From: Ed Inman (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Mar 05 2006 - 16:29:15 PST
We already have one theater in my area with high powered digital projectors. I watched "8 Below" projected digitally there onto a huge 40' x 100' screen. It was the first feature film I've ever seen projected this way.
I'd have to say it looked pretty good. I could even see the film grain in the digital image--everything was sharp and bright.
Does this mean I like it? No, not really. I think film projection still offers better contrast and has a less sterile quality. But I'm a traditionalist who grew up when film was still film and TV was still TV. (I'm not a fan of studios that transfer videos to 35mm and call them "films" either--so many of those like "Super Size Me," "Ramones: End of the Century," and "The Edukators" look fine on DVD, but to me they looked like total crap on the big screen. )
But I suspect folks who grew up in the era of high definition, large screen TV's will think the picture is just fine. I'll have to admit I would have never guessed 6 or 8 years ago that digital projection would have advanced as far as it has.
I do question Scott's claim that it will offer the studios more "security" though. It seems to me that releasing first-run features digitally is only going to further facilitate high-quality bootlegs at a faster pace.
Ed
-----Original Message-----
>From: Scott Janush <email suppressed>
>Bottom line is that in a few years, once the economic aspects have
>truly been worked out, many theaters will be projecting digital. The
>economics from the studio distribution side are massive savings in
>distribution and more importantly to them, security.
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