Well, THIS ought to show how well digital imagery has progressed. Do they truly want us to see DLP on those giant screens?

A text version of this article can be read by clicking here.

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Imax = the very best in film presentation.
DLP = the very best in "Motion Data" presentation.

Imax is looking for a way to increase the utilization of their fixed assests. ie theatres. DLP may be a way, they don't really know.

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DLP as a replacement for 35mm, the arguments given are: to make the booth idiot proof, to improve prensentation, to remove on screen dirt etc..

These points have been argued before, but I don't think they apply to imax. Most people have seen a bad 35mm presentation and if DLP improved presentation quality that would be a good thing. But, how many poeple have seen a bad imax presentation, I haven't. I don't belive DLP will be able to improve on the IMAX image quality any time soon.

Then why bother, Imax prints are large and expensive. But an imax digital video would be rather large and the very, very fast hard disks, needed, would be expensive. Of course I'm assuming that they would scan the film at the corect resolution and colour depth, but then they don't do that with 35mm at the moment.

Even with DLP you could not have an automated imax booth, so you would still have to pay an operator (IT buff, not film head).

I'm not a digital luddite, I'm all for it if it improves presentation or gives the same quality presentation at a lower cost.

For this to happen we may have to wait, a while.

Last week while on my honeymoon, we went to the Imax theatre in West Yellowstone, MT (next door to Yellowstone National Park.) We saw "Wolves" and "Yellowstone," which are both park-related. During Wolves, there were little dancing dirt-particles that would stay in the picture for seconds at a time. This happened through the whole film! "Yellowstone" was not as bad, but there were still some scratches.

Add to this, there were brooms, dust mops and open-topped trash containers in view.

I was disappointed. This facility is only a few years old, and it's the only Imax in Montana, so I was expecting better.

On top of that, during the movie "Yellowstone," when the movie shows geysers erupting, the eruption would be accompanied by a booming bass explosion sound. Real geysers don't sound like that!

Well I guess I've been lucky on the Imax front, having only seen good presentations.

Everest did have some 'very slight' on screen dirt at both the Bradford Imax in the UK and at Sydney, but still much bette than your average multiplex muck-fest(or presenattion).

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The few dozen current DLP Cinema projectors use 1280 x 1024 DMD chips, and a custom 1.9X anamorphic lens for "scope" movies and a custom 1.5X anamorphic lens for "flat" movies.

Most experts agree that 35mm film needs to be scanned at at least 4K resolution to record all the sharpness of the film.

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The QuVis QuBit system is a DATA STORAGE system. It can deliver an average data rate of 76 Mbits/sec. for picture and sound. The Texas Instruments DLP is one of several methods of PROJECTING images from that stored data. They are not in competition with each other.

But as Scott notes, even with this wonderful state-of-the-art technology, the data rates and resolution are still far short of achieving film quality, especially for the IMAX format. The TI/IMAX press release acknowledges this, noting "there are a significant number of technological hurdles to overcome to develop a digital system that meets our standards of image size and clarity for IMAX theatres."

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com