Whichever choice they make, the consumer is stuck with.
      • Actually DV is not intended to be any "closer" to the original than MPEG necessarily. The main difference in optimization is that the DV format is optimized for editing, whereas the MPEG formats tend to be a pain in the butt as editing formats. For a similar level of compression from raw, uncompressed video, you will probably find fairly similar quality levels between MPEG-2 and DV.

        Most of the time people notice MPEG-2 looking "worse" because they are starting from a DV source like a camcorder and then r

    • Re:SIGH: Another reason not to go to the cinema (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:06AM (#11990614)
      Actually you may not have noticed this but most cinemas are hell bent on providing the best quality sound and picture they can so as to attract more people to go to the cinema. After all the invesment in theatres they are not going to shoot themselves in the head with low quality quality video.

      Bandwidth and storage are not going to be an issue for these systems.
    • Yes, I was hoping that blu-ray would solve all this. Imagine if we get a storage medium that is actually capable of storing a full length move in a lossless format. Would they ever do this? It would be really nice. What would also be nice is if the next medium came in a MiniDisc like form-factor, so there'd be less to worry about when it comes to scratching the disc, and having it not play properly. I'll admit that those old cartridge based CD-ROMs were a little klunky, but when the software that came
    • You have a point for the bandwidth constrained mediums, like satellite tv, cable tv, and even broadcast digital TV.

      But, most recently encoded DVDs do a pretty good job, and the artifacts are at a minimum. The bandwidth available per pixel on a DVD is much higher than any of those other mediums.

      But, the bandwidth for theater projection is much higher. The article didn't have any details.. but if it's like the systems they are using elsewhere for digital projection, each film takes terabytes of storage,
    • DLP [webopedia.com] uses compression and looks amazing. Compression doesnt always equal crap. I saw Ep2 in a DLP theater and was blown away at the sharpness and brightness of the picture. I saw the movie previously on film and in comparision it was dark, grainy, and a lot of the CGI looked worse on film.

  • Older films (Score:4, Insightful)

    by caitsith01 ( 606117 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:58AM (#11990574) Journal
    What will the situation be with older films? Many excellent movies are not available in a digitised form, and we may be at the mercy of the film studios as to when, if ever, they are re-released in a format that these projectors can play.
    • How often do older films get shown in Cinemas? Very very infrequently, usually only as part of a special event or some such, and you can bet that these projectors have an analog in anyway, or theres a analog to digital convertor that sits between the projector and the storage unit enabling you to use analog sources.

      • ...you can bet that these projectors have an analog in anyway, or theres a analog to digital convertor that sits between the projector and the storage unit enabling you to use analog sources.

        Uh, this will help them play film, how? It's not like movies are distributed to theaters on VHS.

    • Re:Older films (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dvdeug ( 5033 )
      What will the situation be with older films? Many excellent movies are not available in a digitised form, and we may be at the mercy of the film studios as to when, if ever, they are re-released in a format that these projectors can play.

      Honestly, I don't think I've ever been to a movie theater that wasn't showing the latest movies. I'm sure Rocky Horror Picture Show and Gone with the Wind and the few other old films that movie theaters actually play will turn up in digital formats.

      For the old movie thea
  • See this [slashdot.org] Slashdot story.
  • If this is a LCD projector, that would be pretty cool, because I can't go to a normal theater. 72 hz in a dark room isn't quite enough, so if they want my dollar, they will need to make it faster.

  • A marketing fantasy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by standards ( 461431 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:03AM (#11990601)
    The BBC is reporting that Ireland will be the first country in the world to have their traditional 35mm film projectors replaced with digital projectors.

    Since there are many more than 500 35mm projectors in Ireland, it seems a bit of a fantasy to imply that the entire country will have digital-only screens.

    My question of interest is... what are the economics of giving away 500 projectors? Are the 500 projectors "gifts", or are they leased or under loan? Is the goal to reduce the costs, or reduce the damage to the film, prevent piracy somehow, or what?
    • Maybe it's like the Gilette idea: Give away the projectors, charge for the bulbs!

    • Re:A marketing fantasy (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Xoro ( 201854 )

      Since there are many more than 500 35mm projectors in Ireland,

      Are you sure there are "many more than 500" movie screens in Ireland?

      I couldn't find the exact number, but saw one estimate that said Canada has about 3,000 screens [cftpa.ca]. Since Canada has a population of 30 million people and Ireland a population of < 4 million, ~500 screens seems about right.

      • Re:A marketing fantasy (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Finuvir ( 596566 )
        I'm surprised there are as many as 500. I live in a town of < 20,000 people and one cinema (with one screen). If there was one screen for every 20,000 people in a country of ~4m there'd be only 200 screens. Okay, so there are smaller towns than mine with cinemas in them, and being quite close to Dublin we have access to all of the mulitplexes too which probably limits the business opportunities of the local. 500 screens is certainly of the right order.

  • good Vs. bad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Havenwar ( 867124 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:05AM (#11990612)
    Well, on one hand my first thought is "great, this is a great move and I hopw the entire world follows so we can watch digital movies at any theatre".

    But it is quickly followed up by the thought that "But seriously... My entertainment system is already digital. Why go elsewhere?"

    Sure, a 30 foot screen is bigger than a 32", but hey, size is not everything. And I can always get a projector. By then, teh advantages of move theatres has kind agone bye bye... I have usually seen everything by the time it reaches the screen here in sweden anyways. (Sometimes up to a year after the american release)

    So sure.. digital theatres are good... but only because it is cheaper to distrbute movies for th ecompanies. This way they might cut the prizes, distribute worldwide quicker, and possibly even start to gain some ground on the pirating market. But still... Just buy me a popcornmachine and I'd rather stay home - with friends.

    Nah, I cant decide. What do you think.. good step or bad step, or just a completely useless step?
  • Is it really easier to transfer what must be a massive digital file over some network to each individual movie house then to just fedex them the film reels? Wouldn't people get annoyed that they don't get to watch the movie on opening night because some there was network problems. Isn't 35mm better than digital anyway? Everytime I watch a football game on TV, I'm amazed at how much worse it looks then when they just used to do it in analog.

  • There'll be riots, you know. (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Ultimate Fartkno ( 756456 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:20AM (#11990676)

    "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far aw -

    STREAMING...

  • ETA in the USA... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by T-Bear ( 31340 ) <brian@thyer.net> on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:22AM (#11990684)
    I'm going to respond to a few things here. Sorry if someone mentioned something on one of these points, I couldn't bring myself to read every one of the 45 posts.

    Firstly, yes the projectors can take AVI inputs. DVI too probably, now a days. A few companies in the States have a few projectors scattered around, and I worked as a projectionist at one of them for a time, a few projectionists were fired for outputting a DVD player to the projector after hours and using it to watch Top Gun.

    Secondly, the reason we haven't seen it wide spread in the States and probably won't for a bit yet is simply Cost. Cost to produce the movies in a digital format by the distributors, and cost to the theatres to purchase all those digitgal projectors. They are *not* cheap. For your local 24 mega-plex to replace it's 24 multi-thousand dollar projectors with a digital projector would be *well* more than the profit that theatre sees (if the theatre even manages to post a profit).

    With rising costs put on the theatres by the distributors, and lowering numbers of patrons *in* the theatres, the profit margins and simple ability to make money to invest in new technology for the theatres is drastically being reduced. So until the time that *that* situation reverses itself (which I don't imagine we'll ever see) or until the digital projectors become much cheaper, we'll just have to wait.
    • ...They need a major national movie theater chain to start committing to the technology.

      If a company as big a Century Theatres were to announce they were willing to convert some of their complexes they own to include digital projectors and/or open new digital-projector only complexes, that would finally convince people that digital projection is worth the investment.

      Having seen digital projection, the amazingly vibrant colors, consistent sharpness and lack of scratches on-screen makes for a breathtaking v

  • will that mean.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Exter-C ( 310390 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:27AM (#11990705) Homepage
    Idealy to cut costs further the cinemas could just stream the movies from the one location each time the movies are being shown. Especially with the growth in cheap fibre across europe especially.

    The over all cost savings will be more significant than just the film cases. Ive been in cinemas on several occasions where the film has screwed up and we have had to get a refund from the cinema.. Taking that out out or reducing it seriously would be a great bonus for the cinemas.

  • Will this make being a distributor easier? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Katravax ( 21568 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:33AM (#11990732)
    As this expands and more theaters go digital, will it break the stranglehold that the big distributors have now, or will legal tricks just assure it's the same as before? There are lots of great films out there that get almost no screens because they don't fit the distributors' views of what goes in their catalogs or what will earn them payback for printing and shipping.

    As I understand it, not being in the theater business, theaters are pretty much at the mercy of distributors right now because smaller studios just can't afford the cost of wide distribution. Will digital distribution truly lower the cost and give theaters a wider palette of films to choose from? I suspect the big distrubutors will defeat that possibility with legal tricks, but I'm hoping otherwise.
  • Am I the only one to think that making the whole Irish theater industry totally dependent on one American movie distributor is actually a BAD thing?

    We shall see how this will impact availability of smaller and artsy non mainstream movie productions.

    Also, initially this technology may be advertised as being more "low cost" than the traditional way of creating physical copies. However, once the system is established it may well be that price fixing is applied so that the cost benefits may become null and vo
  • Am I the only one who thinks video that's digital all the way from capture to display has too high a degree of artificially crispness to it? I really don't like the digital look on digitally broadcast sports, for example. It isn't realistic. Are the frame rates lower?
  • Apparently it's not on the web yet, but the new Wired magazine has an interesting article on digital cinema, and how Mark Cuban (Landmark) is the first American cinema owner to go all digital.

    The big holdup is there's little incentive for theater owners to spend $150k per screen. Some are holding out for studios to pay for the equipment, to ensure distribution of their digital product. After all, it's the studios, not the theater owners, who stand to benefit from this, because of greatly reduced distribu
  • More then 50% of the commercial theatres have been digital for several years. That it is because it the hometown of Regal theatre. Colorado oil mogul Phil Anshultz bought up several bankrupt movie chains and to form Regal. Competing chains have gone digital in Denver too.
  • Old news to me. I have a DLP theater down the street from me. It's one of the joys of living in a city.
  • Does anyone know what format they are using? There was a Slashdot article a few months back about Microsoft's push for WMV as the default projection standard for theaters. Is this the beginning of that standard? If anyone has the funding and long-term self interest to give away 500 ludicrously expensive cameras to jump-start an endeavor, it's Microsoft.

  • Sure, flicker and artifacts will be reduced, but will the quality really improve? Is the resolution of digital really good enough for the cinema? Analog is conducive to projection because, well, it's not digital. I realize film has grains that are vaguely like pixels, but it's much more natural. If the tradeoff is pixelation and compression artifacts, is it really worth it? The article has little to no technical detail, so I'm just going on my experience of watching DVDs on (non-HD) projectors. Even a

  • Is digital currently the way to go? I know Roger Ebert is not a big fan of digital. He prefers a system called MaxiVision [maxivision48.com] I know this is an old artical, but has digital film solved these problems, especially when compared to MaxiVision.

    Of course, I don't think the movie industry is really interested in quality. They want the conveniences of digital. Again referring to Ebert, he thinks the films of 40 years ago had better standards than today. How often do they shoot 70mm films today?

  • A friend works at a local cinema... One day we brought the GameCube over, after most of the movies were done showing. He hooked up the GC to the projector and theatre audio, and we sat down in the theatre with wireless controllers and played the best game of Super Smash Brothers Melee ever.

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