I watched the first hour of Star Wars II projected on a screen from a Christie digital cinema projector. It blew away all of the film projectors in the theater. I poked my head in some of the other theaters at the Cineplex and they all had the same story, fuzzy scratched up prints shown on big screens. The digital cinema looked better because it was higher resolution and did not have scratches from a worn out print.
The black level of the digital cinema was not as good as film. Spiderman playing in the theater next to the digital cinema had darker blacks. The digital cinema was higher resolution, better color saturation and the biggest difference was no artifacts from a platter film real.
I saw the film version of "Phamtom Menace" the second night it was showing in NYC back in 1999. Then I saw it in Digital cinema (DILA). The digital cinema version absolutely smoked the film version. Black level was the only aspect of performance that wasn't quite as good. Can't wait to see "Attack of the Clones" in DLP at the Ziefield next weekend.
Kevin Miller
Founding Imaging Science Foundation Member. Video Consultant, and freelance writer. www.ISFTV.COM. Email: [email protected]
Saw AOTC on DILA earlier today.. wow! Looked amazing.. crystal clear! Even my gf noticed the difference.
Agree that the blacks are the only visible drawback.. but I'm used to that these days with my Grand Wega at home. Although the PQ improved exponentially after Kevin calibrated the set!
I just rented The Others, good movie for testing out dark scenes and shadow.. my GW performed surprisingly well. Thanks again Kevin!
The Crown 18 in Skokie IL, digital theater with AOTC is still selling out every day. This weekend all shows were sold out by 2pm. The two film theaters that were showing AOTC were not sold out.
Unfortunately, I do not have a digital cinema near by; however, I did go see Episode 2 the other night and wanted to throw up. Not because of the movie itself but because of the film. There were burn marks all over the film and the theater was set up pretty poorly. I would rather watch it on my Princeton than the theater. Everything seemed washed out from wear.
David Abrams
ISF Calibrationist
Precision Theater Consultants
I saw ATOC at the Sony Metreon here in SF and hated it. I sat fairly close, maybe the a third of the way theater length from the screen and I could see pixels for the entire show. I was like watching TV. Every edge was a stair-stepped. Film ain't perfect either but the digital projection I saw has a long way to go before it's bettter than film.
To set the record straight, Phantom Menace was shown in 4 digital theaters: 2 in NJ and 2 in the LA area. 2 used DPL and 2 used the Hughes-JVC ILA (the predecessor to the D-ILA). Hughes-JVC was shut down and ILA manufacturing stopped at the end of 1999.
Currently JVC is showing the QXGA D-ILA which is the only projector in he world that can display a native 1920x1080. Unforunatley the current version is only 7K lumens and is not bright enough for the screens showing Episode II.
I have seen Episode II in the Digital Theater in Trumbull, CT. It was awesome....but I have not seen it in film. The digital colorimetry is far superior to film.
Although it looked great, keep in mind that DLP is currently only 1280x1024. With JVC raising the bar to 1920x1080, I would seriously doubt that 1280x1024 will ever become the Digital Cimema standard. Whether the war will be won by JVC, DPL or some other new technology is still very unclear, but I beleive that Digital Cinema will continue to be an event and not the "norm" for quite some time.
Al lot of money has been spent by TI to be the leader in and industry that does not really exist and in which no one is making any money. But I look forward to the day when digital Cinema (just like HDTV in the home) is the standard.
Well I just saw the DLP Digital Cinema presentation of "Attack of the Clones" at the Ziegfield last night. It was pretty imppressive. We were sitting just beyond the mid-point in the center of the theater. If anything the picture was just a bit soft, but the color saturation and stability of the image were both spectacular. My usnerstanding is that George Lucas actually filtered the Sony 1080 24 camera to soften the image slightly to make it appear more film like. I also understand that the Sony Camera actually is only doing about 1440 as opposed to 1920.
I had a meeting with Dale Zimmmerman of TI at the Home Entertainment show this past week, and he told me that TI would be introducing the 1920 x 1080 DLP chips somewhere about 2 years from now. Certainly something to look forward to.
Kevin Miller
Founding Imaging Science Foundation Member. Video Consultant, and freelance writer. www.ISFTV.COM. Email: [email protected]
I saw the latest Star Wars at the AMC 25 theaters in Time Square (NYC) while at the show last weekend. I was with the reviewers for Stereophile Guide to Home Theater.
All of us were terribly disappointed. The blacks were terrible as were colors, resolution, and just about everything else (including acting). Even though the screen is much smaller than the Ziegfeld, pixels were easily seen.
If this is what's to be expected, it's no wonder Lucas and others are putting a BIG SALES PITCH on digital cinema. The public will need one helluva pitch to be fooled by this.
If this is truly the future, we've just taken a GIANT step backwards.
You saw the pixels from how far back? Dou you think they were using the anamorphic lens adapter? When I saw Clones it was on a large curved screen with the anamorphic lens. I know the lens was there because of the pincushion. I could not see the pixels, but I could see the holes in the perf screen.
Apparently we have a wide variety of opinion on the picture quality of the Star Wars Digital DLP presentation. As far as black level is concerned I don't think that it was that much worse than film. At the Ziegfield we had to walk right up to the screen to see mirror structure.
Randy,
It's like anything else. This technology is in its infancy. It'll be interesting to see what 1920 x 1080 DLP digital cinema presentations look like in a few years time.
Kevin Miller
Founding Imaging Science Foundation Member. Video Consultant, and freelance writer. www.ISFTV.COM. Email: [email protected]
I seen both versions film and then DLP. They were both at the Crown Palace 17 in Hartford. I watched the DLP immediately after the film to compare them. Here is what I noticed.
DLP +:
Bright! gave the movie a whole different feel
Detail - Much more detail
Color - more vivid ?accurate
DLP -:
Blacks were not as good but IMHO very acceptable
Aliasing
Screen door effect in some scenes
Seemed more difficult to make out detail in fast moving scenes
CRT +:
Blacks
CRT -:
Lots of film "spots", dust , etc. I expected better since it should have been made off a digital master instead of film.
Lacked detail and color, I noticed things with the DLP that I couldn't with CRT
Seemed out of focus
Overall, the movie was much more enjoyable on the DLP.
The Sony camera apparently is full 1920 out of the SDI but compressed to 1440 for the HDCAM tape on board. I have heard three different stories regarding how Lucas used the camera:
1. He recorded 1920x1080 directly to D5 via the SDI.
2. He had engineers rig an RGB full-bandwidth output (4:4:4) right out of the camera's CCDs rather than the 4:2:2 SDI output. I have no idea what this would have been recorded on.
3. He used the standard HDCAM format (1440x1080).
Just talked with Tom Norton (SGTHT). We saw Star Wars in NYC at the AMC Theaters then TJN watched it in LA. He said it was like night and day. Good blacks, much much sharper, far better in every way. Must have been the equipment, huh?
Jim,
We all thought we saw "pixels" at the AMC in NYC on white objects. Maybe this is all related....equipment causing the lousy pics may have been more than just the projector.
Jim Noecker said: "The Sony camera apparently is full 1920 out of the SDI but compressed to 1440 for the HDCAM tape on board. "
Although the Sony uses a CCD sensor with 1920 horizontal pixels, you are correct that the HDCAM recording format has only 1440 luminance, and even less chromiance detail. John Galt of Panavision also has noted that the Nyquist anti-aliasing filter cuts the resolution by more than half.
Kodak has presented several technical papers at SMPTE technical conferences, and shown side-by-side image comparisons:
John Pytlak
Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services
Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, New York 14650-1922 USA
Telephone: +1 585 477 5325
e-mail: [email protected]
website: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Current digital projectors for theatres are only 1280 x 1024 pixels.
The HD camera used has anti-aliasing filtration that cuts the resolution by a factor of over two, and the HDCAM recorder uses subsampling and compression, further reducing color and luminance resolution.
John Pytlak
Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services
Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, New York 14650-1922 USA
Telephone: +1 585 477 5325
e-mail: [email protected]
website: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Just a clarification John. I haven't kept up with things lately, but I thought Kodak was beating the drums against digital. Is that not the case anymore, or have they decided to jump into the digital world?
Second question. Since Lucas is leading the digital charge, is there any chance Kodak and Lucas may hook up together?
Kodak scanning technology is used in the Thomson Spirit DataCine, used for transferring most films for digital release. We make the light source and scanning head.
Kodak provided film scanning technology to George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic in the early 1980's. This technology was used for doing the first digital EFX in movies like "Willow", "Young Sherlock Holmes" and "Die Hard 2":
John Pytlak
Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services
Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, New York 14650-1922 USA
Telephone: +1 585 477 5325
e-mail: [email protected]
website: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
