Digital cinema has a bit to go to compete with Analogue, resolution-wise. I'm more than happy to stay Analogue for the time being...Why people (other than the movie distribution companies who will likely save $Millions) want this is completely beyond me.

KuRt.

Hey triflic - check out the previous post, link in that article for reasons why. Can't remember the exact figures but it's way cheaper to duplicate and distribute digital than celluloid.

I'd love to know your reasons for rating analogue over digital. I'm a big fan of digital at home, but have yet to see it in action in cinema setting.

As a projectionist, I'm all for the transition to digital. Of course, it means that me and my ilk will all, most likely, be jobless in the future as a result, but we shall see...

I've seen Daredevil, Alien: The Directors Cut, and Attack of the Clones Projected Digitally (Using Texas Instruments DLP equipment at the AMC WinstonChurchill in Mississauga Ontario Canada), I've seen several other digital systems at the Cumberland Alliance/Atlantis cinemas in Toronto and at the Toronto Film Festival. At best it is equal in resolution to Analogue Projected cinema, it is obviously free of scratches or hairs and those reel-change indicators, but suffers in being a bit darker than regular old analogue projection. So at best it is merely equal to analogue. Installing all this new digital equipment is going to cost money so thus will raise ticket prices (and in the Mississauga area prices already range from $11.50 to $15.00). In Daredevil and Clones, I could notice some digital aliasing ('jaggies') which was distracting.

I'm not against digital, I would prefer to wait until the systems get cheaper and more sophisticated. Because you well know it will be a long time at most movie theatres before they decide to upgrade again.

Also, since I'm more of a non-mainstream film guy, I worry if the whole distribution networks is dismantled how this will affect the rep cinemas (Bloor St. Cinema in Toronto, Princess Theatre in Waterloo).

At them moment things aren't broken so i see no reason to fix them, considering there is no improvement in image quality, and in some cases, quality gets worse.

KuRt.

One thing on costs is that the reproduction cost for getting a copy made of the movie for the cinema is radically chopped, this is a cost that is recouped for each movie the cinema shows, and that promises quite a healthy saving over time. So that should offer the cinema a way of saving money over time. (Again, see the previous article, link above in this article)

I think what you will find is that this new resolution will bring the studios together and find some way of assisting with the costs for the non-studio cinemas, or one would hope.

To be honest that is my fear as well. We have a local cinema that has been family run for years and years, and it is wonderful with its leather reclining seats and foot stools. Fantastic. How will it cope with the initial costs and funding? Strangely, and I don't know what equipment is behind there, they offer the chance to hire a cinema screen and you can play your own DVD's, so that does hint at some form of digital equipment already.

However, it's much clearer in the UK with the Docspace organisation created to assist the cinemas in understanding the digital systems, implementation and costs. So the UK is doing well on that score, however you are right, it doesn't mean that ticket prices won't be affected, but then are they going to be affected anyway because studios are about to hit us with the "we're loosing money on piracy" score. Not the "we're investing stupid amounts of money in advertising rubbish movies".

On the darkness, I can only talk about my local cinemas. I have a digital home cinema system, and I'm a serious user. It takes about a day to set-up my system (after a house move or for new flooring). This includes measuring speaker distances and directions as well as setting all the TV controls using varying testcards and coloured film.

The reason for this is to set the correct colour mixes, but also to make sure the brightness and contrast are set correctly. We are always viewing this far too highly, and it's something I notice in almost all the cinemas I've been to, black is more like ambient grey.

So when I set black at home it really is black. It takes some initial getting used to, and people think that the screen is too dark to begin with, but it is how it was intended to be seen. Black areas are actually black. Not, as in the cinemas I've seen, where the black darkness is brightened up for all to see.

Don't know if this is your issue, but it's certainly something that annoys me. That and poor audio separation...but more of that in another post.

I hope you guys get some sort of initiative to help smaller cinemas implement digital, I'm sure you will as we certainly are, and all indications and lip service so far is promising that the ticket prices will not be affected.