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Tubes V xSistors: The Dauphinee Report [Updated]

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Nevertheless, Fagan, Miles, Clapton, Yo-Yo and Muddy (Mobile Fidelity version of “Folk Singer”, thank you) made the cut.  We began with a Japanese collector CD featuring a piano trio, just to warm up the Tympanic cavity, and we were off to the races.  I could imagine dust shaking from the piano hammers and the rosin falling from the bass bow.  Outstanding!  We then turned to Donald Fagan’s “Mary Shut The Garden Door” that rumbles the factory-basic system of my Volkswagen CC.  The detail in the mix revealed by this extraordinary system was nothing short of breathtaking.  As a polite guest, I refrained from asking to repeat a vocal refrain that tends to make by butt melt when I hear it.  We moved on to Miles’ “Kind of Blue” and the disappointment in the fidelity begged for a small, bookshelf system, much like a 75 year old woman of great past beauty.  “Keep your clothes on, girl”.  “The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos” presented a church of substantial depth and minimum width – not unlike the Immaculate Conception church I grew up in back in Salem.  The recording was marked by annoying intermodulation that can’t be heard on a home hi-fi.  It’s in the mic-ing.  Perhaps a Pavarotti or Bocelli recording would have better revealed the purity of the male voice.

With my pedestrian collection reduced to the trivial, my neighbor rolled out an organ recording from Lincoln, Nebraska by Felix Hell – http://www.felixhell.com/ (I can’t make this stuff up!).  The performance was recorded when the kid was 17!  After we cleared the phlegm dislodged in our chests and adjust our trouser legs from all the flapping, we shifted over to Muddy Waters.  As if inspired, Muddy appeared in the room, slide guitar and all.  Great recording and remarkable reproduction.  We finished off the audition with Clapton’s “Reptile” instrumental – a very suitable conclusion played on a hollow body Gibson that floats like a samba.

My neighbor recently lost his wife, a beautiful concert pianist with perfect pitch.  She was instrumental in selecting the audio components and acoustic treatment in the home.  He proudly described how each Krell amplifer has an individual 30 amp “home run” to the breaker box with opposing phases – jacketed wiring of equal length – and $50, 1.5 foot power cords to each amp.  Bass traps in each corner behind the Dunlavy speakers compensated for standing waves and both front and back walls were “adjusted” prior to their move in to prevent parallel surfaces.  Even the glass coffee table was covered with a cotton quilt to minimize reflections.  This guy’s a perfectionist – and I adored it.

My neighbor spoke glowingly about his wife, whose photos graced the “great room” and she was a beauty.  I imagine a bit persnickety, but still beautiful.  My new-found acquaintance’s loneliness may be his incentive to reach out to me and I welcome his gestures.  Perhaps we can become friends beyond hobbyists.

Now back to the dilemma.  Sure there’s a difference.  Jeff Beck talks about the continuity of tubes as opposed to the switching nature of transistors.  Keith Richard shares that view.  When I hear tube systems, I just ask, “Can you turn up the volume?”  Most times, it can’t be done.  Like listening to Quad speakers from England.  Anything over ~92 dB SPL and they clip.  When all is said and done, I just plug in my Sennheiser ear buds and head to the gym with an eclectic playlist that gets me moving on the elliptical at a speed and heart rate that battles against the bulge in my waist.  But now, I may have found a new outlet to explore audiophile recordings and share my sonic treasures – as well as learning more about my colleague’s selections.

BTW, I’ve been following David Perrico and Pop Evolution, a band made up of some 20+ players, including 15 horns.  I’ll be interviewing David for our local cable access channel here very soon and will video record the entire 2 hour set at The Palms for b-roll to cut into the interview.  With a 6′ brunette on French horn and a Chinese electric viola player, what’s not to like?  Here’s a sample:

{youtube}Ys52YiBPwKQ{/youtube}

Fig 5. While probably not dead-on accurate, this schematic gives an idea of how Dunipace created a drop-in experiment by setting up a bias point on the MOSFETs, providing necessary thermal compensation, and reducing the gain enough to show that that the solid-state output devices performed like tubes.

Fig 5. While probably not dead-on accurate, this schematic gives an idea of how Dunipace created a drop-in experiment by setting up a bias point on the MOSFETs, providing necessary thermal compensation, and reducing the gain enough to show that that the solid-state output devices performed like tubes.

 

In an attempt to figure out why a vacuum-tube amplifier sounds different than a solid-state amplifier, Part 1 considered what we can hear, what we can discern, and some of the attributes of passive devices that affect audio design (see “‘House Of Fire’: Firebottles And Groove Tubes Versus Devices That Find Their Origins In Sand (Part 1)”).

The article discussed two extreme applications: a live performance with a guitar amplifier and one that required absolute accurate reproduction. Part 2 examines the active devices, the amplifier topologies, and, lastly, an experiment that shattered the myth that tubes sound better than transistors—all other things the same.

Active Devices: MOSFETs

There simply aren’t many MOSFETs available for linear amplifiers in the audio world. Linear MOSFETs are typically lateral devices that have no intrinsic body diode. The higher-gain MOSFETs used in switch-mode power-supply (SMPS) applications often won’t work in linear amplifiers due to hotspotting at low currents and high voltages in linear-mode operation. This was discovered at International Rectifier by a researcher named P. Spirito, and consequently named the Spirito Effect (see “The Spirito Effect Improved My Design—And I Didn’t Even Know It”).

Read the rest of the ElectronicDesign.com article at: Transistors, Tubes Sound The Same, It’s The Circuit Topologies That Differ

Part One is here: “House of Fire”: Firebottles And Groove Tubes Versus Devices That Find Their Origins in Sand (Part 1)

Basic Source-Follower Circuit Classic Emitter-Follower Circuit Typical (popular) Vacumn Tube Tube design concept Circuit for making solid state device perform like a tube.
Community FAQs

Tubes V xSistors: The Dauphinee Report [Updated]

Leave a comment

Nevertheless, Fagan, Miles, Clapton, Yo-Yo and Muddy (Mobile Fidelity version of “Folk Singer”, thank you) made the cut.  We began with a Japanese collector CD featuring a piano trio, just to warm up the Tympanic cavity, and we were off to the races.  I could imagine dust shaking from the piano hammers and the rosin falling from the bass bow.  Outstanding!  We then turned to Donald Fagan’s “Mary Shut The Garden Door” that rumbles the factory-basic system of my Volkswagen CC.  The detail in the mix revealed by this extraordinary system was nothing short of breathtaking.  As a polite guest, I refrained from asking to repeat a vocal refrain that tends to make by butt melt when I hear it.  We moved on to Miles’ “Kind of Blue” and the disappointment in the fidelity begged for a small, bookshelf system, much like a 75 year old woman of great past beauty.  “Keep your clothes on, girl”.  “The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos” presented a church of substantial depth and minimum width – not unlike the Immaculate Conception church I grew up in back in Salem.  The recording was marked by annoying intermodulation that can’t be heard on a home hi-fi.  It’s in the mic-ing.  Perhaps a Pavarotti or Bocelli recording would have better revealed the purity of the male voice.

With my pedestrian collection reduced to the trivial, my neighbor rolled out an organ recording from Lincoln, Nebraska by Felix Hell – http://www.felixhell.com/ (I can’t make this stuff up!).  The performance was recorded when the kid was 17!  After we cleared the phlegm dislodged in our chests and adjust our trouser legs from all the flapping, we shifted over to Muddy Waters.  As if inspired, Muddy appeared in the room, slide guitar and all.  Great recording and remarkable reproduction.  We finished off the audition with Clapton’s “Reptile” instrumental – a very suitable conclusion played on a hollow body Gibson that floats like a samba.

My neighbor recently lost his wife, a beautiful concert pianist with perfect pitch.  She was instrumental in selecting the audio components and acoustic treatment in the home.  He proudly described how each Krell amplifer has an individual 30 amp “home run” to the breaker box with opposing phases – jacketed wiring of equal length – and $50, 1.5 foot power cords to each amp.  Bass traps in each corner behind the Dunlavy speakers compensated for standing waves and both front and back walls were “adjusted” prior to their move in to prevent parallel surfaces.  Even the glass coffee table was covered with a cotton quilt to minimize reflections.  This guy’s a perfectionist – and I adored it.

My neighbor spoke glowingly about his wife, whose photos graced the “great room” and she was a beauty.  I imagine a bit persnickety, but still beautiful.  My new-found acquaintance’s loneliness may be his incentive to reach out to me and I welcome his gestures.  Perhaps we can become friends beyond hobbyists.

Now back to the dilemma.  Sure there’s a difference.  Jeff Beck talks about the continuity of tubes as opposed to the switching nature of transistors.  Keith Richard shares that view.  When I hear tube systems, I just ask, “Can you turn up the volume?”  Most times, it can’t be done.  Like listening to Quad speakers from England.  Anything over ~92 dB SPL and they clip.  When all is said and done, I just plug in my Sennheiser ear buds and head to the gym with an eclectic playlist that gets me moving on the elliptical at a speed and heart rate that battles against the bulge in my waist.  But now, I may have found a new outlet to explore audiophile recordings and share my sonic treasures – as well as learning more about my colleague’s selections.

BTW, I’ve been following David Perrico and Pop Evolution, a band made up of some 20+ players, including 15 horns.  I’ll be interviewing David for our local cable access channel here very soon and will video record the entire 2 hour set at The Palms for b-roll to cut into the interview.  With a 6′ brunette on French horn and a Chinese electric viola player, what’s not to like?  Here’s a sample:

{youtube}Ys52YiBPwKQ{/youtube}

Fig 5. While probably not dead-on accurate, this schematic gives an idea of how Dunipace created a drop-in experiment by setting up a bias point on the MOSFETs, providing necessary thermal compensation, and reducing the gain enough to show that that the solid-state output devices performed like tubes.

Fig 5. While probably not dead-on accurate, this schematic gives an idea of how Dunipace created a drop-in experiment by setting up a bias point on the MOSFETs, providing necessary thermal compensation, and reducing the gain enough to show that that the solid-state output devices performed like tubes.

 

In an attempt to figure out why a vacuum-tube amplifier sounds different than a solid-state amplifier, Part 1 considered what we can hear, what we can discern, and some of the attributes of passive devices that affect audio design (see “‘House Of Fire’: Firebottles And Groove Tubes Versus Devices That Find Their Origins In Sand (Part 1)”).

The article discussed two extreme applications: a live performance with a guitar amplifier and one that required absolute accurate reproduction. Part 2 examines the active devices, the amplifier topologies, and, lastly, an experiment that shattered the myth that tubes sound better than transistors—all other things the same.

Active Devices: MOSFETs

There simply aren’t many MOSFETs available for linear amplifiers in the audio world. Linear MOSFETs are typically lateral devices that have no intrinsic body diode. The higher-gain MOSFETs used in switch-mode power-supply (SMPS) applications often won’t work in linear amplifiers due to hotspotting at low currents and high voltages in linear-mode operation. This was discovered at International Rectifier by a researcher named P. Spirito, and consequently named the Spirito Effect (see “The Spirito Effect Improved My Design—And I Didn’t Even Know It”).

Read the rest of the ElectronicDesign.com article at: Transistors, Tubes Sound The Same, It’s The Circuit Topologies That Differ

Part One is here: “House of Fire”: Firebottles And Groove Tubes Versus Devices That Find Their Origins in Sand (Part 1)

Basic Source-Follower Circuit Classic Emitter-Follower Circuit Typical (popular) Vacumn Tube Tube design concept Circuit for making solid state device perform like a tube.
Basic Lessons

The Basics and a Tool for Creative Commons

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A nice article giving the basics of the Creative Commons License from Katherine Noyes in PC World: How to Protect Your Artistic Works With a Creative Commons License | PCWorld Business Center

Followed by another of her articles that refer to a tool that helps decide which license to choose for your situation: Need to Choose a Creative Commons License? This New Tool Can Help | PCWorld Business Center

Basic Lessons

The Basics and a Tool for Creative Commons

Leave a comment

A nice article giving the basics of the Creative Commons License from Katherine Noyes in PC World: How to Protect Your Artistic Works With a Creative Commons License | PCWorld Business Center

Followed by another of her articles that refer to a tool that helps decide which license to choose for your situation: Need to Choose a Creative Commons License? This New Tool Can Help | PCWorld Business Center

White Papers Advices

SSL Certificates

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This article is the beginnings of an article about SSL Certificates, what they look like, what they do, and what you should know so as not to be fooled.

The objective is pretty simple: To make it easy for the user’s computer to send and receive information from a site in a closed and secure environment.

Once a few steps are checked, the user can be assured that the data they are sending and receiving from the site is not going to be intercepted and mis-used. Most of the work is done by the “to be trusted” site, and one of a handful of 3rd party groups called Certificate Authorities (CA).

Now, in the digital cinema business the term certificate authorities comes up when speaking of the interchange of data between media server components and projector components. There are passwords (in the form of encrypted public and private keys) and encrypted data flying back and forth, and all refereed by CAs who follow rules set by a standards group or three.

The same is true in the web space, where keys are sent back and forth according to strict protocols. The user does’ t suspect any of this unless and until there is a gross problem. Usually the browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome) notices certain clues that the sending site sends out, and if the browser doesn’t get more of what it needs for safe browsing it will either refuse to work or if it isn’t completely suspicious, it will tell the user the problem and ask the user for permission to continue.

Of course, absolutes don’t seem to exist…

SSL Certificate Explained – YouTube

{youtube}SJJmoDZ3il8{/youtube}

On the DCinemaCompliance.net demo site, there is a certificate from one of the major CAs named Comodo. They are major enough that Firefox and Chrome and Safari recognize them. If we got all our friends together to set up a certificate authority, we could do so but the browsers would throw up an error…probably each time. The user would have to grant authority.

cert on dcinemacompliance.net siteThe picture of a cert as on the DCinemaCompliance site might look cool and official, but it means nothing significant. It might remind you to look at the URL and see if it has one important feature: did the “http:” change to “https:”. A site that doesn’t have that ‘s’ wouldn’t be secure.

What an https:// url should look like

You will notice that the URL is also colored green. It could also have a green or blue bar behind it, depending on which level of certificate was purchased from the CA. In this case the ‘s’ is showing so that indicates that a secure communication line has been created for the data to pass through. Without the bars behind it indicates that there is some material on the page that may not be completely secure, for example if there is a link to a non-secure site.

One should still be careful that there isn’t any of those famous key stroke stealing pieces of malware that can get whatever data you punch in. But that is the background of SSL.

The following two pictures show what happens when hitting the lock on a site with a valid certificate, and the identical site incorrectly using the same certificate…valid in one place and not another. Note that it will get goofy with questions if there is no means of qualification with a widely acknowledged certificate authority. There are private certs, but your browser will tell you and give you a chance to make your mind up about accepting them or not.

A Cert Validates Correctly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part II will deal with how this is important to you as a user of the DCinema Compliance Post-Installation.

White Papers Advices

SSL Certificates

Leave a comment

This article is the beginnings of an article about SSL Certificates, what they look like, what they do, and what you should know so as not to be fooled.

The objective is pretty simple: To make it easy for the user’s computer to send and receive information from a site in a closed and secure environment.

Once a few steps are checked, the user can be assured that the data they are sending and receiving from the site is not going to be intercepted and mis-used. Most of the work is done by the “to be trusted” site, and one of a handful of 3rd party groups called Certificate Authorities (CA).

Now, in the digital cinema business the term certificate authorities comes up when speaking of the interchange of data between media server components and projector components. There are passwords (in the form of encrypted public and private keys) and encrypted data flying back and forth, and all refereed by CAs who follow rules set by a standards group or three.

The same is true in the web space, where keys are sent back and forth according to strict protocols. The user does’ t suspect any of this unless and until there is a gross problem. Usually the browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome) notices certain clues that the sending site sends out, and if the browser doesn’t get more of what it needs for safe browsing it will either refuse to work or if it isn’t completely suspicious, it will tell the user the problem and ask the user for permission to continue.

Of course, absolutes don’t seem to exist…

SSL Certificate Explained – YouTube

{youtube}SJJmoDZ3il8{/youtube}

On the DCinemaCompliance.net demo site, there is a certificate from one of the major CAs named Comodo. They are major enough that Firefox and Chrome and Safari recognize them. If we got all our friends together to set up a certificate authority, we could do so but the browsers would throw up an error…probably each time. The user would have to grant authority.

cert on dcinemacompliance.net siteThe picture of a cert as on the DCinemaCompliance site might look cool and official, but it means nothing significant. It might remind you to look at the URL and see if it has one important feature: did the “http:” change to “https:”. A site that doesn’t have that ‘s’ wouldn’t be secure.

What an https:// url should look like

You will notice that the URL is also colored green. It could also have a green or blue bar behind it, depending on which level of certificate was purchased from the CA. In this case the ‘s’ is showing so that indicates that a secure communication line has been created for the data to pass through. Without the bars behind it indicates that there is some material on the page that may not be completely secure, for example if there is a link to a non-secure site.

One should still be careful that there isn’t any of those famous key stroke stealing pieces of malware that can get whatever data you punch in. But that is the background of SSL.

The following two pictures show what happens when hitting the lock on a site with a valid certificate, and the identical site incorrectly using the same certificate…valid in one place and not another. Note that it will get goofy with questions if there is no means of qualification with a widely acknowledged certificate authority. There are private certs, but your browser will tell you and give you a chance to make your mind up about accepting them or not.

A Cert Validates Correctly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part II will deal with how this is important to you as a user of the DCinema Compliance Post-Installation.

The Future Holds...

Then there were 3: Atmos Eats ImmSound

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Your editor wrote an article after spending time with all 4 systems back last April during the run up to CinemaCon. The article went unpublished since there are too many friends involved and who wants to harm anyone’s income? …or maybe there was inside data that is too intertwined with the public un-known un-knowns…

Suffice to say though that of the four companies involved (Barco, Dolby, Iosonno and Imm Sound), the one least likely to finesse enough program material from the important studios and get the technology right and get it into enough facilities to remain viable in the long run wasn’t going to come from a Barcellona university project (however exciting the 2009 CinemaEurope display was.

But: It is logical that they would come up with technology that would be interesting to the likely front runner. The portfolio that makes progress quicker and simpler and cheaper and allows entry into the consumer market sooner will be the most interesting thing to the impressive layer of executives of the Atmos group.

When hearing the imm Sound system with other technical people, there was general agreement that they played material that would be most impressive to people who needed to be impressed. But it wasn’t the immersive sound that the future will bring us. What they did well was show that there is a need for something beyond 5.1 sound, but Dolby did that a few years ago with the experimental systems they showed at CineEurope in 2009 and CinemaCon in 2010. So most of the sound people agreed that we felt we were being conned by the choices of the program material.

So, good luck to us all. Audio can be so much better. Audio needs to be so much better.

[Apologies for the typos and incomplete thoughts in the first draft of this piece. It wasn’t supposed to be released…and then a big crash happened. We’ll try not to repeat that particular mistake again.]

The Future Holds...

Then there were 3: Atmos Eats ImmSound

Leave a comment

Your editor wrote an article after spending time with all 4 systems back last April during the run up to CinemaCon. The article went unpublished since there are too many friends involved and who wants to harm anyone’s income? …or maybe there was inside data that is too intertwined with the public un-known un-knowns…

Suffice to say though that of the four companies involved (Barco, Dolby, Iosonno and Imm Sound), the one least likely to finesse enough program material from the important studios and get the technology right and get it into enough facilities to remain viable in the long run wasn’t going to come from a Barcellona university project (however exciting the 2009 CinemaEurope display was.

But: It is logical that they would come up with technology that would be interesting to the likely front runner. The portfolio that makes progress quicker and simpler and cheaper and allows entry into the consumer market sooner will be the most interesting thing to the impressive layer of executives of the Atmos group.

When hearing the imm Sound system with other technical people, there was general agreement that they played material that would be most impressive to people who needed to be impressed. But it wasn’t the immersive sound that the future will bring us. What they did well was show that there is a need for something beyond 5.1 sound, but Dolby did that a few years ago with the experimental systems they showed at CineEurope in 2009 and CinemaCon in 2010. So most of the sound people agreed that we felt we were being conned by the choices of the program material.

So, good luck to us all. Audio can be so much better. Audio needs to be so much better.

[Apologies for the typos and incomplete thoughts in the first draft of this piece. It wasn’t supposed to be released…and then a big crash happened. We’ll try not to repeat that particular mistake again.]

Exhibitor News

Black Screen Alert~! InterOp Losing Life Support

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Long Live InterOp

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The engineers contributing to SMPTE, and the studios who contributed to DCI, came up with enough elements to create a secure and beautiful D-Cinema environment. The same studios financed the equipment qualification standards and partially financed equipment purchases for many exhibitors. These exhibitors agreed to buy this qualified equipment and use it in a way that somewhat assured that copyrights and quality-better-than-film would be typical on screens world-wide.

Fortunately, there were written and unwritten agreements which allowed the simple DCinema origins of MPEG and a fairly loose mechanism of security keys to transition to the full on (and just recently completed) versions of standards, specifications and practices known as SMPTE Compliant Digital Cinema, with SMPTE Compliant DCPs and Security and screen fulls of other ingredients. These transitional agreements are known as InterOp.

Unfortunately, InterOp worked well enough to be added to…and added to…and added to…

For example, the simplest multimedia tools use metadata to describe computer needed info and human interface info within the songs or movies that we get to and from iTunes and Hulu and Netflix. Workers who had to get equipment and people working together in the InterOp world had to come up with an interim…maybe one year or so to live…Naming Convention. It wasn’t useful for computers at all, and cumbersome for humans at best and kept getting added to without increasing the number of characters since some old equipment only had so many display characters…kinda like computers in the 60’s. There were (and are, since years later it is still in use) dozens of ways for it to go wrong, beginning with the fact that some studios chose to ignore it when it gets in the way (according to the logic at their end of the string) while projectionists might miss some nuance that is needed for logic at their end of the string.

What happened to adding metadata like modern sciences do, and which everyone knows eventually will be needed? There are other panics with higher priority. It sits partly formed, probably until it becomes a keystone item needed for some other important development.

There are other examples of InterOp and loose de facto ‘standards’ living beyond their time, the most garish being what is hopelessly called 3D.

Instead of using valuable engineering time to progress the computer to computer interface and give exhibitors a fighting chance at perfection, engineers have had to shoehorn one feature after another into the InterOp structure. It is done with the best intentions, of course. It begins with, “My customers were asking for this now, not at some point in the SMPTE-Compliant future.” It ends with, “I have to do this because my competitor is bragging about how they can do this at no extra cost even though it violates the spirit and the essence of every standard.”

There are too many examples to mention ranging from forensics and audio mapping. Specifics aren’t as important as the fact that the entire industry has floated out far enough from land that some see letters in the water, and some seem to think that they spell H – E – R – E    B – E    D – R – A – G – O – N – S

DCinema Dragons don’t breathe fire. They are light suckers. They cause Dark Screens. Coming to theaters and drive-ins near you.

Why?

Many reasons, partly centered around the effects of software upgrades. Because the upgrade from InterOp to SMPTE-Compliant software is not a simple ‘add a feature or two’ software upgrade. At the best of times, you just never know what you will be causing when you hit that ‘Upgrade’ button. Did the software writer anticipate every single parameter of combinations of hardware and software that is in your situation?

There just are some odds that you come out of the hospital feeling worse than how you went in (look up HAI). Anyone with a computer has had software upgrades that worked for thousands of others, but did not work for them (look up: damn, not again.) There is probably some inverse squared proportionality involved as well. Getting closer to a deadline quadruples the odds of failure.

So, don’t change~! Jeez. That is sooo obvious. Which is what many do. Don’t get the first generation of anything, including upgrades. Especially during summer when all the big movies are playing.

But a horizon event approaches. Some InterOp juggling just won’t work for some combinations of . There are an amalgam of changes coming though, prompted by the teams of Jackson and Cameron. It might be easy to ignore the 60 frames per second requirement of a Cameron release (famous for pushing deadlines forward as he is), but The Hobbit will probably not be delayed. 48 frames per second, stereoscopic 3D. Will it work in the InterOp world? And what other changes will be made

Why 48fps? Phil Oatley, the post group head of technology from Park Road Post (Mr. Jackson’s facility in New Zealand) who spoke at the SMPTE/NAB DCinema Days last April said that they choose 48 because they didn’t know if equipment and exhibitors could change to 60fps in time and in significant numbers. As it turns out, all server and projector manufacturers have announced 48 and 60 fps capability. Sony even put a price on it…$3,000…which they can more easily do for their 13,000 users as they have always used an internal media block in their system.

In this case, Sony has something like the Apple advantage: They control the server, the media block and the projector so the odds are higher of getting a smooth transition. And, they have gotten DCI Compliance (at one moment of software version time…does HFR cause enough of a technology disruption that they need to re-certify?)

A TI-based projector with an SD-HDI interface will be a lot more complicated. An IMB (internal media block) needs purchasing and inserting, which isn’t a cheap investment. It is dependent upon TI-code and code from the projector manufacturer as well as code from the server all working together. How different is the server, which will have had its graphics-serving guts ripped out? …will that need a new cert? Check the DCI site for Compliance passed equipment.

But we have gotten off point. Back a few years ago you could sign a VPF deal and promise that you would use DCI-Compliant equipment and run with the latest SMPTE specs and recommended practices. At the time there wasn’t one piece of gear through the compliance procedures. And since you know that there is no SMPTE Police checking your screen for the required 48 candela/square meter luminance standard, you didn’t feel bad breaking the luminance number when showing 3D, a number that approached moonlight-equivalence at the sides of the theater and barely reached 10cd/m2 in the center. (For info on the light fall off from silver screens, see: 23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?)

But the history of the studios has been to look the other way until there is a technology that fulfills the DCI requirement. When Doremi proved they could do JPEG as the standard required, MPEG suppliers were given notice. When laser light engines can provide 3D at 48 cd/m2 (14 foot-lamberts), will the studios insist that passive 3D systems with their horrid high gain silver screens are no longer allowed (as was done in France recently? See: The Death of Silver Screens~! Vive la France)

We’ll see, but this doesn’t have anything to do with HFR. HFR is outside the DCI specs. It falls into the ‘no less than’ zone, similar to the color primaries. Laser suppliers can pick primaries outside the capabilities of xenon if that is financially and politically worthwhile, just as long as they don’t chose primaries inside the DCI/SMPTE limits.

So what does HFR and SMPTE compliance have to do with each other? Only that they are two locomotives that are running on two separate but not parallel lines. There is no firm deadline for SMPTE compliant DCPs, and no one is saying that InterOp compliant DCPs have a limited life. In fact, the studios expect that DCI equipment will play future SMPTE-compliant DCPs as well as what will become ‘legacy’ InterOp DCPs.

But something, at some time, is going to bulge the balloon of InterOp to the point that going SMPTE-Compliant is the logical move. Engineers at the manufacturers are just going to say, “I can’t play this game anymore. We were promised SMPTE would be the container that fit everything, I did the work, I will InterOp no more.”

There is rumor that this will happen soon. There is a particular setup that is rubbing against the InterOp balloon. Exhibitors are saying, “We don’t want to change until the summer season is over.” Will everything play nice together if only one condition is changed in a system? Possibly. How can you increase your odds?

Go to the ISDCF site that lists all the latest software/firmware versions for the equipment in the field. See to it that you have the latest. That will increase the odds. ISDCF Current Versions

Another thing you can do is prepare a database listing all of your equipment at each projection position, all of the software and firmware versions and all the serial numbers, and leave a field where you can download your .pem file from each piece of gear. Save this and get ready for a note from your distribution center asking for this info.

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way
– in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens – Tale of Two Cities

Exhibitor News

Black Screen Alert~! InterOp Losing Life Support

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Long Live InterOp

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The engineers contributing to SMPTE, and the studios who contributed to DCI, came up with enough elements to create a secure and beautiful D-Cinema environment. The same studios financed the equipment qualification standards and partially financed equipment purchases for many exhibitors. These exhibitors agreed to buy this qualified equipment and use it in a way that somewhat assured that copyrights and quality-better-than-film would be typical on screens world-wide.

Fortunately, there were written and unwritten agreements which allowed the simple DCinema origins of MPEG and a fairly loose mechanism of security keys to transition to the full on (and just recently completed) versions of standards, specifications and practices known as SMPTE Compliant Digital Cinema, with SMPTE Compliant DCPs and Security and screen fulls of other ingredients. These transitional agreements are known as InterOp.

Unfortunately, InterOp worked well enough to be added to…and added to…and added to…

For example, the simplest multimedia tools use metadata to describe computer needed info and human interface info within the songs or movies that we get to and from iTunes and Hulu and Netflix. Workers who had to get equipment and people working together in the InterOp world had to come up with an interim…maybe one year or so to live…Naming Convention. It wasn’t useful for computers at all, and cumbersome for humans at best and kept getting added to without increasing the number of characters since some old equipment only had so many display characters…kinda like computers in the 60’s. There were (and are, since years later it is still in use) dozens of ways for it to go wrong, beginning with the fact that some studios chose to ignore it when it gets in the way (according to the logic at their end of the string) while projectionists might miss some nuance that is needed for logic at their end of the string.

What happened to adding metadata like modern sciences do, and which everyone knows eventually will be needed? There are other panics with higher priority. It sits partly formed, probably until it becomes a keystone item needed for some other important development.

There are other examples of InterOp and loose de facto ‘standards’ living beyond their time, the most garish being what is hopelessly called 3D.

Instead of using valuable engineering time to progress the computer to computer interface and give exhibitors a fighting chance at perfection, engineers have had to shoehorn one feature after another into the InterOp structure. It is done with the best intentions, of course. It begins with, “My customers were asking for this now, not at some point in the SMPTE-Compliant future.” It ends with, “I have to do this because my competitor is bragging about how they can do this at no extra cost even though it violates the spirit and the essence of every standard.”

There are too many examples to mention ranging from forensics and audio mapping. Specifics aren’t as important as the fact that the entire industry has floated out far enough from land that some see letters in the water, and some seem to think that they spell H – E – R – E    B – E    D – R – A – G – O – N – S

DCinema Dragons don’t breathe fire. They are light suckers. They cause Dark Screens. Coming to theaters and drive-ins near you.

Why?

Many reasons, partly centered around the effects of software upgrades. Because the upgrade from InterOp to SMPTE-Compliant software is not a simple ‘add a feature or two’ software upgrade. At the best of times, you just never know what you will be causing when you hit that ‘Upgrade’ button. Did the software writer anticipate every single parameter of combinations of hardware and software that is in your situation?

There just are some odds that you come out of the hospital feeling worse than how you went in (look up HAI). Anyone with a computer has had software upgrades that worked for thousands of others, but did not work for them (look up: damn, not again.) There is probably some inverse squared proportionality involved as well. Getting closer to a deadline quadruples the odds of failure.

So, don’t change~! Jeez. That is sooo obvious. Which is what many do. Don’t get the first generation of anything, including upgrades. Especially during summer when all the big movies are playing.

But a horizon event approaches. Some InterOp juggling just won’t work for some combinations of . There are an amalgam of changes coming though, prompted by the teams of Jackson and Cameron. It might be easy to ignore the 60 frames per second requirement of a Cameron release (famous for pushing deadlines forward as he is), but The Hobbit will probably not be delayed. 48 frames per second, stereoscopic 3D. Will it work in the InterOp world? And what other changes will be made

Why 48fps? Phil Oatley, the post group head of technology from Park Road Post (Mr. Jackson’s facility in New Zealand) who spoke at the SMPTE/NAB DCinema Days last April said that they choose 48 because they didn’t know if equipment and exhibitors could change to 60fps in time and in significant numbers. As it turns out, all server and projector manufacturers have announced 48 and 60 fps capability. Sony even put a price on it…$3,000…which they can more easily do for their 13,000 users as they have always used an internal media block in their system.

In this case, Sony has something like the Apple advantage: They control the server, the media block and the projector so the odds are higher of getting a smooth transition. And, they have gotten DCI Compliance (at one moment of software version time…does HFR cause enough of a technology disruption that they need to re-certify?)

A TI-based projector with an SD-HDI interface will be a lot more complicated. An IMB (internal media block) needs purchasing and inserting, which isn’t a cheap investment. It is dependent upon TI-code and code from the projector manufacturer as well as code from the server all working together. How different is the server, which will have had its graphics-serving guts ripped out? …will that need a new cert? Check the DCI site for Compliance passed equipment.

But we have gotten off point. Back a few years ago you could sign a VPF deal and promise that you would use DCI-Compliant equipment and run with the latest SMPTE specs and recommended practices. At the time there wasn’t one piece of gear through the compliance procedures. And since you know that there is no SMPTE Police checking your screen for the required 48 candela/square meter luminance standard, you didn’t feel bad breaking the luminance number when showing 3D, a number that approached moonlight-equivalence at the sides of the theater and barely reached 10cd/m2 in the center. (For info on the light fall off from silver screens, see: 23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?)

But the history of the studios has been to look the other way until there is a technology that fulfills the DCI requirement. When Doremi proved they could do JPEG as the standard required, MPEG suppliers were given notice. When laser light engines can provide 3D at 48 cd/m2 (14 foot-lamberts), will the studios insist that passive 3D systems with their horrid high gain silver screens are no longer allowed (as was done in France recently? See: The Death of Silver Screens~! Vive la France)

We’ll see, but this doesn’t have anything to do with HFR. HFR is outside the DCI specs. It falls into the ‘no less than’ zone, similar to the color primaries. Laser suppliers can pick primaries outside the capabilities of xenon if that is financially and politically worthwhile, just as long as they don’t chose primaries inside the DCI/SMPTE limits.

So what does HFR and SMPTE compliance have to do with each other? Only that they are two locomotives that are running on two separate but not parallel lines. There is no firm deadline for SMPTE compliant DCPs, and no one is saying that InterOp compliant DCPs have a limited life. In fact, the studios expect that DCI equipment will play future SMPTE-compliant DCPs as well as what will become ‘legacy’ InterOp DCPs.

But something, at some time, is going to bulge the balloon of InterOp to the point that going SMPTE-Compliant is the logical move. Engineers at the manufacturers are just going to say, “I can’t play this game anymore. We were promised SMPTE would be the container that fit everything, I did the work, I will InterOp no more.”

There is rumor that this will happen soon. There is a particular setup that is rubbing against the InterOp balloon. Exhibitors are saying, “We don’t want to change until the summer season is over.” Will everything play nice together if only one condition is changed in a system? Possibly. How can you increase your odds?

Go to the ISDCF site that lists all the latest software/firmware versions for the equipment in the field. See to it that you have the latest. That will increase the odds. ISDCF Current Versions

Another thing you can do is prepare a database listing all of your equipment at each projection position, all of the software and firmware versions and all the serial numbers, and leave a field where you can download your .pem file from each piece of gear. Save this and get ready for a note from your distribution center asking for this info.

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way
– in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens – Tale of Two Cities

…Like Tangents In Rain