posted 03-15-2005 04:29 PM                    

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Theater Chain Buying Sony's Digital Projectors

Landmark Theaters, the art-house chain controlled by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, will become the first chain to install a new generation of digital projectors developed by Sony, which show movies at twice the resolution of previous digital projectors.

Landmark will buy six of the Sony projectors when they become available in July, and over the next few years will install others in all 58 of its theaters, Mr. Cuban said.

Hollywood has been discussing the use of digital projectors, which show movies without using film, for the last several years, but fewer than 100 are currently used in theaters to show full-length features.

Substantial questions remain both about the projectors' technical merits and, more important, who would pay for them. The main advantage of digital projection is the potential to save movie studios the expense of copying movies on film, which can cost more than $1,000 a print.

Theater owners are waiting to see if the studios will find a way to subsidize the cost of the projectors, which can be $100,000 each when the costs of the other needed hardware and software are included.

Landmark, however, chose to pay for the projectors itself, largely because it is building a business model different from that of most theater chains.

Mr. Cuban and Mr. Wagner, who together created Broadcast.com, an Internet media site that they sold to Yahoo for about $6 billion in 2001, are building a series of companies related to independent film and high-definition television. In addition to Landmark, they control HDNet, a cable network devoted to high-definition programming, and several companies involved in producing and distributing films.

Mr. Cuban, who also owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, said that the projectors would give his theaters flexibility to show a broader variety of programming, including broadcasts of live events, like concerts and sports events. Moreover, digital projection ability will allow Landmark to show works by independent filmmakers who are starting to use the inexpensive high-definition cameras coming to the market.

Landmark chose the new Sony model because it can display images at a resolution of 4096 by 2160 pixels, known as 4K resolution, compared with the previous generation of projectors with half the number of horizontal pixels.

Mr. Cuban said it took a trained eye and a seat close to the screen to see the difference between the sorts of projectors, but he felt the new projectors were worth the investment.

Mr. Cuban said Landmark was paying more than $100,000 for each projector and related equipment, about double the cost of lower-resolution digital projectors.

Landmark's announcement raised some eyebrows among digital cinema experts, who noted that Sony's technology is under development and that the shipping of the projectors had been delayed several times.

"I'm happy that Landmark will buy 4K projectors," said Walt Ordway, the chief technical officer of Digital Cinema Initiatives, a consortium of major film studios that is defining standards for digital projection. "I'm surprised that the sales have started prior to demonstrations of a production unit."

John Scarcella, the president of Sony's broadcast and production systems group, said the company would demonstrate a nearly complete version of the projector at the ShoWest motion picture industry conference in Las Vegas this week. "We are making some last little tweaks," he said. "We will have the projectors in the market by July."

Major theater chains do not see any pressing need for such high-definition projectors. Regal CineMedia, the nation's largest theater chain, has installed digital projectors at about 5,300 of its 6,273 screens. But those projectors have substantially lower resolution, and are used by Regal only to show commercials and some special event programs.

"There is no financial incentive for us to do it," Kurt Hall, the chief executive of Regal, said. "We can't charge more for tickets and it won't increase our attendance."

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posted 03-16-2005 08:28 PM                    

quote: Scott Norwood

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I don't see how cheap HD cameras will change anything.

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posted 03-16-2005 09:21 PM                       

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Rodli says that Kodak is committed to a 4K system and will provide leadership as digital projection technology continues to evolve. He also stresses that film quality sets a moving target.

"We have made a quantum leap forward in emulsion technology with the new generation of KODAK VISION2 films," Rodli says. "When you couple that ongoing progress with gains being made in digital intermediate technology, the possibilities for creating more nuanced and visually compelling motion pictures are unlimited."

Rodli lauds the pioneering work done by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in collaboration with Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), representing the seven major studios. That collaborative effort resulted in the production of a short film designed for use as standard evaluation material for prototype digital projectors. Rodli notes that the original 35 mm negative was scanned at 6K resolution, and the ASC/DCI test material is available at both 2K and 4K resolution.

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posted 03-16-2005 10:18 PM                       

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Geez, a person would think you work for Kodak or something!

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Let me check my paystub...

By gosh, I do work for Kodak!

I enjoy what I do.

posted 03-18-2005 08:57 AM                       

quote: Dean Kollet

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What John isn't telling us is that he has a 6k in his office ready to be mass-produced.

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All I can say is that I don't have a 6K projector in my office.

posted 03-18-2005 09:57 AM                    

quote: Scott Norwood

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As for Landmark: I'll believe this when I see it.

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posted 03-18-2005 12:06 PM                    

quote: James R. Hammonds, Jr

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I was told that was the reason they went with SDDS rather than Dolby Digital.

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