From: Ed Inman (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Apr 26 2010 - 13:05:46 PDT
-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeff Kreines <email suppressed>
>I have a feeling that digital projection using consumer projectors will be
>replacing 16mm projection more quickly than most of us would like...
That already happened years ago. It has been at least a decade since 16mm played any significant role in the "film" festival I used to work for (and at least five years since we had even a single 16mm print).
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.
>There are some very good codecs that do not need fast computers or hard
>drives to play back high resolution files at 24 fps.
I'm not an expert at this, but I know in 2008 and 2009 most of our festival was run off of laptops with "consumer" grade projectors set up in the auditoriums on a table. To me it looked like total crap on the big screen--far worse than the most horrid 16mm dupe.
This year, for the first time, everything was run directly off of Avids through professional theatrical digital projectors. And as much as I have despised digital projection from the start--and still prefer film projection--the improvement in overall quality was truly remarkable. For the first time I could actually watch essentially homemade videos on a big screen without giving myself a headache.
So, while my diatribe is probably veering off the original question a bit, perhaps the good news is that digital projection, even the "consumer" grade variety, is undoubtedly getting better all the time.
Ed
>
>I love film projection. I wish I could foresee a long life for it,
>especially in 16mm. But Kodak seems to care only about cheap ink-jet
>printer ink these days -- IDIOTS! -- so we will have to improvise and find a
>replacement that doesn't lose the qualities that are important to us all.
>
>Jeff "still has many 16mm projectors" Kreines
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