HDTV Forum

I watched the first hour of Star Wars II projected on a screen from a Christie digital cinema projector. It blew away all of the film projectors in the theater. I poked my head in some of the other theaters at the Cineplex and they all had the same story, fuzzy scratched up prints shown on big screens. The digital cinema looked better because it was higher resolution and did not have scratches from a worn out print.

The black level of the digital cinema was not as good as film. Spiderman playing in the theater next to the digital cinema had darker blacks. The digital cinema was higher resolution, better color saturation and the biggest difference was no artifacts from a platter film real.

Jim

I saw the film version of "Phamtom Menace" the second night it was showing in NYC back in 1999. Then I saw it in Digital cinema (DILA). The digital cinema version absolutely smoked the film version. Black level was the only aspect of performance that wasn't quite as good. Can't wait to see "Attack of the Clones" in DLP at the Ziefield next weekend.

Kevin Miller
Founding Imaging Science Foundation Member. Video Consultant, and freelance writer. www.ISFTV.COM. Email: [email protected]

Saw AOTC on DILA earlier today.. wow! Looked amazing.. crystal clear! Even my gf noticed the difference.

Agree that the blacks are the only visible drawback.. but I'm used to that these days with my Grand Wega at home. Although the PQ improved exponentially after Kevin calibrated the set!

I just rented The Others, good movie for testing out dark scenes and shadow.. my GW performed surprisingly well. Thanks again Kevin!

<daegloe>

You must have seen it on a DLP. DILA is not THX certified. It is going to br retested next month.

Jim

Oops.. you're right. It was DLP.

<daegloe>

The Crown 18 in Skokie IL, digital theater with AOTC is still selling out every day. This weekend all shows were sold out by 2pm. The two film theaters that were showing AOTC were not sold out.

Jim

Unfortunately, I do not have a digital cinema near by; however, I did go see Episode 2 the other night and wanted to throw up. Not because of the movie itself but because of the film. There were burn marks all over the film and the theater was set up pretty poorly. I would rather watch it on my Princeton than the theater. Everything seemed washed out from wear.

David Abrams
ISF Calibrationist
Precision Theater Consultants

I saw ATOC at the Sony Metreon here in SF and hated it. I sat fairly close, maybe the a third of the way theater length from the screen and I could see pixels for the entire show. I was like watching TV. Every edge was a stair-stepped. Film ain't perfect either but the digital projection I saw has a long way to go before it's bettter than film.

<ColinD>

D-ILA vs ILA

To set the record straight, Phantom Menace was shown in 4 digital theaters: 2 in NJ and 2 in the LA area. 2 used DPL and 2 used the Hughes-JVC ILA (the predecessor to the D-ILA). Hughes-JVC was shut down and ILA manufacturing stopped at the end of 1999.

Currently JVC is showing the QXGA D-ILA which is the only projector in he world that can display a native 1920x1080. Unforunatley the current version is only 7K lumens and is not bright enough for the screens showing Episode II.

I have seen Episode II in the Digital Theater in Trumbull, CT. It was awesome....but I have not seen it in film. The digital colorimetry is far superior to film.

Although it looked great, keep in mind that DLP is currently only 1280x1024. With JVC raising the bar to 1920x1080, I would seriously doubt that 1280x1024 will ever become the Digital Cimema standard. Whether the war will be won by JVC, DPL or some other new technology is still very unclear, but I beleive that Digital Cinema will continue to be an event and not the "norm" for quite some time.

Al lot of money has been spent by TI to be the leader in and industry that does not really exist and in which no one is making any money. But I look forward to the day when digital Cinema (just like HDTV in the home) is the standard.

Jim Taylor

Well I just saw the DLP Digital Cinema presentation of "Attack of the Clones" at the Ziegfield last night. It was pretty imppressive. We were sitting just beyond the mid-point in the center of the theater. If anything the picture was just a bit soft, but the color saturation and stability of the image were both spectacular. My usnerstanding is that George Lucas actually filtered the Sony 1080 24 camera to soften the image slightly to make it appear more film like. I also understand that the Sony Camera actually is only doing about 1440 as opposed to 1920.

I had a meeting with Dale Zimmmerman of TI at the Home Entertainment show this past week, and he told me that TI would be introducing the 1920 x 1080 DLP chips somewhere about 2 years from now. Certainly something to look forward to.

Kevin Miller
Founding Imaging Science Foundation Member. Video Consultant, and freelance writer. www.ISFTV.COM. Email: [email protected]