I will be showing "Return to Neverland" only on both DLP projectors. (At least for a while).

No film presentations.

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Paul, What size screen are you doing DLP with?

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- dave
I want that North American cable deal!

Digital. Fe! Pitooie! Gag! Digital needs a new slogan "Bits done right." I haven't seen it done yet.

Digital can look truly awsome, but ONLY WHEN THE FEATURE IS COPIED DIRECTLY FROM A DIGITAL SOURCE. So far only a handfull of animated films have been realeased. The rest are transfered from a 35mm strip, in which case digital projection sucks. I am a PIXAR nut, so i saw Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 2 several times on 35mm, then went to my local DLP theater and PAID to see the movies digitally. In both cases, Digital kicked the ass off 35mm.

I then went to see Jurassic Park 3 in DLP, which was transfered from a 35mm source, and it looked like

Star Wars EP2 will be a great digital showcase, as it was "filmed" digitally and will be transfered to DLP without ever touching film.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do not pass judgement on DLP without seeing a feature that was created, edited, and transfered digitally.

</CRAZYRANT>

BTW, i dont know if return to Neverland will be transfered digitally or not, but if it is, the image quality will be great.

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FWIW, my personal experience is that you could cast a very distinct shadow on the screen in the beam of a DLP-Cinema projector showing "black" on the screen. (AMC Empire 25, NYC, August 2001, after "Planet of the Apes" showing).

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 585-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 585-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Just down the street at the ETC theater they've been testing the latest generation of TI's "black chip" imagers. 1920x1024 (or is it 1920x1080?) with improved blacks. Unfortunately I moved away from SoCal before I got a chance to see them--perhaps we'll get to see them at ShoWest. Supposedly the new chips will make their public debut with Star Wars II.

Cheers from a ShoWest (raw) fish eater!

Paul
SMPTE Hollywood Section
Underemployed mercenary film/video projectionist/engineer
"Otaku wa tsurai yo" <-- Yeah I know, bad Japanese pun. Sue me.
It's tough being a fan!

Are the fifty or so existing 1280 x 1024 pixel projectors obsolete, or can they be upgraded?

AFAIK, 1920 x 1080 pixels would match the current Sony HD cameras, with a HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio.

Paul, have you actually seen these higher resolution machines, or at least talked to someone who has worked directly with them? I hate to be skeptical, but I've been hearing rumors about TI having a higher resolution chip for about 4 or 5 years now. Until they actually have a public announcement and demonstration, it sounds like vaporware to me.

Do you think by any chance your two TI machines have the new "black chip"? I ask because you ARE in their hometown and I agree with Joe, that picture did look pretty good. The only problems I had with it were that in front the pixelation was still noticeable unless you stared into a bright area of the screen, but 1/2 of the way back it was not noticeable, at least in the couple of scenes we saw of it. Also, TI never did do that "electronic aperture" they told me about a few years back. You could see where the keystoning was throwing the corners off of the screen. Something that definitely stood out to me was the "digital sharpening". Granted it looked good and I'm sure it added a lot to the overall image, but there is definitely some "cheating" going on in the resolution department. It is kind of like sharpening a picture in Adobe PhotoShop. Sure it *looks* sharper, but it really isn't. It also could have been a bit brighter, even though I think you said it was a 7K DLP vs. a 4K 35mm film. Finally was the issue of contrast. Upon comparing it to a 35mm print, the film revealed a lot more details in the image and had a lot of "bite" to it that the DLP did not.

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This article by Kodak sums up the current state of digital technology fairly well (with a Kodak slant of course): http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/digital/kennelP.shtml They say the horizontal resolution of "typical" 35mm release prints is about 2000 pixels. The 35mm camera negative is 4000 pixels. Current professional digital cameras capture about 1500 pixels and have far less "dynamic range" than film.

Current DLP projectors have 1280 x 1024 resolution, or about 1.2M pixels total (not all are used of course). Kodak's competing D-ILA system has 2048 x 1536 pixels, or 3M pixels total.

So just looking at the numbers, I am baffled as to how a 1280 x 1024 digital display on a typical multiplex-sized screen (say, 40 feet wide in scope?) can look anywhere close to 35mm film. It doesn't seem remotely possible based on the facts.

Is there something else going on? Most people look at a DirectTV broadcast and think it looks good. But their impression is maybe being colored by the fact that satellite signals do not suffer from snow, ghosting, faint herringbone patterns, or other artifacts that are normal with cable or over-the-air TV. But funny thing is, you NEVER hear DirecTV talk about the RESOLUTION of their picture. Why? Because the resolution is actually terrible. (Pay-per-view broadcasts seem to be given more bandwidth and better resolution, but still nothing to get excited about.)

For a while, I had DirectTV with a subscription to the major networks (ABC, NBC, etc), as well as a conventional analog cable TV hookup for local stations. I was able to easily switch between satellite and local cable for the same content. What I discovered is that even though the cable TV signal had some ugly artifacts coming along for the ride, it also had FAR better overall picture resolution. Details in people's faces that were easy to see on cable were missing on satellite, things like creases in the skin or small blemishes. On satellite, it looked like closeups of faces were "homogenized" or painted uniformly. The detail was just not there.

This doesn't necessarily prove anything with regard to d-cinema. But you can't help wondering if favorable impressions about d-cinema are at least partly due to the absense of jitter, weave, etc. and don't fully take into account the actual resolution on the screen. Same as DirectTV and "digital cable" can claim "Delivered with Digital Clarity!!" but they refuse to talk about the real resolution. The "digital clarity" is superficial if you look hard.

Brad mentioned artifical sharpness and other "tricks" to spiff up the digital image. Is that what they're doing? You can't get "something" from "nothing". Visual trickery doesn't cut it.

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- dave
Look at this! His chin strap has been cut!