Warner Bros., Universal, and DCIP to make digital cinema a reality
By Jeannie Choe 
posted Mar 6th 2007 7:10PM
posted Mar 6th 2007 7:10PM
Could it be? Apparently, some major plans have been set in motion to finally go digital on the big screen. Movie industry big-guns Warner Bros., Universal, and Digital Cinema Implementation Partners have announced a joint venture to evaluate various distribution methods, such as satellite or digital terrestrial distribution, to determine the best way to deploy digital content across a whopping 14,000 Regal, AMC, and Cinemark screens. DCIP (equally owned by the 3 aforementioned theater giants) was formed earlier this year to apply the new format to cinemas during the motion picture industry's digital transition where traditional film will peace out for real. The shift, if well-orchestrated, will not only enhance the movie-going experience, but can also provide back-end benefits such as faster rollouts, more scheduling flexibility, and cutting out physical shipping costs. To fight the pirates who will no doubt be wanting a piece of this ultra-HD action, the group is plotting a digital distribution system that streamlines delivery methods and keeps the number of people involved to a minimum. There's no word yet on exactly when this much-anticipated, way-overdue implementation will begin.
That kind of sucks, the cinema will not be the same without the slight grain and the occasional minute flicker. It just adds character, oh well it had to happen one day.
Can't we just skip the middle man and stream new flicks directly to my LCD? The movie experience is OK every once and a while but 90% of the time I just want to see the new movie without some a*hole answering his cell phone at the best part, and missing a key part of the movie when I get up to piss.
Well to be fair that grain and flicker can be added in digitally. It's can be improved of course but from everything I've seen it's a convincing effect.
I'm just glad we finally have serious interest being paid to digital cinema. The sooner we can move towards it the better.
Meh... they are just "evaluating options" according to this release. That means we might actually see something come out of this in maybe 5 years at best.
Wow - you can't please everyone. Grain, scratches - film streaks. Good riddance to them all.
I've seen a few digital movies - bring em on!
For me it will be like getting spoiled by HD. I can't watch regular broadcast anymore. (except Battlestar Galactica
I can live without that annoying flicker the same way I can live without technicolor. If you want the original old school film complete with missing frames, artifacts and nose hairs then go to the old movie house and pay $1 for your flick. If you like ultra crisp 4k high contrast images at variable framerates then you will have one hell of an experience at these theaters. ARE YOU WITH ME MR. CUBAN?
My only concern is that by the time they get this up and running 4k res will be old news and we will have far greater capabilities.
Zach
Doesn't the film lose some quality because its at a lower resolution? I read digital cinemas aren't even HD res? In that case...not so good perhaps.
Many of the new digital theaters coming out are either 2K (2048x1080 -- a bit more than 1080p) or 4K (4096x2160) resolution. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema#Digital_projection.
I don't think a 2160p standard is coming out anytime soon for the home theater, but I'd like to see how crisp a 4K movie is!
I've seen a movie or 2 in digital DLP projection, and let me say...wow. THe quality really is wonderful.
Where have you been hiding? There are 100s of digital Cinema installations.
http://www.dlp.com/dlp_cinema/dlp_cinema_theater_search.asp
I'm a part time projectionist for a Regal Theater here in the Valley. I think that it's long overdue too. Even though I'll be out of a job Har Har
*Wants to pirate movies at 4096x2160*
As long as I never see "Searching for Satellite signal" on the big screen, I'm cool with it.
Digital Cinema is currently 2K - 2048x1080.... that's the only Holywood approved digital format.... 4K is something being banded about by Sony to try to delay the deployment of the TI based DLP technology.
Movies in 2K are far superior to their 35mm film counterparts and the only benefit of 4K is that you can add an extra row of seats at the front of the theatre... but who likes sitting at the front anyway?
The extra costs of distributing a 4K film instead of a 2K film remove some of the advantages of going digital in the first place.
Lastly - it's happening now.... not in 5 years time. Deployment of digital is rolling out fast all over the world.... USA, Europe and Asia. China has just signed a deal for 700 screens to go over...
http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/pressreleases/show.asp?index=1890
OMG!!! Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
they give state of the ART computer animation on 1960's projectors! WTF!??!?!?!?!
Look attentively at the telescreen, Mr. Smith. the two minutes hate is about to begin, and afterward we will recieve information on the war in Eastasia direct from Big Brother.
Richy
As much as you hate Sony, the 4k resoulution wasn't developed to delay the TI DLP technology.
The TI technology was established and deployed before Sony announced 4k digital cinema. Sony is also actually shipping 4k projecters so it's not a 'vapor' FUD product.
I'd imagine that Sony was releasing digital projectors and wanted to provide a marketly better product. In some way they have suceeded and in some ways they haven't. The cristie is still the biggest install base.
The real boon for Sony was the ability to use the same chips design from the digital cinema line in the Home theatre projectors. There is a reason that the Sony home theatre projectors are among the highest ranked.
Also needless to say this article is quite dated.
Digital cinema is actually here and deployed now. For now they simply swap large raids.
Without better compression or MUCH bigger internet pipes or pushing movies to theatres will take to damn long. Movies are around 1-2 TB uncompressed and I'd guess 300-500 GB compressed at resolution.
That would be one HELL of a torrent seed.
First of all.. .nuts to all you digital fan boys. Yes digital can look good, but it's no film yet.
Film has a wider colour gamut.
Film has more contrast.
Don't believe me? look it up.
Dust and scratches are the product of bad projectionists - go somewhere where they do it right. At this moment, good projection of a good film print beats digital projection hands down.
I also don't understand why there's this big worry that pirating is coming from people who handle the prints... unless you're talking about garbage videotaping of the screen from the projection booth (ugh). I've never heard of someone taking an entire film print down to the ol' spirit telecine and making a scan... it's not practical or cost effective.
start talking about real d-cinema when we actually are using cameras on set that shoot 2k or 4k, and the signal stays digital all the way through. Until then, 35mm is still where its at.
Ben, scratches on a new print are a sign of a bad projectionist. The prob is film will eventually, no matter how good the projectionist, get scratches on it. Its not a sign of a bad projectionist, the film is mildly magnetic and will attract dust to it. So the longer period of time a film is played, the more scratches will start to show. Now if your going with digital, the film will have more consistancy through out its run. No more deteriorating quality, no chance of audio glitches, no more scratches even if its been played for 6 months. I do agree that a good projectionist is important tho, nothing ruins a movie like it stopping half way through because some idiot up in the booth screwed up.
You have never heard of people using a telecline machine to pirate movies? Perhaps you should inspect http://www.vcdquality.com/index.php?enddate=1169980400 . Unless I misunderstand your statement, telecline's, while rare, have been pirates for many many years now.
Being in the digital cinema business I can attest that there are a great number of features that are kept digital all the way through the mastering, distribution, and projection process at 12-bit 4:4:4...the latest being Zodiac, which was shot on Thomson Viper cameras. It's not as though everything is "digitized" from a 35mm reel.
The information on the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) is publicly available at http://www.dcimovies.com/
From the information there most movies will be around 500 GB.
too bad digital projection currently looks like shit compared to film. but I guess saving a few bucks is more important to them. currently digital projection is simply not up to par. pixels are visible unless you are sitting in a very limited "sweet spot" in the theatre. I think rolling out an inferior presentation method before it is truly ready (as in as good or better looking than film) is a huge mistake.
here is my favorite article on the subject
http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern/digitalprojection.html
this picture reminds me of "1984, won't be like 1984"
"traditional film will peace out for real"
Was that an intended pun (real/reel)??
Somebody install Bittorrent on the cinema's computers quick.
I don't know where some of you are watching your movies, but I've seen a couple DLP movies and they look awesome. If movie film works anything like still film, I don't really know where film would be better. Positives have about the same dynamic range as digital All the digital I've seen beats the pants off of film.
I think the 35mm vs. Digital argument isn't going to go away until there's no one on Earth remains who has seen actual 35mm projection. I've been a projectionist for eight years and every format from 16mm to Super 35mm, including digital and, as much as I love film, digital does produce a cleaner, nicer picture, depending on the equipment used.
Speaking of which, I went to ShoEast this year and there were about 6 Digital projectors being shocased for every ONE 35mm projector. The problem was that there were absolutely no established standards. There was 3LCD, DLP, SXRD and every resolution listed above. Until these people can come to a consensus, digital rollout is going to be slow to come.
Ben - In reply to your coment about color on film vs. video, you are quite correct...when it comes to acquisition. To date, I don't know of a single camera that can capture the full color range of 35mm. Some of the projectors, however, can beautifully reproduce the full dynamic color range of film (Kodak's own digital projector comes to mind). To that end, the best viewing experience would come from a movie shot on film (70mm, for the VERY best) and projected digitally (with the right projector). As far as contrast, the problem with film is that, if you hold a completely black frame up to a normal light, you can see that light right through it. When you focus a 4200w light through there, you simply can't project a true black with film because there is always SOME amount of light hitting the screen. Digital formats like DLP and SXRD avoid this by tilting the mirrors away from the screen depending on the level of darkness for that area. So, with the right projector, digital can actually beat 35mm in contrast.
As far as any pirating concerns involved with digital distribution, it's quite unlikely. All the places I've seen received an encrypted data stream via sattelite, downloaded into and played via a RAID storage system on-site (so no "searching for sattelite signal" messages) using a proprietary codec. And it's all password-protected and heavily regulated so moving them off-server is nearly impossible.
I can't wait until this gets implemented at my theater. I'll be all over that transmission, pirating it like blackbeard.
But...
Even If this saves them money, they WILL raise ticket prices!
And, What more important here? What were seeing or how see it?
Put money in better writers and scripts and stop 'digitaly'polishing turds.
you said it!
I've seen a couple movies in digital at the newest theatre here. Starting with "SW:Attack of the Clones". They only have one digital projector (the only one for like 300 miles actually) and I saw EpII four times in four weeks in digital. The fifth week, they had moved it to the second theatre, not realizing it wasn't on the digital screen, I bought a ticket and went in. I left after ten minutes, getting my money back on the way out. I simply could not watch it on film, it was horrible compared to the four screenings I had seen in digital; grainy, scratchy, eyewatering flicker, and washed out colors. This spoiled me for life. I go and see any movie they have that is in digital just to support digital (why else would I have seen scoobydoo2??). If a movie is not offered in digital, I just have to go the first night, as I have noticed they look terrible after only the second day of screenings for film.
For digital, I admit I have noticed a slight screen door effect if I sit too close, I believe this is due mostly to the 2k resolution, and I would hope that 4k becomes the standard.
I really would love to sit next to a digital projection aficianado in a theater and point out the craptacular artifacts I see. In in my admittedly limited experience with it, text looks jaggy, whites look blocky and fast changing colors -- like, say, fireballs and explosions -- look really blocky.
Maybe someday it will look better than film, but right now it reminds me of sitting too close to the TV.
Digital Cinema has been deployed in over 1000 of Carmike cinemas (3rd largest) screens, with the remaining 1300 to be completed by near years end, with many theaters having it for almost a year now. The movies are at most 250G, on a portable hard drive, and also delivered by satelite. Also, movies are being filmed digitaly, Miami vice being one that was filmed and shown digitally for a FAR superior picture.
BTW, dust and scratches are not the product of a bad projectionist, its the product of pulling film over around 50 rollers 5 times a day 7 days a week. Also, fading is a major problem, since shining a 3000 watt bulb through film will cause it to fade within 2-3 weeks. None of this happens with digital cinema, let alone you get the digital sound as well, not having to read a sound strip, or use DTS discs which rely on the correct time code.
And to the "piracy via telecine" guy, that would be something that is possible via digital intermediates, not for a native digital film that is shot and post-processed digitally.
2K will be here to stay, and while I've seen the benefits of 4K resolution myself it is hardly perceptible except when sitting close to the screen or on text. However, color accuracy, contrast ratio, etc are all far superior on the TI DLP projectors thus far, which is why they are being more heavily deployed.
There are well over 2000 digital screens in the US alone (not including EU or AS) so it is not as though this is a completely new technology.
Furthermore, the DCIP/Warner/Uni proposal is not for digital deployment, but rather trying to establish an efficient and practical method of distributing the content. Screen conversion is different from distribution...
@ Camperton:
That article you posted was UPDATED in 2002! It's no surprise to anyone reading this site how much technology changes in 5 years...Before you go judging you should either experience it for yourself or at least post a more recent comparison article.
I don't know about other parts of the country but I think many of the Carmike Cinemas have gone digital already in my part of the country
Carmike rolled DLP nationwide in early '06. Granted they used the world's worst DLP equipment, but they did commit to (and actually implemented) 100% deployment.
These other theatre groups are playing catch-up.