There has been quite a debate over here in the UK as a lot of comments made say it looks better than film!, but as this was shot in Digital format any way may well look better, but the real test is transfer from film, that issue I am not sure so far.

Can you belive one person on a chat room on the web stated Digital Cinema looks better than a 70mm!, and film is now dead.

It is said that film has a horizontal resolution that is analogous to 6,000 lines. Digital Cinema is up to 1280 lines of resolution. So film has four times more resolution than video. Remember that 70mm had four times more resolution than 35mm and we don’t have 70mm anymore. Digital Cinemas is being driven by the cost of film shipping and handling.

The theatre owners aren’t going to foot the bill to convert to Digital. The costs are still much higher than film. Look, the industry still hasn’t switched to reverse-scan sound heads yet and the companies are going to reduced silver film. It is the studios and distributors that are driving the digital cinema thing down the road. If they would put that much effort into maintenance and training, then there would be no big push to go digital. I have $130,000 tied up in film handling systems in my theatre. That money came out of my pocket, and I am not in a hurry to invest another $425,000 so that we can save a little money of film shipping. I would much rather spend another $100,000 in new sound equipment.

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As it's slowly perfected (that's another subject thread in itself), the price will come down, prompting more installs, the price drops further, etc., etc.

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Paul

The chip resolution for the current generation of digital projectors is 1280 X 1024. This is 4x3.

The proper resolution for HDTV is 1920 X 1080. This is 16x9.

Many who saw the ShoWest demos (including the press) felt that the flesh reproduction, tone scale and color reproduction were not as good as film, especially in critical scenes like those in "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "American Beauty". Digital material like "Toy Story 2" did look better on the digital projector.

I'm sure further improvements are on the way. But the supposed savings still aren't there. Assuming that a typical brand new 35mm print costs about $1200, showing that print for only two months would only cost four dollars per show. (2 months X 30 days X 5 shows per day = 300 shows in two months). It's tough to imagine amortizing the cost of the sophisticated equipment required for digital cinema at a cost anywhere near only $4 per show. And mastering, encoding, encryption, and distribution of digital cinema by satellite or fiber optic or DVD isn't free.

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