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Bill Vermillion
Guest
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 Posted:
Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:40 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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In article <MPG.1dc6b7b5a02ebc68989ab9@news.individual.net>,
Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:
| Quote: | Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:29:07 GMT from Manco <manco_dollars@net.com>:
Jordan wrote:
I sat down this week-end and watched Batman Begins and was struck,
immediately, at how much clearer it looks on DVD at home than it did
in the theater. I don't have a AAA home theater set-up, but I have a
nice 51" rear projection 16:9 set and Dolby Digital/DTS 6.1 surround.
I remember thinking when I saw it in the theater that it was a little
blurry, a little grainy, kind of hard to follow the action. I said to
myself back then "I wonder what it's going to look like on DVD?"
Turns out it kicks ass on DVD. Has anyone else had this experence? I
first noticed it back when the Brendan Frasier version of the Mummy
came out. I used to blame it on the projectionist (or lack of a
trained one), but now I'm not so sure.
- Jordan
and this why multiplexes are dying and DVD sales/rentals are BOOMING. People
do care about quality.
Exactly. I went to the local theatre (Fall Creek Cinema, Ithaca) to
see /The Aristocrats/. I was not pleased to be in the screening room
where the screen is too high up, the seats are too close to it, and
half of them are broken, but I decided to put up with it.
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Wow. I feel lucky to be in area that is growing and decent
multiplexes are being built. One recently had plenty of room
between the seat and what struck me was the height of the back of
the seat. It went above the head of the average person so all you
saw were seat tops - as if there was no one else in the theatre.
Sound and picture were good. Even the blow-up of March of The
Penguins looked very good - which surprised me - as I understood
it had been shot in Super-16 [IMDB has no spec on shooting stock].
| Quote: | What I could not put up with was distorted sound, on a dialog-driven
movie to boot. I complained to the projectionist, but he shrugged his
shoulders and said they knew about it but couldn't fix it. I demanded
my money back; in three or four months I'll see the show in comfort
for half the price.
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And the only problem I've found with the sound in the local
googleplexes is that it is often far too loud. But I guess it's
designed for those who drive cars with super-loud sound systems you
can hear coming for blocks away.
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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Bill Vermillion
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:40 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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In article <1k5ql1h02u721mc1eft8aev1k20ei834ks@4ax.com>,
John Harkness <jharkness@sympatico.ca> wrote:
| Quote: | On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 09:52:04 -0700, "Curtin/Dobbs"
curtin-dobbs@comcast.net> wrote:
"John Harkness" <jharkness@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:d03ql1ts00kck1kon3u7t0qofup2mp49km@4ax.com...lm is going through.
If they use a print to screen for critics in Boston or NY,
they're not going to box it up and ship it to Peoria to open it.
Why not? It's just lying around. Why waste it? Those hayseeds in Peoria
won't complain.
They'd just send it to a suburban multiplex locally -- it's cheaper.
It's not that you're more likely to get better prints in L.A. or NY --
I can't vouch for NYC, but I would bet that Grauman's Chinese, The Egyptian,
El Capitan, etc. are never sent bad prints.
it's that you're more likely to have a theatre that's properly run --
that has audiences which bitch about out of focus shows and non-synch
sound.
Agreed.
What you've got of course, is the inevitable decay caused by the
automation of the projection process in the multiplexes.
I trained on 35mm back in the 70s, when it was a craft -- when you had
to learn how to inspect and fix a print, you had to know how to do
reel changes, you had to be in the booth to project a film.
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But even then there were those who didn't care.
I was watching 2001 back in the late 1960s after seeing it out of
town I went to see it again at a local theatre.
When there was a lot of black space - such as the long shots of the
ships where all you could see were the lights in the windows -
there were veritcal light streaks. The shutter was out of sync and
the film was being pulled down before the shutter closed.
I went up to the front and the assistant projectionist was there.
I told him what I saw and he asked if I was a projectionist -
thinking perhaps that only those in the know would understand the
problem.
He said he had told the head projectionist about this and was told
it was too hard to adjust and no one would notice.
It's the 'no one would notice' or today 'no one cares' that I think
has led to the degradation we see so often.
| Quote: | Lord knows that there were sloppy projectionists in the old days, but
there were a lot people who took pride in the showing films, and
making sure that the one thing people in theatres were NEVER aware of
was the projectionist.
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Which brought to mind the time I was watching a foreign print at a
local theatre that had a lot of them - being down the block from a
university.
A reel change came up and the picture had the sound track on the
left side of the screen - and I don't recall if we got the sound
of sprockets on the right. I figured it would get stopped almost
instantly. But after the reel ran this way for about 20 to 30
seconds I got up out of my seat - in the front 1/3rd of the theatre
- past everyone who was just sitting there - and complained
to the people up front.
The film got stopped and got fixed. I understood the projectionist
was fired over that - and I had no intention of that happening.
But he had to work to get the film reversed this way, and then LET
IT RUN. He obviously did not even look at the screen after the
changeover.
I talked the manager who was in charge of the only two theatres in
the small town I grew up in - to let my best friend and I in to
both projection booths to see how they worked. That had to be
about 1950. And one of the two was really old - built in the early
1930s, with the big 'smoke-stacks' coming out of the arc lamp
housings and going through the roof. The other was built in 1947
so was fairly modern.
I always loved film from the time I was quite young. My parents
took me to The Wizard of Oz for my first film on it's first run.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com |
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Sammy
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:40 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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In article <caK7f.477499$_o.261152@attbi_s71>,
trotsky <gmsingh@email.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Anybody that's really discerning will know that (the best) analog is
better than (the best) digital in all cases, regardless of the
medium.
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If Lord Trots says so, it must be true.
P.S. Why the need to use a fake name, trots? |
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trotsky
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:40 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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gaffo wrote:
| Quote: | moviePig wrote:
Re DLP's quality, the argument has heretofore been "DLP's not as good
as film"... but that's increasingly turning into the more mystical
"DLP's *not* film".
black levels are getting better - still not as good a film (yet).
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The hyper-clarity that DLP provides will never look as good as film. If
TI is smart they will add some feature to soften the image without
losing resolution a la film. Eventually I think the two will be
indistinguishable. |
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Bill Vermillion
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:40 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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In article <1130581046.845191.308000@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Ed Stasiak <estasiak@att.net> wrote:
| Quote: | John Harkness wrote
By the way, when you're in a theatre and the print's "a little
blurry", try complaining. They may send someone up to the booth
to adjust the focus.
Will the manager then re-wind the movie, so you can
see the parts you missed when you were tracking him
down and complaining about the blurry/dark picture,
garbled sound, broken chairs, screaming kids, idiots
with cell phones, ect, ect, ect?....
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They rewind them now.
I had been called in to look at the sound system in a local
room - that was part of a museum/show complex. That was about 20
years ago. I haven't been in a booth since then.
They had horrible underpowered system and I arranged for that to be
changed - all for the better. The sound system looked like it had
been designed/selected by some home audio person - with low
efficiency speakers and low powered amps.
But the projector ran the film from a huge flat platter that as I
recall pulled the film from the inside and then wound it back on
the outside. A huge continous loop.
Last time I was in a booth -
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com |
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Jay Stewart
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Oct 31, 2005 2:08 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.com> wrote in message news:Ip5H6r.1EFM@wjv.com...
| Quote: | In article <MPG.1dc6b7b5a02ebc68989ab9@news.individual.net>,
Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:29:07 GMT from Manco <manco_dollars@net.com>:
|
<snip>
| Quote: | Wow. I feel lucky to be in area that is growing and decent
multiplexes are being built. One recently had plenty of room
between the seat and what struck me was the height of the back of
the seat. It went above the head of the average person so all you
saw were seat tops - as if there was no one else in the theatre.
Sound and picture were good. Even the blow-up of March of The
Penguins looked very good - which surprised me - as I understood
it had been shot in Super-16 [IMDB has no spec on shooting stock].
|
According to American Cinematographer it was indeed shot on Super 16. |
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NunYa Bidness
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Oct 31, 2005 4:37 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:25:01 GMT, bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) Gave
us:
| Quote: | In article <g6s3m158ed55vemdut97uk6igja6kij4l0@4ax.com>,
NunYa Bidness <nunyabidness@nunyabidness.org> wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 18:15:49 -0400, Rich <none@none.com> Gave us:
[hunks of text brutally hacked away by Lizzie Borden].
|
Lizzy was innocent.
| Quote: |
Once upon a time, the studios and the theatre chains had
money.
They still do, they just don't know how to use it, or distribute it
correctly among the company's members.
Has it not always been so - the money goes to those at the top and
when they want more money instead of trying to figure ways to
increase income they spend the same amount trying to reduce costs -
which often decreases income :-(
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Serves them right then.
| Quote: | They could have introduced digital in a big way,
they could have produced better film showing devices or
at least used them as they should have been used.
That is absolutely true. Had they embraced what we now know to be
they best method for storing what gets filmed, that being digital
mediums, We would / could have Film On Demand personal theaters where
customers do not need to view a film with 200 or more strangers, many
of which doing things you wouldn't do during a film screening. There
should be movie kiosks everywhere to watch a new release.
One of the joys of watching a good movie with a good audience is
the shared reaction of lots of laughter and sometimes applause.
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A good audience is hard to find.
| Quote: | Last week there was applause after the showing of Good Night and
Good Luck. The audience was a bit older. It looked like
it could have been rated NC-50 :-)
Digital delivery at the theater level, should have happened ten
years ago. Right around the same time as the advent of MPEG2.
A live
projectionist to monitor problems that could occur with the automated
systems they have. But, they didn't do any of this.
The don't even need that really.
Instead, they cheapened everything, right down to the poor development
of the film stock we often see now.
Within another ten years, well be "filming" in the digital realm.
Remember when CDs came out how there weren't many "DDD" discs
around? Check the numbers now.
For modern recordings digital is much cheaper. At first it was
quite costly - and the big Sony 32-track digital would set you back
well over $125,000 which was twice as much as our Studer A-800.
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Now, we can do it on our PCs. There is still, however, an analog
link at the instrument level. Like guitar pickups, and feeds. I know
there are some direct to digital gear out there, but I didn't think it
was mainstream yet.
| Quote: | But now you can get digital devices that record 24-tracks
simultaneously for under $3000. It's the old 'cheaper is better -
even when it isn't'. And a lot of disks were never properly
labeled in the early days.
And have YOU really checked CD's lately. I just checked a stack
and only about 1 in 10 have any labeling like that anymore.
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We cared. Idiots these days don't care. The evidence is in the
content they choose. Half of it barely qualifies as music, and has
little imaginative content. The other half spews violent lyrics that
the idiots claim does not affect their personalities. I guess not...
it's too fucking late for that.
| Quote: | It was
a selling point at one time - and I bet most people would have no
clue what it means if you found a CD with it on it and pointed it
out to them.
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I'd bet that it is better than 90% that do not have such clues.
| Quote: | Actually, it was the cable companies that did most of the pissing and
moaning about HDTV. Their equipment upgrade costs were their reason.
And locally there is far more HDTV on cable than there is on the
air.
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Yeah, they saw the cash cow that it was. The test market was
actually high speed internet access. Once they found out they could
screw us on that, they started in with everything else. All the
millions they make on internet subscribers goes into the cable
infrastructure, not the internet set-up. We should have 200TB Usenet
servers with NO deleted groups, and we should be getting the spam
stopped at their node(s), not ours. Instead, the millions they make
on us goes back into the cable services. We got screwed, Service
took a dive, and they actually called a reduction in bandwidth
(capping) an "upgrade". I still have the letter I was sent by the
president of the firm declaring as such.
I think they think we are retards. The opposite is true. Ray Nagin
is a perfect example of that.
| Quote: |
TV stations get their gear bought by their network carrier.
Since when.
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Sure, they have to take it from their budget, but you can rest
assured that the uplink encoders, and downlink decoders that General
Instrument has in place at EVERY TV station in this country and many
other in the world were bought by their respective carriers. The HDTV
gear will be as well. The only things the stations pay for themselves
are the transmitters and towers.
| Quote: | Locally one of the major network stations drops
some evening programming so they can show some locally run content
- as they make far more money selling local ads than they get paid
by the network.
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But they didn't buy the decoder gear, which costs like $1.2M per
rack. Some stations need several racks to operate. |
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NunYa Bidness
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Oct 31, 2005 4:39 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 19:39:14 -0700, Sammy <sammy@xxx.invalid> Gave us:
| Quote: | In article <caK7f.477499$_o.261152@attbi_s71>,
trotsky <gmsingh@email.com> wrote:
Anybody that's really discerning will know that (the best) analog is
better than (the best) digital in all cases, regardless of the
medium.
If Lord Trots says so, it must be true.
P.S. Why the need to use a fake name, trots?
|
Do you actually think that an LCD display is better than a CRT?
Sorry, but CRTs are still the king as it relates to video quality
and picture purity, etc., etc. |
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Bill Vermillion
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Nov 12, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Re: DVD movies look better than theatrical? |
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In article <3L99f.364397$tl2.291295@pd7tw3no>,
Jay Stewart <brewclanNOSPAM@shaw.ca> wrote:
| Quote: |
"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.com> wrote in message news:Ip5H6r.1EFM@wjv.com...
In article <MPG.1dc6b7b5a02ebc68989ab9@news.individual.net>,
Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:29:07 GMT from Manco <manco_dollars@net.com>:
snip
Wow. I feel lucky to be in area that is growing and decent
multiplexes are being built. One recently had plenty of room
between the seat and what struck me was the height of the back of
the seat. It went above the head of the average person so all you
saw were seat tops - as if there was no one else in the theatre.
Sound and picture were good. Even the blow-up of March of The
Penguins looked very good - which surprised me - as I understood
it had been shot in Super-16 [IMDB has no spec on shooting stock].
According to American Cinematographer it was indeed shot on Super 16.
|
You would be hard pressed to believe from the print that was shown
at the new AMC. I've seen current 35MM productions that didn't
look that good.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com |
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