M$ In the Theatres?? aaagghhhhhh

[Treebeard]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030403/sfth027_1.html

blue screen of death in the theatres? that would be funny

[flaninacupboard]

*Engaged in vision of a horrible future where all cinema is digital and we're forced to watch .WMV files because it's cheaper for studios*
i hate the way quality takes another dive for money and convenience. eventually you won't be able to buy normal TV's anymore, just wristwatch sized black and white mono ones, because they're more convenient, and cheaper to produce, and integrate with windows.

[Tbear]

M$ in theatres is scary. M$ in home theatre systems even scaryer! Can you imagine watching Star Wars in .WMV? Streamed thru M$ cableTV? And it's the only way to watch it? :crying:

[MOVIEGEEK]

M$ in theatres is scary. M$ in home theatre systems even scaryer! Can you imagine watching Star Wars in .WMV? Streamed thru M$ cableTV? And it's the only way to watch it? :crying:

I wouldn't doubt if M$ starts buying cable companies in the near future.

[menace]

Simple solution--don't go to the theater--let bill gates eat the loss when people attend non windows movie theaters to enjoy quality not quantity--I don't go to the movies for great stories, I go for great visual quality--when that dries up, so does any money I would have spent at the theater. As one person in these forums states "screw the MPAA...."

[Cyrl]

wow this is pretty damn funny.... Did any of you go to a digital projection theatre to see Episode 2 when it was out? If you think they are going to be using Windows media player and a 200kbit/s stream on the projector... well they aren't, they are going to be using the DRM features of Media player 9 to help protect the digital prints that will be sent out and the video looks flawless compared to film, Episode 2 in the digital theatres was amazing compared to film, the picture was perfect every showing, EVERY showing... You can laugh all you want and poke fun but you have no clue what you are talking about if you've not seen it. And if you hate MS so much, don't use their products, it's possible to do.

[Donny661]

I don't like this Idea of WMV9 being used or any other compressed format. Sure WMV, DivX, Mpeg can be great on you tv's at home, but that is a small screen and relatively hard to notice digitally introduced noise, but on a theater screen it will be much easier to notice, and you will see it every time in every theater. I think they should just stick with uncompressed images. Also, they said that they would transfer these images with cd-roms and dvd-roms. How can these formats have enough storage to transfer even compressed video at high enough quality for theatrical exhibition? I don't see how this can be good for the movie industry quality wise; I think we should just stick with film.

[Cyrl]

Film = 2 miles of easily scratched umm.. film....NO matter how well a print is handled the SDDS and Dolby Digital soundtracks eventually will no longer function properly since they are part of the film itself, DTS is a bit more resiliant but it still breaks down once the timing info on the print gets damaged (which WILL happen in time)

DVD... up to 18ish GB per...the "print" looks identical when 6 months old compared to when it's 1 day old.. No sound degredation.. Who said it was on one DVD in the first place, it's not like they have a little PC sitting there with a DVD drive running the movie on a TV out. DTS soundtracks span multiple CD's, it's just as easy for them to span multiple DVD's for movies, hell the Projectors could just have big ass hard drives in them that you load the movies onto with *gasp* digital keys to be able to use them... which explains the use of MP9 for it's DRM components.

Anyway, who here went and saw Episode 2 in a digital theatre, the picture was amazing....

[Bravoxena]

why do we call it "M$"?
maybe ive been under a rock here.

[DivXExpert]

cyrl: No matter how high a bitrate you have, there will still be visible compression artifacts. No way to prevent this other than to just go uncompressed, or analog.

And the fact that it will just make pirating a breeze, just duplicate it directly from the source with no degrading. I don't think that they want that.

[Cyrl]

That is why they want the digital rights management crap from MP9... and who said they are using a lossy compression... besides, make the files big enough and that becomes the problem in copying them... You can lock it down if
1) the files are big enough to be too difficult to steal
2) the "digital keys" are only available in hardware that costs thousands of dollars (ie, digital projectors)
3) the prints could easily be watermarked to identify where an illegal copy came from, and that would be some serious legal action.

[DivXExpert]

Thats good that they are trying to put a stop to piracy. I sure hope it is lossless. Otherwise I am gonna go nuts.

[vitualis]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what the resolution of the digital video used in those theatres are?

Also, what compression does the video use (apart from the WM9 banner)?

And how exactly are the films being distributed? I wouldn't have thought that one DVD (as per the article) would be able to store a film of any length at the resolution and quality required for a theatre/cinema projection. The film spanned over several DVDs perhaps?

Regards.

[DivXExpert]

I agree. I mean DVD already looks like crap on a tv. now inlarge it 25 times. they will have to use a bigger storrage medium, or spread it over several DVDs just like spreading a film over several reels.

[Cyrl]

The camera's used to film Episode 2 film at 1920x1080 and at 24 frames per second, I unfortunately can't seem to find any info on the projetors... And I ave no idea how they distributed it to the theatres, I really should have asked when I went to see it.

[dcsos]

I heard they sent the movies over a PRIVATE SATTELITE NETWORK 24hrs prior to EXHIBITION as in the LUCAS PHANTOM MENACE rollout example..


This way they don't get internet POP-UP ADS during the screening

[Mirror_Image]

why do we call it "M$"?
maybe ive been under a rock here.

It's mostly envious resentment of a highly successful, intensely competitve corporation, one that makes a healthy profit for its stockholders. Making bucks for the stockholders is the main responsibility of a corporation, though many don't seem to realize that.

Microsoft is to those that hate it, much like Alcibiades was to the Athenians (according to Aristophanes):

"They love, and hate, and cannot do without him"

[musher70]

Who goes to the movies anymore anyway?
Thats what the internet and broadband is for...

[djmattyb]

Cyrl

You said quote:

Episode 2 in the digital theatres was amazing compared to film, the picture was perfect every showing, EVERY showing... You can laugh all you want and poke fun but you have no clue what you are talking about if you've not seen it.

I saw the first midnight showing on Episode 2 in Seattle at the Cinerama which has a digital projector. For most of the movie it was perfect, but as anyone who went to see it that night at that showing will tell you, there was one glitch where then screen went all pixelated. It lasted for probably what was one frame, but it made the entire audience groan a painfull "Owwww".

[MOVIEGEEK]

... one that makes a healthy profit for its stockholders. Making bucks for the stockholders is [i]the main responsibility[i]

Unfortunatly that mentality causes thousands of workers to be laid-off every year"to make the bottom line look better" and caused the US to enter a great depression because of what happened on Wall Street in 1929.If a company needs money then they should get a loan or venture capitalist,a company should gauge it's success on it's ability to sell it's products or services..not how high their stock price is.I'm not a communist but this "must buy stock"mentality makes me sick because the stock market has the most destabilizing affect on the economy.I have great respect for companies that stay privately owned,it's when they go public that corruption runs rampant.
BTW..gas prices are high not because of OPEC or oil co.it's caused by,go figure,the stock market.

[flaninacupboard]

Personally i think analog is the way of the future for cinema. how ould i cope with comprssion artifacts, portability, high resolution and easy piracy in one fell swoop? easy. Laserdisc. Now that higher density discs are available, 3 high density LD's one with a red signal, one with green and one with blue, and each carrying 2 to 3 channels of audio (supporting both DD and DTS) would be perfect! NO artifacts, NO transport problems, it's less than a kilo, DAMN hard to pirate, who the hell has a capture card with 30MHZ RGB inputs?! and of course the copies don't degrade over time, and once the movie is no longer in theatres the copies can be sold straight on to home cinema enthusiasts with a proper set up, and it will be identical to being at the movies. it's a perfect system!

[DivXExpert]

Laser Disc is the Shit. Perfect.

[Cyrl]

flaninacupboard - Wouldn't argue with you on that one... Sounds like it would be a great system... have you tried selling the idea to people in the industry ? =) I think it would be good, but who knows.....

Pixelation on one frame huh... Do you know how many new prints have glue splices in the middle of a frame when they come out... that is one frame that is totally hosed... a new print will usually have 1 or 2 of them... plus the occasional frame that is too light too dark etc... if one frame of a movie "glitched" on opening day that rocks... because in 5 years that same "Print" would glitch once... you can't say the same for a 5 year old print... you can't say the same for a 5 DAY old print...

[Robert Simandl]

I can see it now:

"Movie Theater has encountered a problem and needs to close. Any unsaved plot elements in the film you were watching will be lost. Report this problem to Microsoft?"

[flaninacupboard]

you think they'd be gracious enough to give you the -option- of reporting it to microsoft??!
Cyrl, i'd suggest it if i knew who to suggest it to! i couldn't imagine it ever happening, people love "Digital" at the moment, Digital is more important than quality these days, and i know that LD's were damn expensive to press. it'd probably be different nowadays, someone somewhere could think of a better way to do it (Huge HD-LD-R's burned from their edit suite? or maybe HD-LD+R's ) but then it needn't even be an optical format, nice thick video tape would be nearly as good, we could certainly get the bandwidth, the synching is possible, but degradation would happen.
it's weird the way the "Future" is often a step back. If you compare what until recently was the only real home cinema option, the CRT projector, to a TFT LCD projector, the difference is astonishing! Black is black on CRT, white is bright on CRT! dare we even compare that to the sad excuse that is DLP? Take the worst points of TFT, add in what look likes poorly aligned tubes, and there you have it, an expensive crap system! as for plasma? once again, with a contrast of 500:1 beeing common, it's like watching things through sunglasses. but hey, they look nice on the wall, and all the celebrities have them, so they -must- be good, right?

[emaildavet]

This diatride has been quite amusing at times. I thought I'd add to the mix.

First, in reference to the whole "digital" thing, let's stop a take a look. This is a concept technology right now. Lamborghini in 2001 showed a concept car and called it the Gallardo. It came out 2 years later with a different name and totally different body. Same here. This will evolve and will change to adapt to the hinderences that are mentioned here (pixil loss, piracy, degredation loss, etc.) Face it, film will become the medium of "epic" movies only. Digital will become the Wal-Mart of most "common" movies in the future. That is just how technology evolves. Evolution, can't stop it.

Second, MS (or M$) is here and we have to deal with it. On one hand, if you don't like it, go and create your own OS and sell it. Don't hate a person because you are envious of their accomplishments. On the other hand, I don't appreciate strong-armed-monopolistic-back-room-take-over-everything-you-touch tactics. There is a fine line between being successful and preventing others from doing so. The way I figure, if MS tries to totally enter the digital movie, they'll get another monopoly-lawsuit tacked onto them. As for the comment about stockholders and money and the stock market, unfortunately, you are correct. The stock market has become the roulette table in Vegas. You could post 10 quarters of positive growth, but say that you are 2 cents short on your prediction, and your stock dives $20. The stock market has definitely changed, for the worst.

Bottom line: digital will be the future, no question there. There will always be piracy where quality will not be an issue (shadowrealm). Film shows color in a different way than a computer could ever. We're talking apples and oranges with mediums, the issue is HOW they will be delivered to the public. And that is where the choice of medium will be the determining factor (Marshal McCluen: "The medium is the message"). MS should never totally get the full rights, there should be some room for competition without Gates squishing anyone's hope of some day wanting to be a Gates as well.

Thanks for the ranting. Good post.

[Karate Media]

Just wanted to throw my hat in the ring:

Everyone arguing against digital b/c of the compression seems to have forgotten that films are already on a compressed format right now -- the filmstock. You didn't think there was a huge projector up there running filmstock that was 30-ft wide or so, did you? It's compressed onto film and decompressed using a special, high tech codec called a "light and lens" The lens expands the film into the proper widescreen dimensions and the light projects it, making it larger than the original "file."

(It's been a few years since I worked at a movie theater, so if any of this has changed, let me know)

If they get the process down right, and the picture looks good, I've got nothing against digital films (to be honest, I usually wait for DVD anyway, since, you know, i hate people and all...) If they screw it up, we'll let them know with our wallets. Will most of the movie-going public still go see the movies anyway? Of course -- I mean, if they can keep Julia Roberts' career alive, why would they care about artifacting?