From: Jeff Kreines (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Apr 26 2010 - 13:47:42 PDT
Ed Inman writes:
"These days it is the 35mm projectors that are being replaced left and right
to the tune of 200 to 300 theater auditoriums a month. They have to be at
least 2K "DCI-compliant" to book major studio releases. And the very
cheapest, used bargain basement DCI-compliant theatrical digital projector
will cost you about $35,000 from what I gather. "
I think that DCI is something to be avoided unless you are a movie theater
and need to run Hollywood films with their DCI copy protection.
The whole DCI format is a bit of a scam -- it's 2048 x 1080 vs. 1920 x
1080 -- a 6% difference -- it was done to make post houses able to charge
higher rates for "2K" vs. "HD."
There is a big difference between consumer projectors these days -- but
suddenly there is a large crop of projectors in the $1500-2500 range that
are bright and have excellent contrast ratios. A good source of info is
ProjectorCentral.com.
A lot also depends on what you are feeding the projector. Sending an 8-bit
compressed DVD off of a laptop via VGA is going to suck. Component inputs
can often be useful in dealing with mismatches between source and projector.
And calibration of the projector and the computer are critical -- all sorts
of gamma and other issues that can cause big problems.
Ideally, someone would come in and help establish an arthouse, non-DCI
standard that is easily met using affordable gear. Paging James Bond...
(the real one)
Jeff "really" Kreines
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.