As the digital cinema equipment transition erupts anew, with the exhibitor instead of Virtual Print Fee -borne expenses of lasers and retrofits and the replacement of 10 year old equipment, it is nice to see that the Event Cinema Association is getting bigger and improving. Here’s the link for the latest email:
Category Archives: Exhibitor News
The feet hitting the street. This is where it all plays out.
Dolby Vision and The Force of Darkness
Hours before the 8PM Star Wars release time, AMC was able to open a Dolby Cinema | AMC Prime room in Century City. There was no official announcement but opening day tickets sold in minutes.
Christie was also able to issue a press release the day before, announcing a dual-laser system with Dolby 3D at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.
Two months ago the AMC 16 in Burbank announced the opening of their new Dolby Cinema | AMC Prime auditorium. Several industry and non-industry journals did well, explaining how the projectors and screen achieve 1,000,000:1 contrast, with more detail in the deeper, smooth blacks and the increase of light level from the normal 48 candela/square meter to 108. The demonstrations were every bit as jaw-dropping as they were when first publicly shown at CinemaCon 6 months earlier. The message of brighter colors and greater depth, matched with the great sound from the Atmos object oriented sound system and superb seating with low-end boost gave more tools for the author and the ultimate presentation to the audience.
The next big movie release was Spectre. It as then that several colorists who attended commercial showings of the movie found out the nuance in the message. Now we know that the client must be aware of whether the movie was mixed and color timed for Dolby Cinema. That is, was there a Dolby Vision million to one pass made for the movie and was there an object oriented mix. It could be both (as Star Wars and Mission Impossible are), or it could be neither, and it could be Atmos only. It is unlikely that it would be Dolby Vision without Atmos, though it is possible.
Why is this significant? First, Dolby’s point is that the AMC Prime, Dolby Cinema combination – even without a movie release made for their technologies – still delivers the ultimate in potential sound and image quality and comfort. They point out that their clients, in this case AMC, chooses to book the theater with the movies available and sometimes they will book movies that aren’t in Atmos and Dolby Vision. Which is a lot to put on a bumper sticker, or an asterisk at the bottom of the entry way sign that announces the Dolby Cinema room.
The three colorists who your author sat with watching and listening to Spectre all felt that something was wrong, but weren’t yet aware about this color timing thing. Everyone noticed artifacts in deep colors, in the deep blacks especially. It was obvious that this wasn’t color timed for a million to one. And as well done as the sound was, it was obvious that it wasn’t object oriented. There was one big scene when the sound music got louder in the front and reached out as far as it could…it should have/could have burst into the room in some clever way but it just stood there like an over inflated balloon, or an effect that could never do anything because the alternative was to enter into the arrays which would have been too much. Alas.
This is when the detective hunt came about. It took multiple emails and interviews to find out the situation.
First, we are told that if a movie isn’t timed for million to one, the dual laser projectors get tamped down to 5000:1. Which is a lot, except that it is more than twice what it was ever seen in most any post production suite. The Dolby response was:
The fixed luminance gamma function defined by DCI supports over 7,500:1 contrast, and the Dolby Vision projection system faithfully map those fixed luminance codes to the proper luminance levels on the projector. Dolby doesn’t alter what the content is representing. Many post houses have projection systems in excess of 2,000:1 contrast and they grade under ideal conditions, which allows them to produce content in excess of 2,000:1. We don’t believe there are any post houses with systems in excess of 5,000:1, and as such limit the darkest code there (i.e. anything over 5,000:1 is soft clipped to 5,000:1). When post houses can grade on higher contrast systems then we can increase our levels to match. No matter the content format a Dolby Cinema is still the best place to see and hear a movie.
Last sentence first, this makes sense. Most Atmos systems will have new audio equipment which can better handle high levels with low annoyance due to recent calibration and low THD from new equipment and components. Because the rooms have been tweaked a bit, they probably handle early reflections well. And because several individual speakers are delivering the sound, it is likely that the sound level can match the mixer’s level – by leaving the audio processor at ‘7’ – and deliver each of us a cleaner image that is apparently loud without being overbearing.
The problem might come from the choice to clip at 5000:1. It is probably correct that most facilities are grading at around 2000:1. That is the spec for most of the TI projectors. Until the new release of Sony projectors (8500:1) and laser projectors, even 2000:1 is difficult to attain. In practice at the best post houses, a carefully tweaked 4K xenon bulb-based projector system is hard pressed to get to 2000:1 and a little over 2000:1 is the best a 2K will do. So most people seeing the movie at the final post stages are seeing it at 2000:1. Compression artifacts that don’t show at 2000:1 may show up at 5000:1…and this is what is posited.
It is possible that there are 5000:1 monitors in use at the post house, but they are not large screen. These screens, of which the Dolby Professional Reference Monitor PRM-4220 is the premier, are brilliant and have their place, but they could also hide something that looks ugly on the big screen. And thus it goes for the very areas that are, or are supposed to be the glory spots for the system.
So either check the Dolby site before you go to the movies to see if your choice has the Dolby Vision and Atmos, or train your ears and eyes to stop waiting for the added dimensions and subtleties of those systems. As one colorist said, “At least we got comfortable chairs.”
Back to watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens with the purpose of evaluating the laser and object sound system. So very unfair, as it is simultaneously a pleasure and disconcerting to have to break the wall of disbelief to pay attention to dark areas, to force oneself to notice nuance and smoothness in the dark during dark scenes. It was a pleasure to hear the objects going exactly where mixer Andy Nelson needed them to be, and a surprise to feel how well the low end was tied into the seats, even having directionality. It is still disconcerting at first, even having experienced it a few times, but once or twice done well it becomes an appropriate part of the mix.
So Dolby gets a Well Done for getting another group to implement two out of three of their important technologies without excess or neglect. The third technology – Dolby 3D, is no trifle. Having seen movies that have been timed for 3D at 48 candela, it is a shame that AMC has decided not to show 3D in their Dolby Cinema | AMC Prime rooms. The extra light brings a completely new aspect to a movie. All the cues that the human visual system uses for placing objects in space are enhanced. It is especially wonderful on a low-gain white screen eliminating all the vignetting and false contrast that a high-gain / dark silver screen delivers. And the AMC Prime rooms have that nice screen, in contrast – if you’ll excuse the expression – to the out of spec screens used with the other technologies.
Dolby also gets a demerit for not thinking through the effect of allowing their name to be used in a manner that implies more than it can deliver. Telling their patrons that they must search through pages of PR on their cool but hardly searchable website to find as to whether a movie has the proper imprimaturs is not a good solution. Knowing Dolby for the good faith actors that they are, they will find the right solution.
AMC also gets a Well Done for the excellent job they do physically. A.) Good marks for providing a nicely done room. The long-wavelength red accents throughout the room, especially on the speakers is technically terrific for pre-show eye accommodation, and aesthetically first rate. B) Good marks for the un-ostentatious, nicely protected alcove which, although removing several seats under the port glass, protects the miscreant patron who would be so stupid as to jump on a chair and look into the projector lens. This solution will be common in the world of laser projectors, which have to follow health code regulations based upon a ridiculous mis-application of logic and an anachronistic understanding of how lasers are used in the projector. (They’re treated as if there are coherent laser beams actually coming from the lens.) As if the light exiting the lens isn’t the same beam of divergent (non-laser coherent) photons that exit any projector’s lens, which is to say: A lot.
In addition to all that wonderfulness, AMC still gets the same demerit as Dolby does for the poorly handled ‘hole’ they leave in a patron’s education. There must be some way to educate the audience member that they are purchasing tickets for a movie presentation that isn’t optimized for the equipment that is being highlighted in the room. They also get a demerit for not showing 3D presentations when the system they have would be the best presentation possible: No Silver Screen, No High Gain Screen, No Vignetting and dark patches, glasses that are as matched to the eyes as possible (including children’s glasses, a very important detail) and 48 candela/square meter displaying a movie in the way it is supposed to be seen. Presentations, like all engineering, is the art of balancing compromises. Dolby has gone all out to push with these three components to reduce as many of those compromises as possible. It would be nice to see them all working.
So now we have to go to the ArcLight Cinerama Dome to sample the Dolby 3D, but the PR – which is notoriously poorly written – says that the light levels will be at 27.5 cd/m2, an odd number (well, it is an even 8 when divided by pi when using the deprecated and unwieldy foot/lambert system) considering that it is still 10 cd/m2lower that the lowest limit of exhibition expectations (48 being the CalibratedWhite Luminance, center specification, with a Theatrical Tolerance of ±10.2 cd/m2 – or 14 fL ±3 in the old style). But this isn’t any theater. This is the theater that we saw movies from Mad Mad Mad Mad World to Apocalypse Now, Gone With The Wind to Out of Africa in. This Christie dual laser system should be giving us the max. More when that viewing happens.
Enough of the rant. Just as the new Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is the movie that needed to be made to launch us into a new future storyline, the new object oriented sound system(s) and laser projectors are the equipment for the next iteration of digital cinema. In addition to putting more shadows into the dark, and potentially more colors into the spectrum, we should look forward to better Live presentations, whether Event Cinema or Alternative Content. I look forward to a live presentation concert with a mixer in the center seats mixing bed channels and objects special to the auditorium.
Good luck to us all.
Earlier similar articles:
Dolby Vision and The Force of Darkness
Hours before the 8PM Star Wars release time, AMC was able to open a Dolby Cinema | AMC Prime room in Century City. There was no official announcement but opening day tickets sold in minutes.
Christie was also able to issue a press release the day before, announcing a dual-laser system with Dolby 3D at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.
Two months ago the AMC 16 in Burbank announced the opening of their new Dolby Cinema | AMC Prime auditorium. Several industry and non-industry journals did well, explaining how the projectors and screen achieve 1,000,000:1 contrast, with more detail in the deeper, smooth blacks and the increase of light level from the normal 48 candela/square meter to 108. The demonstrations were every bit as jaw-dropping as they were when first publicly shown at CinemaCon 6 months earlier. The message of brighter colors and greater depth, matched with the great sound from the Atmos object oriented sound system and superb seating with low-end boost gave more tools for the author and the ultimate presentation to the audience.
The next big movie release was Spectre. It as then that several colorists who attended commercial showings of the movie found out the nuance in the message. Now we know that the client must be aware of whether the movie was mixed and color timed for Dolby Cinema. That is, was there a Dolby Vision million to one pass made for the movie and was there an object oriented mix. It could be both (as Star Wars and Mission Impossible are), or it could be neither, and it could be Atmos only. It is unlikely that it would be Dolby Vision without Atmos, though it is possible.
Why is this significant? First, Dolby’s point is that the AMC Prime, Dolby Cinema combination – even without a movie release made for their technologies – still delivers the ultimate in potential sound and image quality and comfort. They point out that their clients, in this case AMC, chooses to book the theater with the movies available and sometimes they will book movies that aren’t in Atmos and Dolby Vision. Which is a lot to put on a bumper sticker, or an asterisk at the bottom of the entry way sign that announces the Dolby Cinema room.
The three colorists who your author sat with watching and listening to Spectre all felt that something was wrong, but weren’t yet aware about this color timing thing. Everyone noticed artifacts in deep colors, in the deep blacks especially. It was obvious that this wasn’t color timed for a million to one. And as well done as the sound was, it was obvious that it wasn’t object oriented. There was one big scene when the sound music got louder in the front and reached out as far as it could…it should have/could have burst into the room in some clever way but it just stood there like an over inflated balloon, or an effect that could never do anything because the alternative was to enter into the arrays which would have been too much. Alas.
This is when the detective hunt came about. It took multiple emails and interviews to find out the situation.
First, we are told that if a movie isn’t timed for million to one, the dual laser projectors get tamped down to 5000:1. Which is a lot, except that it is more than twice what it was ever seen in most any post production suite. The Dolby response was:
The fixed luminance gamma function defined by DCI supports over 7,500:1 contrast, and the Dolby Vision projection system faithfully map those fixed luminance codes to the proper luminance levels on the projector. Dolby doesn’t alter what the content is representing. Many post houses have projection systems in excess of 2,000:1 contrast and they grade under ideal conditions, which allows them to produce content in excess of 2,000:1. We don’t believe there are any post houses with systems in excess of 5,000:1, and as such limit the darkest code there (i.e. anything over 5,000:1 is soft clipped to 5,000:1). When post houses can grade on higher contrast systems then we can increase our levels to match. No matter the content format a Dolby Cinema is still the best place to see and hear a movie.
Last sentence first, this makes sense. Most Atmos systems will have new audio equipment which can better handle high levels with low annoyance due to recent calibration and low THD from new equipment and components. Because the rooms have been tweaked a bit, they probably handle early reflections well. And because several individual speakers are delivering the sound, it is likely that the sound level can match the mixer’s level – by leaving the audio processor at ‘7’ – and deliver each of us a cleaner image that is apparently loud without being overbearing.
The problem might come from the choice to clip at 5000:1. It is probably correct that most facilities are grading at around 2000:1. That is the spec for most of the TI projectors. Until the new release of Sony projectors (8500:1) and laser projectors, even 2000:1 is difficult to attain. In practice at the best post houses, a carefully tweaked 4K xenon bulb-based projector system is hard pressed to get to 2000:1 and a little over 2000:1 is the best a 2K will do. So most people seeing the movie at the final post stages are seeing it at 2000:1. Compression artifacts that don’t show at 2000:1 may show up at 5000:1…and this is what is posited.
It is possible that there are 5000:1 monitors in use at the post house, but they are not large screen. These screens, of which the Dolby Professional Reference Monitor PRM-4220 is the premier, are brilliant and have their place, but they could also hide something that looks ugly on the big screen. And thus it goes for the very areas that are, or are supposed to be the glory spots for the system.
So either check the Dolby site before you go to the movies to see if your choice has the Dolby Vision and Atmos, or train your ears and eyes to stop waiting for the added dimensions and subtleties of those systems. As one colorist said, “At least we got comfortable chairs.”
Back to watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens with the purpose of evaluating the laser and object sound system. So very unfair, as it is simultaneously a pleasure and disconcerting to have to break the wall of disbelief to pay attention to dark areas, to force oneself to notice nuance and smoothness in the dark during dark scenes. It was a pleasure to hear the objects going exactly where mixer Andy Nelson needed them to be, and a surprise to feel how well the low end was tied into the seats, even having directionality. It is still disconcerting at first, even having experienced it a few times, but once or twice done well it becomes an appropriate part of the mix.
So Dolby gets a Well Done for getting another group to implement two out of three of their important technologies without excess or neglect. The third technology – Dolby 3D, is no trifle. Having seen movies that have been timed for 3D at 48 candela, it is a shame that AMC has decided not to show 3D in their Dolby Cinema | AMC Prime rooms. The extra light brings a completely new aspect to a movie. All the cues that the human visual system uses for placing objects in space are enhanced. It is especially wonderful on a low-gain white screen eliminating all the vignetting and false contrast that a high-gain / dark silver screen delivers. And the AMC Prime rooms have that nice screen, in contrast – if you’ll excuse the expression – to the out of spec screens used with the other technologies.
Dolby also gets a demerit for not thinking through the effect of allowing their name to be used in a manner that implies more than it can deliver. Telling their patrons that they must search through pages of PR on their cool but hardly searchable website to find as to whether a movie has the proper imprimaturs is not a good solution. Knowing Dolby for the good faith actors that they are, they will find the right solution.
AMC also gets a Well Done for the excellent job they do physically. A.) Good marks for providing a nicely done room. The long-wavelength red accents throughout the room, especially on the speakers is technically terrific for pre-show eye accommodation, and aesthetically first rate. B) Good marks for the un-ostentatious, nicely protected alcove which, although removing several seats under the port glass, protects the miscreant patron who would be so stupid as to jump on a chair and look into the projector lens. This solution will be common in the world of laser projectors, which have to follow health code regulations based upon a ridiculous mis-application of logic and an anachronistic understanding of how lasers are used in the projector. (They’re treated as if there are coherent laser beams actually coming from the lens.) As if the light exiting the lens isn’t the same beam of divergent (non-laser coherent) photons that exit any projector’s lens, which is to say: A lot.
In addition to all that wonderfulness, AMC still gets the same demerit as Dolby does for the poorly handled ‘hole’ they leave in a patron’s education. There must be some way to educate the audience member that they are purchasing tickets for a movie presentation that isn’t optimized for the equipment that is being highlighted in the room. They also get a demerit for not showing 3D presentations when the system they have would be the best presentation possible: No Silver Screen, No High Gain Screen, No Vignetting and dark patches, glasses that are as matched to the eyes as possible (including children’s glasses, a very important detail) and 48 candela/square meter displaying a movie in the way it is supposed to be seen. Presentations, like all engineering, is the art of balancing compromises. Dolby has gone all out to push with these three components to reduce as many of those compromises as possible. It would be nice to see them all working.
So now we have to go to the ArcLight Cinerama Dome to sample the Dolby 3D, but the PR – which is notoriously poorly written – says that the light levels will be at 27.5 cd/m2, an odd number (well, it is an even 8 when divided by pi when using the deprecated and unwieldy foot/lambert system) considering that it is still 10 cd/m2lower that the lowest limit of exhibition expectations (48 being the CalibratedWhite Luminance, center specification, with a Theatrical Tolerance of ±10.2 cd/m2 – or 14 fL ±3 in the old style). But this isn’t any theater. This is the theater that we saw movies from Mad Mad Mad Mad World to Apocalypse Now, Gone With The Wind to Out of Africa in. This Christie dual laser system should be giving us the max. More when that viewing happens.
Enough of the rant. Just as the new Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is the movie that needed to be made to launch us into a new future storyline, the new object oriented sound system(s) and laser projectors are the equipment for the next iteration of digital cinema. In addition to putting more shadows into the dark, and potentially more colors into the spectrum, we should look forward to better Live presentations, whether Event Cinema or Alternative Content. I look forward to a live presentation concert with a mixer in the center seats mixing bed channels and objects special to the auditorium.
Good luck to us all.
Earlier similar articles:
Lessons of Spectre and the Force (WIP)
They said that most mastering rooms are running at 5000:1. All those who know a xenon based projector that is running at more than 2500:1, please raise your hands. OK. Let’s make it easier. All those who have a mastering room with a cool and groovy 4K xenon-based projector who is getting better than 2000:1, please raise your hand. Ah! look, there’s that guy with the new Sony projector. Very nice sir. No one with a TI based projector…didn’t think so. Tweaking the iris and getting the nicest bulb will get you to 1750:1, but more brightness after that gives you brighter darks…but not more contrast.
This article is a work in progress.
And no Atmos? Wha? There was some great music build-up during one of the scenes…wow, those 5 sets of speakers in the front sure can sing. But it never left the front of the room.
This article decided to wait for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so that the mystical art of watching the perfect movie in the perfect environment timed and mixed for the perfect audio and multi-mode dual laser system.
OK: That happened – Dolby Vision and The Force of Darkness
Previous article: The Spectre of Vision
Lessons of Spectre and the Force (WIP)
They said that most mastering rooms are running at 5000:1. All those who know a xenon based projector that is running at more than 2500:1, please raise your hands. OK. Let’s make it easier. All those who have a mastering room with a cool and groovy 4K xenon-based projector who is getting better than 2000:1, please raise your hand. Ah! look, there’s that guy with the new Sony projector. Very nice sir. No one with a TI based projector…didn’t think so. Tweaking the iris and getting the nicest bulb will get you to 1750:1, but more brightness after that gives you brighter darks…but not more contrast.
This article is a work in progress.
And no Atmos? Wha? There was some great music build-up during one of the scenes…wow, those 5 sets of speakers in the front sure can sing. But it never left the front of the room.
This article decided to wait for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so that the mystical art of watching the perfect movie in the perfect environment timed and mixed for the perfect audio and multi-mode dual laser system.
OK: That happened – Dolby Vision and The Force of Darkness
Previous article: The Spectre of Vision
The Spectre of Vision
Nonetheless, they basically are pumping up the bright by 2 – and getting the studios to create and distribute a custom master print – but it is the dark that Dolby wants you to concentrate on. Want to or not, you will notice it. If there were black masking drapes to compare the screen to, the screen may be darker than the drapes, which is truly a terrific phenomena after a decade and a half of getting better and better digital cinema but, until now, no great blacks. They will not give a measured amount of darkness in nits or candela, nor will they tell you how the magic is done. But they will give a curiously round number of a million to one as the contrast ratio being presented. Isn’t it great when the laws of physics give round numbers? Let’s see. Move the decimal to the left a few times and a few times more and viola~! Less than 0. 0001 nits is the amount of dark that the Dolby Vision system is able to present. High Dynamic Range.
Let’s be clear about what that means, since there is a great demo associated with the system. A circle in a field of black is presented and we are told that this is the standard 48 candela/meter2 against a black field that the typical digital cinema projector is delivering at your cinema. What they are presenting is a 2000:1 ratio circle of white to field black, which they say is a test pattern for the standard. They are being very kind when saying that this is the contrast of the typical cinema. In fact, the specification in the SMPTE and ISO standards (or is that a Recommended Practice?), the one that requires a nominal 2000:1 value is the Sequential Contrast test. This standard actually allows 1500:1 for a review room and no less than 1200:1 for a Theatrical room. But they are making the point without confusion because of what they are going to do next, which is increase the light output and decrease the dark output. Let’s slide into that with a little tangent.
First, a white circle on a black field is a test pattern, but it isn’t a sequential test pattern. The Sequential Test doesn’t need a pattern since you just shoot the room with the projector blazing all white (RGB 4096,4096,4096 while putting 106 nits on the screen), then when the projector is blazing as close to black as it can translate the R, G, B values of 0,0,0 you grab a measurement and divide it into the measurement of the previous slide and call it a ratio of something to 1. Alluding to this as an industry standard test pattern is still a valid way to show their point, and just because it is condensing science and art to communicate a point that might otherwise take minutes to show doesn’t make it wrong. On the other hand, it also isn’t a test if you only give one score of the game. Wasn’t there a George Carlin routine where he only gave half the baseball scores for games? Dolby is giving the dividend (106) and the quotient (a million~!) and saying, “Find your own divisor. ” There were 14 runs in the game and the winning team had 2 more than the other team. Or as they said in a recent public demo when being asked for that number, “That is rather difficult. ” Yes. Science is difficult. Communicating science is even more difficult.
So, let’s do this. Just because that is what was recommended at the Press Demo – Divide 106 by a million. Pencils for photons as pixels.
- 106 is one to one.
- 10. 6 is ten to one.
- 1. 06 is a hundred to one.
- 0. 106 is a thousand to one.
- 0. 0106 is ten thousand to one.
- 0. 00106 is a hundred thousand to one.
- 0. 000106 is a million to one. 1,000,000:1 – Seven orders of magnitude.
The first statement that many engineers make is “Perhaps that low end number can’t really be measured, maybe?”
Yes. Individual photons can be detected if need be. Not with typical industry tools of course since they aren’t designed to measure in the range required. Tools in the same families as the high end tools will get close, and there are specialty companies that go even deeper. Length of time and number of measurements and repeatability all become a mirage that needs to be approached with caution, and if a marketing person were in the room they would say, “Look at that!!! Let’s say Infinity to One. ” Or, they can say that the score is 106 to a million.
Before we go back to the absolute awesome next step in the demo. . . and that is said with no hyperbole. . . , one more point to clear up the last detail of ‘test pattern’. The spot on the black field is closer to what is called the Intra-frame spec. This is a technique for measuring the projector’s ability to produce simultaneous light and dark. Usually this is done with a checkerboard grid of black and white and the spec is not anywhere close to 2000:1. The nominal number is 150:1, and both review and theatrical are allowed to hit 100:1 minimum.
This is only interesting because measuring (and mis-measuring) grey level and black and white levels were a huge point of contention in the consumer market and yet again the market is being saturated with number noise (and marketing bits) due to a concept called HDR. In the past, a number would be made up and then the science would be made to fit it. Not by Dolby, of course. . . they be science people. But as an example of bad actors in the past, for one common spec the marketeers would define black as 90% grey and white as 10% white and measure from those. There were projector manufacturers who would use a clever technique of dynamic irising to increase their contrast ratio. There is currently one large screen system which uses a variation on this by using a faster and anamorphic lens and a dark, high gain screen. The re-reflection of a bunch of gold filigreed wall decorations in an auditorium with that system and everything takes on a green cast.
But seriously, from a fanboy viewpoint, it may not matter if it is a million or 10 thousand to one if the entire system isn’t adjusted for the movie environment. We can’t have a lot of light in the darkened theater, or we’d be blinded every time there is an actual multi-thousand nit explosion of light. The eyes protective bleaching will kick in and it will be another 30 minutes before we get the benefit of all that dark again. . . or color at all. This is the HVS’s (human visual system’s) magic of accommodation, and Dolby’s design and AMC’s implementation try to take every advantage possible to make it work for us in our seats.
The Dolby Vision entrance announces with an inviting corridor of slowly moving scenes from the coming movie which get your eyes going into dark right away. The auditorium itself is black on black with highlights of deep red. You know that red. . . it is the long wavelength that you remember from scenes of a darkroom. Some magic allows the eyes to use the red without making all the other internal parts get stimulated. In a nice touch, each of the speakers. . . and there are a lot of them on the walls and in the ceiling for this Atmos system. . . each of them is lit with enough red light to see the details of the cones in the arrays or hanging boxes.
Very cool. If only they lit up the speakers behind the screen. Wonder if they tried it. Did the red show through the micro-perfs of the screen and look cool or did that show the screen shaking devices? We’ll probably not find out. There might be interest in dynamic irising, but there is just as much interest in how one keeps a screen tight when the room changes with humidity and temperature. Will it be an invitation for some smartass to come up with a term like the Aurora Borealis effect when the frequencies get out of balance and the waves make a pattern across parts of the sheet? Or did Dolby nail this problem already? Will have others who are in the big-screen-with-laser-equipment business, those who still need to use screen shakers to keep the speckle down?
OK; back to the test pattern. After a few seconds of letting the eyes get used to the 2000:1 contrast of white to grey/black, suddenly there is a visual pop. The white does something, but the eyes really see the grey drop several levels to black black black. The intensity of the black is matte on matte. . . or is it that the matte on matte takes on its own kind of intensity vacuum? It is somewhat, that the existence of non-existence that gets triggered. As in, you look at a dark pair of pants in a scene and if you have some contrast you can see that it isn’t just dark but there can be shadows in the dark. With more contrast there will be texture in the faintly lit parts of the fabric that may be darker or lighter than the shadows, and so on. This is the opposite. You notice that there is no subtle shade darker than what you are ‘seeing’, but that you sense that you would have the ability to see a range if it weren’t so dang perfectly black.
What does all this contrast mean? We don’t watch black and white movies. And color is. . . well, color. They’re different parts of the physiological input system. Cones and rods and the twain where they meet. And that cones-based color system gathers data from only 40% of your field of vision, give or take 10% or so. To ‘see’ this, put your hands at 90° from each other, then cut that in half for 45°. Place that in front of your eyes. In the center angle is what the color wavelength sensitive cones are ‘seeing’. Outside of that is what the black and white sensing rods are receiving. Any colors you ‘see’ there is either made up or residual memory from the last time your eyes scanned that part of your field of vision. . . . or something like that.
When studying light and color, there is a lot of math and quite a bit of science. But when dealing with light and color perception, suddenly all the papers come from the psychology department. Another thing that is quickly noticed is that no matter what you knew 10 years ago, all the new papers will contradict or refine that data. How all this contrast affects the color images is difficult to discuss because it approaches magic. So, case in point, it was thought that we don’t see color outside of a cone that is 30° of our vision. Now it might be 40 or with certain colors, up to 60°. Everything else is perceived in blacks and greys and white, but the point is that what one knew is no longer true and not only from an empirical (more or less) vantage. The new data comes from a tangent. It isn’t colors from cones, but colors from a mental opposing color mechanism unique to one branch of the evolutionary chain. Opponent colors? That is so 1890’s and Goethe. Wherever it comes from, there is a richness to the color and Dolby has been great with seminar papers and web seminars trying to up our game.
Well, you might ask – those who have upped their game, perhaps the richness comes from laser’s capability to indulge us in a wider set of primary colors, a bit deeper blues and slightly deeper reds and a bit more green (and thereby brightness. ) But we were told at the AMC/Dolby Press Briefing that this extra color space capability – known as Rec. 2020’s color gamut – is entirely a Creatives’ decision and that thus far only one scene of one movie has used the extended gamut (that being the monster scene in Inside/Out. ) We were also told that using 2020 had no negatives, including no extra energy draw. Turns out that this is because the laser diodes happen to be at frequencies that are conducive to 2020 and need no more encouragement to deliver that gamut. . . and that every manufacturer is drawing from the same set of parts. But, that isn’t the reason for the extra pop.
In fact, we are so used to seeing colors in terms of horseshoes that we forget that there is a range of lightness and darkness for all the colors that we are aware of. Just as with understanding sound, we sense quite a lot more than we often understand, then we realize that there is not only much more nuance but much more complication like ‘squares of the distance’ and reflections at certain frequencies, and physical things that happen at some harmonics more than it happens at others.
Unraveling magic is all we’re left with. Nothing wrong with that. How contrast affects color perception is a great field of study. All we know for certain is that the HVS wants to have a white point to hang its hat on and will let the gooiest brown be white if that is the best it can get. And it will then use that spot as the reference for everything else. We also know that while we can see a range of 14 orders of magnitude of light (ten million to one), at any one time we can only grab about 5 orders of magnitude (10 thousand to one) – again, not so different from our sound capabilities.
Using sound as an example, we might be able to make amplifiers and speakers that could create sound pressure levels that are beyond 2 or 3 multiples of the loudest we have now, but we cannot use it. The ears would clamp down, using its versions of chemical and electrical desensitising, just like the vision system shuts down to protect itself. We’re limited at the top. This being the case, instead of cranking up the amount of light we want bouncing off the screen, refining down into the blacks makes sense. You get the mind thinking that the sun light level is correct and the orders of magnitude of depth are the luxury it craves.
Now that we have learned entendu, (if only the French had a word for it), and how that affects the efficiency of using light and power at the DLP in the projector, we get to learn the human analog, the land of Mr. and Mrs. Troland’s son Leonard. What can go efficiently and effectively into the eye? This isn’t nano stuff, but the iris of the eye makes it is square millimeter stuff and single nits and steradians that actually can be allowed to get into the eye. . . What Mr. Troland has to say about whether there is special magic in a million to one or whether 10 thousand to one would serve just as well will be the musings of a future article.
Fortunately and notwithstanding, we have our tickets to see Spectre in a Dolby Vision room, and we’ll have our Suspension of Disbelief set onto 11, ’cause that’s one more. . . or as the case may be, -11, ’cause that’s one less. Impressions later.
Oh, and to be certain, there is no pretense at extra super secret knowledge in any of the above. After the Press event your author sent a dozen questions or so to the press and engineering people at Dolby and got no response. More on those questions later as well – suffice to say that this system is the high end of the format wars, and it will be a closed system boutique and nuanced experience for a long time. They don’t need to show us no stinking badges, or tell us about multiple DLPs talking to other DLPs so that no light slips into the cracks.
Other articles on tangential topics:
Dolby Vision and The Force of Darkness
Lessons of Spectre and the Force (WIP)
The Spectre of Vision
Nonetheless, they basically are pumping up the bright by 2 – and getting the studios to create and distribute a custom master print – but it is the dark that Dolby wants you to concentrate on. Want to or not, you will notice it. If there were black masking drapes to compare the screen to, the screen may be darker than the drapes, which is truly a terrific phenomena after a decade and a half of getting better and better digital cinema but, until now, no great blacks. They will not give a measured amount of darkness in nits or candela, nor will they tell you how the magic is done. But they will give a curiously round number of a million to one as the contrast ratio being presented. Isn’t it great when the laws of physics give round numbers? Let’s see. Move the decimal to the left a few times and a few times more and viola~! Less than 0. 0001 nits is the amount of dark that the Dolby Vision system is able to present. High Dynamic Range.
Let’s be clear about what that means, since there is a great demo associated with the system. A circle in a field of black is presented and we are told that this is the standard 48 candela/meter2 against a black field that the typical digital cinema projector is delivering at your cinema. What they are presenting is a 2000:1 ratio circle of white to field black, which they say is a test pattern for the standard. They are being very kind when saying that this is the contrast of the typical cinema. In fact, the specification in the SMPTE and ISO standards (or is that a Recommended Practice?), the one that requires a nominal 2000:1 value is the Sequential Contrast test. This standard actually allows 1500:1 for a review room and no less than 1200:1 for a Theatrical room. But they are making the point without confusion because of what they are going to do next, which is increase the light output and decrease the dark output. Let’s slide into that with a little tangent.
First, a white circle on a black field is a test pattern, but it isn’t a sequential test pattern. The Sequential Test doesn’t need a pattern since you just shoot the room with the projector blazing all white (RGB 4096,4096,4096 while putting 106 nits on the screen), then when the projector is blazing as close to black as it can translate the R, G, B values of 0,0,0 you grab a measurement and divide it into the measurement of the previous slide and call it a ratio of something to 1. Alluding to this as an industry standard test pattern is still a valid way to show their point, and just because it is condensing science and art to communicate a point that might otherwise take minutes to show doesn’t make it wrong. On the other hand, it also isn’t a test if you only give one score of the game. Wasn’t there a George Carlin routine where he only gave half the baseball scores for games? Dolby is giving the dividend (106) and the quotient (a million~!) and saying, “Find your own divisor. ” There were 14 runs in the game and the winning team had 2 more than the other team. Or as they said in a recent public demo when being asked for that number, “That is rather difficult. ” Yes. Science is difficult. Communicating science is even more difficult.
So, let’s do this. Just because that is what was recommended at the Press Demo – Divide 106 by a million. Pencils for photons as pixels.
- 106 is one to one.
- 10. 6 is ten to one.
- 1. 06 is a hundred to one.
- 0. 106 is a thousand to one.
- 0. 0106 is ten thousand to one.
- 0. 00106 is a hundred thousand to one.
- 0. 000106 is a million to one. 1,000,000:1 – Seven orders of magnitude.
The first statement that many engineers make is “Perhaps that low end number can’t really be measured, maybe?”
Yes. Individual photons can be detected if need be. Not with typical industry tools of course since they aren’t designed to measure in the range required. Tools in the same families as the high end tools will get close, and there are specialty companies that go even deeper. Length of time and number of measurements and repeatability all become a mirage that needs to be approached with caution, and if a marketing person were in the room they would say, “Look at that!!! Let’s say Infinity to One. ” Or, they can say that the score is 106 to a million.
Before we go back to the absolute awesome next step in the demo. . . and that is said with no hyperbole. . . , one more point to clear up the last detail of ‘test pattern’. The spot on the black field is closer to what is called the Intra-frame spec. This is a technique for measuring the projector’s ability to produce simultaneous light and dark. Usually this is done with a checkerboard grid of black and white and the spec is not anywhere close to 2000:1. The nominal number is 150:1, and both review and theatrical are allowed to hit 100:1 minimum.
This is only interesting because measuring (and mis-measuring) grey level and black and white levels were a huge point of contention in the consumer market and yet again the market is being saturated with number noise (and marketing bits) due to a concept called HDR. In the past, a number would be made up and then the science would be made to fit it. Not by Dolby, of course. . . they be science people. But as an example of bad actors in the past, for one common spec the marketeers would define black as 90% grey and white as 10% white and measure from those. There were projector manufacturers who would use a clever technique of dynamic irising to increase their contrast ratio. There is currently one large screen system which uses a variation on this by using a faster and anamorphic lens and a dark, high gain screen. The re-reflection of a bunch of gold filigreed wall decorations in an auditorium with that system and everything takes on a green cast.
But seriously, from a fanboy viewpoint, it may not matter if it is a million or 10 thousand to one if the entire system isn’t adjusted for the movie environment. We can’t have a lot of light in the darkened theater, or we’d be blinded every time there is an actual multi-thousand nit explosion of light. The eyes protective bleaching will kick in and it will be another 30 minutes before we get the benefit of all that dark again. . . or color at all. This is the HVS’s (human visual system’s) magic of accommodation, and Dolby’s design and AMC’s implementation try to take every advantage possible to make it work for us in our seats.
The Dolby Vision entrance announces with an inviting corridor of slowly moving scenes from the coming movie which get your eyes going into dark right away. The auditorium itself is black on black with highlights of deep red. You know that red. . . it is the long wavelength that you remember from scenes of a darkroom. Some magic allows the eyes to use the red without making all the other internal parts get stimulated. In a nice touch, each of the speakers. . . and there are a lot of them on the walls and in the ceiling for this Atmos system. . . each of them is lit with enough red light to see the details of the cones in the arrays or hanging boxes.
Very cool. If only they lit up the speakers behind the screen. Wonder if they tried it. Did the red show through the micro-perfs of the screen and look cool or did that show the screen shaking devices? We’ll probably not find out. There might be interest in dynamic irising, but there is just as much interest in how one keeps a screen tight when the room changes with humidity and temperature. Will it be an invitation for some smartass to come up with a term like the Aurora Borealis effect when the frequencies get out of balance and the waves make a pattern across parts of the sheet? Or did Dolby nail this problem already? Will have others who are in the big-screen-with-laser-equipment business, those who still need to use screen shakers to keep the speckle down?
OK; back to the test pattern. After a few seconds of letting the eyes get used to the 2000:1 contrast of white to grey/black, suddenly there is a visual pop. The white does something, but the eyes really see the grey drop several levels to black black black. The intensity of the black is matte on matte. . . or is it that the matte on matte takes on its own kind of intensity vacuum? It is somewhat, that the existence of non-existence that gets triggered. As in, you look at a dark pair of pants in a scene and if you have some contrast you can see that it isn’t just dark but there can be shadows in the dark. With more contrast there will be texture in the faintly lit parts of the fabric that may be darker or lighter than the shadows, and so on. This is the opposite. You notice that there is no subtle shade darker than what you are ‘seeing’, but that you sense that you would have the ability to see a range if it weren’t so dang perfectly black.
What does all this contrast mean? We don’t watch black and white movies. And color is. . . well, color. They’re different parts of the physiological input system. Cones and rods and the twain where they meet. And that cones-based color system gathers data from only 40% of your field of vision, give or take 10% or so. To ‘see’ this, put your hands at 90° from each other, then cut that in half for 45°. Place that in front of your eyes. In the center angle is what the color wavelength sensitive cones are ‘seeing’. Outside of that is what the black and white sensing rods are receiving. Any colors you ‘see’ there is either made up or residual memory from the last time your eyes scanned that part of your field of vision. . . . or something like that.
When studying light and color, there is a lot of math and quite a bit of science. But when dealing with light and color perception, suddenly all the papers come from the psychology department. Another thing that is quickly noticed is that no matter what you knew 10 years ago, all the new papers will contradict or refine that data. How all this contrast affects the color images is difficult to discuss because it approaches magic. So, case in point, it was thought that we don’t see color outside of a cone that is 30° of our vision. Now it might be 40 or with certain colors, up to 60°. Everything else is perceived in blacks and greys and white, but the point is that what one knew is no longer true and not only from an empirical (more or less) vantage. The new data comes from a tangent. It isn’t colors from cones, but colors from a mental opposing color mechanism unique to one branch of the evolutionary chain. Opponent colors? That is so 1890’s and Goethe. Wherever it comes from, there is a richness to the color and Dolby has been great with seminar papers and web seminars trying to up our game.
Well, you might ask – those who have upped their game, perhaps the richness comes from laser’s capability to indulge us in a wider set of primary colors, a bit deeper blues and slightly deeper reds and a bit more green (and thereby brightness. ) But we were told at the AMC/Dolby Press Briefing that this extra color space capability – known as Rec. 2020’s color gamut – is entirely a Creatives’ decision and that thus far only one scene of one movie has used the extended gamut (that being the monster scene in Inside/Out. ) We were also told that using 2020 had no negatives, including no extra energy draw. Turns out that this is because the laser diodes happen to be at frequencies that are conducive to 2020 and need no more encouragement to deliver that gamut. . . and that every manufacturer is drawing from the same set of parts. But, that isn’t the reason for the extra pop.
In fact, we are so used to seeing colors in terms of horseshoes that we forget that there is a range of lightness and darkness for all the colors that we are aware of. Just as with understanding sound, we sense quite a lot more than we often understand, then we realize that there is not only much more nuance but much more complication like ‘squares of the distance’ and reflections at certain frequencies, and physical things that happen at some harmonics more than it happens at others.
Unraveling magic is all we’re left with. Nothing wrong with that. How contrast affects color perception is a great field of study. All we know for certain is that the HVS wants to have a white point to hang its hat on and will let the gooiest brown be white if that is the best it can get. And it will then use that spot as the reference for everything else. We also know that while we can see a range of 14 orders of magnitude of light (ten million to one), at any one time we can only grab about 5 orders of magnitude (10 thousand to one) – again, not so different from our sound capabilities.
Using sound as an example, we might be able to make amplifiers and speakers that could create sound pressure levels that are beyond 2 or 3 multiples of the loudest we have now, but we cannot use it. The ears would clamp down, using its versions of chemical and electrical desensitising, just like the vision system shuts down to protect itself. We’re limited at the top. This being the case, instead of cranking up the amount of light we want bouncing off the screen, refining down into the blacks makes sense. You get the mind thinking that the sun light level is correct and the orders of magnitude of depth are the luxury it craves.
Now that we have learned entendu, (if only the French had a word for it), and how that affects the efficiency of using light and power at the DLP in the projector, we get to learn the human analog, the land of Mr. and Mrs. Troland’s son Leonard. What can go efficiently and effectively into the eye? This isn’t nano stuff, but the iris of the eye makes it is square millimeter stuff and single nits and steradians that actually can be allowed to get into the eye. . . What Mr. Troland has to say about whether there is special magic in a million to one or whether 10 thousand to one would serve just as well will be the musings of a future article.
Fortunately and notwithstanding, we have our tickets to see Spectre in a Dolby Vision room, and we’ll have our Suspension of Disbelief set onto 11, ’cause that’s one more. . . or as the case may be, -11, ’cause that’s one less. Impressions later.
Oh, and to be certain, there is no pretense at extra super secret knowledge in any of the above. After the Press event your author sent a dozen questions or so to the press and engineering people at Dolby and got no response. More on those questions later as well – suffice to say that this system is the high end of the format wars, and it will be a closed system boutique and nuanced experience for a long time. They don’t need to show us no stinking badges, or tell us about multiple DLPs talking to other DLPs so that no light slips into the cracks.
Other articles on tangential topics:
Dolby Vision and The Force of Darkness
Lessons of Spectre and the Force (WIP)
Outside Researched Views Immersive
The leaders want something great that no one else can have so they can attract the great clients. This is true in production, in post-productin and in now more commonly in exhibition. Do they want to have competing systems that mean that their big-super-room is locked out from 50% of the movies? Probably not 50%, but there is a number that is probably palatable. To discuss it another point has to be made.
Digital Cinema in full transition has been 100% of digits-to-the-chip with some standard deliverable to all the cinema theaters. It couldn’t have worked with only 10% of the facilities making the change. Paragraphs could be written on this point, but not now.
Immersive audio isn’t in that category. There will not be 100% saturation of immersive audio ever. Does anyone venture to say that it will reach 20%? Even with less expensive systems built from less robust hardware and technical support, the majority will find that it is too expensive to put in the dozens of even more expensive amplifiers and speakers in the majority of their auditoriums. Which fits in with a lot of other points that say: there is and always will be a myriad of rooms with different capabilities.
When M:I5 got kicked out of the best room in the house for its tepid replacement, it goes to a lesser room and most of the remaining audience won’t care. The movie is enough of a ride or they kick themselves for going late or whatever. Most facilities probably won’t have a 2nd great room to move it into. And if a movie comes along that is mixed exclusively in another format – for the super sound system – it will also have a standard 5.1 or 7.1 mix that will play just fine for the majority of the audience.
What is the message when an exhibition company says (as Randi writes): “The cinema owners are concerned about investing in one format only for another to become the standard. To quote one panel member, “No one wants to own an HD-DVD when the world has gone Blu-ray.””
First, false corollary. There will always be the uncompressed 5.1 or 7.1 mix that, when in a room that is properly tuned, will rock most listeners regardless that it ain’t an AuroMax or Atmos or DTS:X/MDA variant. What they are probably saying is, I don’t want to have what everyone else has, especially if it is Dolby, because they are ubiquitous and I want special. But I also don’t want to get stuck with something that will be a doorstop in a few years…and they are thinking in the back of their minds: No one ever got fired for buying IBM Dolby.
Fair enough, but when the majority of the cost is in speakers and amplifiers and wiring that can be plugged into the winning system, best you can hope for is that you can market whatever you buy in the time that it was special. Good luck. Basically, it isn’t the same as it was when a $30,000 investment in the best film projector possible would last for 30 years or more. Servers and projectors that cost 3 times as much and last for 10 years will be held in high regard. It used to be that changing the DTS or Dolby or SDDS head at $15 grand was a huge unthinkable sum. That’s just not the way it is anymore.
There is other nuance in what Randi writes. There is a most important question that shouldn’t be ignored: Of whether a perfectly homogenized system that can input anything and playback to what-I-installed …will actually sound as good as something that is input/output to the system it was mixed in?. This is where a writer who is on the committees has to be careful. Nobody can talk about Fight Club. You don’t have to go to the SMPTE committee meetings to know that theory says: It is just algorithms and laws of physics. On the other hand, this author’s grandfather helped figure out how to get lights working in an under-river tunnel that 10 years previous had to be given up on because electricity science had gotten that far for that distance yet.
Choose your speakers and amps and cables wisely.
Outside Researched Views Immersive
The leaders want something great that no one else can have so they can attract the great clients. This is true in production, in post-productin and in now more commonly in exhibition. Do they want to have competing systems that mean that their big-super-room is locked out from 50% of the movies? Probably not 50%, but there is a number that is probably palatable. To discuss it another point has to be made.
Digital Cinema in full transition has been 100% of digits-to-the-chip with some standard deliverable to all the cinema theaters. It couldn’t have worked with only 10% of the facilities making the change. Paragraphs could be written on this point, but not now.
Immersive audio isn’t in that category. There will not be 100% saturation of immersive audio ever. Does anyone venture to say that it will reach 20%? Even with less expensive systems built from less robust hardware and technical support, the majority will find that it is too expensive to put in the dozens of even more expensive amplifiers and speakers in the majority of their auditoriums. Which fits in with a lot of other points that say: there is and always will be a myriad of rooms with different capabilities.
When M:I5 got kicked out of the best room in the house for its tepid replacement, it goes to a lesser room and most of the remaining audience won’t care. The movie is enough of a ride or they kick themselves for going late or whatever. Most facilities probably won’t have a 2nd great room to move it into. And if a movie comes along that is mixed exclusively in another format – for the super sound system – it will also have a standard 5.1 or 7.1 mix that will play just fine for the majority of the audience.
What is the message when an exhibition company says (as Randi writes): “The cinema owners are concerned about investing in one format only for another to become the standard. To quote one panel member, “No one wants to own an HD-DVD when the world has gone Blu-ray.””
First, false corollary. There will always be the uncompressed 5.1 or 7.1 mix that, when in a room that is properly tuned, will rock most listeners regardless that it ain’t an AuroMax or Atmos or DTS:X/MDA variant. What they are probably saying is, I don’t want to have what everyone else has, especially if it is Dolby, because they are ubiquitous and I want special. But I also don’t want to get stuck with something that will be a doorstop in a few years…and they are thinking in the back of their minds: No one ever got fired for buying IBM Dolby.
Fair enough, but when the majority of the cost is in speakers and amplifiers and wiring that can be plugged into the winning system, best you can hope for is that you can market whatever you buy in the time that it was special. Good luck. Basically, it isn’t the same as it was when a $30,000 investment in the best film projector possible would last for 30 years or more. Servers and projectors that cost 3 times as much and last for 10 years will be held in high regard. It used to be that changing the DTS or Dolby or SDDS head at $15 grand was a huge unthinkable sum. That’s just not the way it is anymore.
There is other nuance in what Randi writes. There is a most important question that shouldn’t be ignored: Of whether a perfectly homogenized system that can input anything and playback to what-I-installed …will actually sound as good as something that is input/output to the system it was mixed in?. This is where a writer who is on the committees has to be careful. Nobody can talk about Fight Club. You don’t have to go to the SMPTE committee meetings to know that theory says: It is just algorithms and laws of physics. On the other hand, this author’s grandfather helped figure out how to get lights working in an under-river tunnel that 10 years previous had to be given up on because electricity science had gotten that far for that distance yet.
Choose your speakers and amps and cables wisely.
CineEurope Solutions: NOC and Screen Verify (UPDATE)
Harkness Screens is offering their new iPhone Luminance meter – Oops! Digital Screen Verifier app – at a 25% discount this week – until 28 June. This is another tool that brings expertise to the “your own staff”, but it also brings the data into the Harkness database tool, which management or a service provider can use externally to make certain that the projector/screen interface is working well.
USL has announced that their model two version of the LSS-100, as the LSS-100P, incorporating new features, in some cases surpassing and some cases keeping up with the Digital Test Tools Digital eXperience Guardian – both have a method for detecting speakers (or amp) that are not playing – the Guardian’s as part of the NewNoise Detection System that points out the area of new rattles or noises, while the 100 has added a satelite sync test, this being a new and clever feature in this Event Cinema Era.
Sony has 3 interesting items at the CinemaEurope 2015 assemblag. First is showing 2 of their 4K systems in one box! The is good for screens up to 19.5 meters (1.8 gain white) at 48 candela/m2 and 15.4 cd/m2 for 3D on a 2.4 gain silver screen. The nice claim is 8000:1 contrast ratio, which should really make things nice. Oops! These press releases should be read better: The units are not in one box but are a match set of projectors that can be placed side to side or on top of each other. That shoud be interesting to see anyway.
They also point out that their managed services are compelling due to VPFs disappearing.
Finally, and most interesting is how Sony is promoting the Alternative Content, or as it is better described, Event Cinema market.
Leading the way in Event Cinema
Projected in Sony 4K for an unforgettable experience, the fast-growing Event Cinema market is attracting new audiences with a revenue-boosting blend of live and recorded events to suit every screen owner.
In February 2015, Sony Digital Cinema 4K announced a ground-breaking initiative with the National Theatre and Vue Entertainment to screen four NT Live stage productions in detail-packed 4K. The first of these –Behind the Beautiful Forevers – was recorded in March and screened as a series of exclusive 4K presentations across Vue’s 83-site estate.
Details of the next 4K productions covered by this historic agreement will be confirmed during the ECA (Event Cinema Association) hosted panel discussion: “Event Cinema- Taking Stock and Looking Forward”, which takes place at CineEurope on the tradeshow floor, 4pm on Tuesday 23rd June. Addressing the session will be Emma Keith, National Theatre Live and Johnny Carr, Vue Entertainment. They’ll be discussing the recording of Behind the Beautiful Forevers – and outlining more exciting technical developments for the upcoming shows – with John Bullen, VPF and Content Manager for Sony 4K Digital Cinema (Europe).
Learn more about Event Cinema
“It’s great to be back at CineEurope once more”, says David McIntosh. “Since we last came to Barcelona a year ago, Sony Digital Cinema 4K has successfully implemented a unified new global business structure. Today we’re seeing this pay dividends with an improved service for our exhibition customers, significant business wins across Europe and beyond – and a further strengthening in our product offering, with industry-leading 4K solutions for cinemas of every size.”
Sony has filled in the details of their next Event Cinema adventure and it sounds like a good one.
CineEurope Solutions: NOC and Screen Verify (UPDATE)
Harkness Screens is offering their new iPhone Luminance meter – Oops! Digital Screen Verifier app – at a 25% discount this week – until 28 June. This is another tool that brings expertise to the “your own staff”, but it also brings the data into the Harkness database tool, which management or a service provider can use externally to make certain that the projector/screen interface is working well.
USL has announced that their model two version of the LSS-100, as the LSS-100P, incorporating new features, in some cases surpassing and some cases keeping up with the Digital Test Tools Digital eXperience Guardian – both have a method for detecting speakers (or amp) that are not playing – the Guardian’s as part of the NewNoise Detection System that points out the area of new rattles or noises, while the 100 has added a satelite sync test, this being a new and clever feature in this Event Cinema Era.
Sony has 3 interesting items at the CinemaEurope 2015 assemblag. First is showing 2 of their 4K systems in one box! The is good for screens up to 19.5 meters (1.8 gain white) at 48 candela/m2 and 15.4 cd/m2 for 3D on a 2.4 gain silver screen. The nice claim is 8000:1 contrast ratio, which should really make things nice. Oops! These press releases should be read better: The units are not in one box but are a match set of projectors that can be placed side to side or on top of each other. That shoud be interesting to see anyway.
They also point out that their managed services are compelling due to VPFs disappearing.
Finally, and most interesting is how Sony is promoting the Alternative Content, or as it is better described, Event Cinema market.
Leading the way in Event Cinema
Projected in Sony 4K for an unforgettable experience, the fast-growing Event Cinema market is attracting new audiences with a revenue-boosting blend of live and recorded events to suit every screen owner.
In February 2015, Sony Digital Cinema 4K announced a ground-breaking initiative with the National Theatre and Vue Entertainment to screen four NT Live stage productions in detail-packed 4K. The first of these –Behind the Beautiful Forevers – was recorded in March and screened as a series of exclusive 4K presentations across Vue’s 83-site estate.
Details of the next 4K productions covered by this historic agreement will be confirmed during the ECA (Event Cinema Association) hosted panel discussion: “Event Cinema- Taking Stock and Looking Forward”, which takes place at CineEurope on the tradeshow floor, 4pm on Tuesday 23rd June. Addressing the session will be Emma Keith, National Theatre Live and Johnny Carr, Vue Entertainment. They’ll be discussing the recording of Behind the Beautiful Forevers – and outlining more exciting technical developments for the upcoming shows – with John Bullen, VPF and Content Manager for Sony 4K Digital Cinema (Europe).
Learn more about Event Cinema
“It’s great to be back at CineEurope once more”, says David McIntosh. “Since we last came to Barcelona a year ago, Sony Digital Cinema 4K has successfully implemented a unified new global business structure. Today we’re seeing this pay dividends with an improved service for our exhibition customers, significant business wins across Europe and beyond – and a further strengthening in our product offering, with industry-leading 4K solutions for cinemas of every size.”
Sony has filled in the details of their next Event Cinema adventure and it sounds like a good one.
The Earliest Exhibitor
This story is worth several good minutes – Still Playing: The Theater That Saw The Birth Of Cinema
The Earliest Exhibitor
This story is worth several good minutes – Still Playing: The Theater That Saw The Birth Of Cinema
CinemaCon Technology: Evolution Has Arrived
IMAX is making its pitch with their new dual-laser light projectors. Unfortunately, unless one is in Toronto the only screen to make a judgement upon is the horridly dark silver screen with the gold reflections of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Horrible green-grey cast to everything.
But the boutique niche of ultra-quality is what Dolby is moving into in an all-encompassing way. If all popcorn weren’t already GMO-Free, perhaps they would have attacked that problem as well.
Barco meanwhile has launched a full range of non-xenon projectors that will have the same Cost of Ownership as xenon in something like 3 years…or 2 or 5 or some number significantly less than the 10 years of their warranty. And, for those 25 or 30 thousand owners of C Series Barco projectors, there is a laser retrofit, with an S Series retrofit later this year.
Why buy anything else? Big room with ability to share profits with Dolby, then the choice is Dolby Vision. Studios will be releasing a special High Dynamic Range DCP for them, and the question will be whether Barco Laser system owners can get that DCP as well and whether Barco can tweak for them a bit more HDR instead of their previous goal of “Let’s keep everything at the DCI minimums until people know what they need and want.”
What we want is more…
Barco Auro will deliver their new object oriented system soon which incorporates some technology from the IOSONO purchase. Time will tell, especially since they have been talking about this for 2 or 3 years…but it aligns with the push for a standard interchange of immersive mixes, driven by the studios desire for the One Master and Open Source where possible, which DTS:X is driving toward with MDA.
But there should be no confusion with any of the other brilliant products shown or discussed at the show. The evolution to the Dolby complete package and Barco’s laser projectors is monumental.
CinemaCon Technology: Evolution Has Arrived
IMAX is making its pitch with their new dual-laser light projectors. Unfortunately, unless one is in Toronto the only screen to make a judgement upon is the horridly dark silver screen with the gold reflections of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Horrible green-grey cast to everything.
But the boutique niche of ultra-quality is what Dolby is moving into in an all-encompassing way. If all popcorn weren’t already GMO-Free, perhaps they would have attacked that problem as well.
Barco meanwhile has launched a full range of non-xenon projectors that will have the same Cost of Ownership as xenon in something like 3 years…or 2 or 5 or some number significantly less than the 10 years of their warranty. And, for those 25 or 30 thousand owners of C Series Barco projectors, there is a laser retrofit, with an S Series retrofit later this year.
Why buy anything else? Big room with ability to share profits with Dolby, then the choice is Dolby Vision. Studios will be releasing a special High Dynamic Range DCP for them, and the question will be whether Barco Laser system owners can get that DCP as well and whether Barco can tweak for them a bit more HDR instead of their previous goal of “Let’s keep everything at the DCI minimums until people know what they need and want.”
What we want is more…
Barco Auro will deliver their new object oriented system soon which incorporates some technology from the IOSONO purchase. Time will tell, especially since they have been talking about this for 2 or 3 years…but it aligns with the push for a standard interchange of immersive mixes, driven by the studios desire for the One Master and Open Source where possible, which DTS:X is driving toward with MDA.
But there should be no confusion with any of the other brilliant products shown or discussed at the show. The evolution to the Dolby complete package and Barco’s laser projectors is monumental.