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Author Topic: Digital Cinema In UK Neil Robinson Film Handler Posts: 28 From: Coxhoe, Durham, UK Registered: May 2004 posted 04-06-2007 03:55 PM                     The Empire Cinema High Wycombe and Odeon Cinema Hatfield are running several films on Digital Projection has anyone in the UK visited either of these sites and watched any of the films, I would be interested in what they thought, as these two sites are being used as test beds for Digital for these companies Thanks Neil  |  IP: Logged Paul Carey Film Handler Posts: 17 From: St Andrews, Scotland, UK Registered: Feb 2004 posted 04-06-2007 06:09 PM                        Neil, the UK Film Council has nearly completed is run out of the Digital Screen Network. Here is a list of the current sites - UK Film Council DSN List of Sites Why not try and find your nearest site and give them a ring to see if you can get a look at some digital product on screen. Most of the DSN sites will have some trailers on the server. Hope this helps, Paul  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-06-2007 07:41 PM                     Six screens in five cinemas in the North East area; Fifty eight (I think at a quick count) screens in Greater London, plus two more in Croydon, which may, or may not, be part of London. It's been a London Borough since 1964, most of it has London telephone numbers, but doesn't have a London post code, for example. I think there are two hundred and something screens in total, so London gets about 25% of them. How exactly does this over-representation of cinemas in the London area help to increase accessibility to 'specialist' film outside London? We've only run one film on it so far, three shows, with a gap of about six or seven weeks before the next one which opens on the 20th of this month so it's still very early days for us. I've seen a few other things on it, mainly trailers, and I would say that it looks considerably better than the old 1.3k machines. Does it look better than film? I can't really say, Some film looks much better than other, and the same goes for digital. I remember thinking that one of the trailers I saw didn't look as good as the film versio that I'd seen, but 'Wizard of Oz' looked very good. I ran a couple of clips of hi-def video through it from my laptop, and I was surprised at how good that looked. Also tried a couple of DVDs; they didn't look so good, but still much better than they looked on the old video projector. A rather expensive way to project DVDs though.  |  IP: Logged Justin Gorka Expert Film Handler Posts: 174 From: High Wycombe, England Registered: Apr 2006 posted 04-06-2007 07:54 PM                     Any news on getting rid of QuVISS?  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-06-2007 07:59 PM                     We didn't get it; do you mean they're replacing it in installations which did? What's wrong with it; I've never seen one?  |  IP: Logged Mark Hajducki Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 500 From: Edinburgh, UK Registered: May 2003 posted 04-07-2007 06:55 AM                     All the new Arts Aliance (UKFC) sites are getting Doremi servers, at the training day I went to they said they were removing the QuVISS servers. I don't know about timescales though.  |  IP: Logged Justin Gorka Expert Film Handler Posts: 174 From: High Wycombe, England Registered: Apr 2006 posted 04-07-2007 08:46 AM                     QuVISS has a habit of freezing on start-up requiring a long (10-15min) wait before re-booting it. It is also a pain to program. We've had numerous films on the DLP now. he best looking have been Cars and 300(currectly playing. I was not impressed with Yellow Brick Road. With that one there was even a digital hair in the gate during the credits! We have shown some alternative content including 2 episodes of the Last series of Doctor Who on DVD for a charity event. I was pretty (and the punters more so) with the result. While not film quality the results were pretty impressive and the sound excellent. I still think that 2k is not enough. Pixiltion still seems to show through (evident in Becoming Jane recently) on dark or green out of focus backgroungs. This maybe the way the films are transfered to the media, but I am still not convinced.  |  IP: Logged Amanda Mundin Expert Film Handler Posts: 122 From: Belper, Derbyshire, UK Registered: Sep 2005 posted 04-10-2007 01:42 PM                     Out of interest has anyone tried projecting Blu-Ray dvd through one of the DSN projectors?  |  IP: Logged Alan Gouger Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 501 From: Bradenton, FL, USA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 04-10-2007 02:43 PM                        quote: Amanda Mundin Out of interest has anyone tried projecting Blu-Ray dvd through one of the DSN projectors? Id be curious to know this as well. How does it stack up against the media coming off the servers. HD DVD or BD are encrypted via its digital HDMI outputs. Component analog is open but I do not think these projectors offer a analog input, do they? There are a few companies offering HD SDI mods for these players. This would bypass the encryption and allow you to maintain a digital signal path to the projector.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-10-2007 03:13 PM                     The projectors do not have an analogue input; the Christie interface box (I can never remember the name) does, in composite, Y/C, Y,Pr,Pb or RGB form, with various sync options, but HD players will normally only output at SD resolution on the analogue outputs when playing protected content. The Christie box has a DVI input, which could be connected to DVD or HDMI HD outputs, but the unit does not support HDCP, and therefore will not display protected HD content; at least that's what the manual says. I don't actually have any suitable content to try it with. The two unprotected clips that I tried playing from my laptop looked pretty good, not equal to propper digital cinema content, but considerably better than normal video.  |  IP: Logged John Caswell Film Handler Posts: 35 From: Liverpool, Merseyside, UK Registered: Oct 2006 posted 04-10-2007 03:25 PM                     Hi Stephen, completely right. We've got a HDCP encrypted DVD player, which has HDMI out and won't play via this to DVI. Everything looks decent enough via RGB though. Hoping there'll be some form of upgrade soon to enable the Christies to decrypt HDCP. Optional HDSDI inputs for the CineIPM are apparently about £1,100 but Arts Alliance can supply and fit their own version for around £350.  |  IP: Logged Pete Naples Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1565 From: Dunfermline, Scotland Registered: Feb 2001 posted 04-10-2007 03:26 PM                     http://www.christiedigital.co.uk/products/cineIPM2K/cineIPM2Koverview.asp Is the gadget you're referring to. As it comes from AA there's no HD / HD-SDI input but you can pay for optional modules to enable that feature, about £2000 off the top of my head  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-10-2007 03:49 PM                     quote: John Caswell Hi Stephen, completely right. We've got a HDCP encrypted DVD player, which has HDMI out and won't play via this to DVI. Everything looks decent enough via RGB though. I assume that you're talking about analogue RGB; can your player output HD in that form from protected content? They are supposed to downsample to SD for any non-protected output. Then again, DVD players aren't supposed to play discs from different regions, but some will, so maybe not all HD players do what they are supposed to. The video switcher and cabling at the Clocktower are all composite, so that's how video gets shown at the moment; I hope that changes soon. The Christie Cine-IPM 2K is a very useful bit of kit; there's not much that it can't handle. I doubt that it's cheap though.  |  IP: Logged John Caswell Film Handler Posts: 35 From: Liverpool, Merseyside, UK Registered: Oct 2006 posted 04-10-2007 04:09 PM                     I think you're right about the downsampling, think our player may do that. Still happy with the quality at the moment, but would be ideal to keep an all-digital signal.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 04-10-2007 05:09 PM                     It's easy to tell if it's downsampling, look at the horizontal frequency distlayed on the front of the Cine-IPM 2K, if it's 15.625 kHz. (15.73425 kHz. for NTSC) or something very close then it's standard definition video. If it's HD then you should be seeing a much higher figure, exactly what will depend on what format it's in. The vertical frequency will also depend on whether t's an interlaced or progressive signal.  |  IP: Logged

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