HD For Indies

CinemaTech: Technicolor vs. Christie/AIX

The two leading vendors in the digital projector space duke it out. Technicolor is pushing 4K, in an effort to have a theatrical experience above and beyond what can possible be done in the home (the 2K digital standard is barely higher pixel resolution than regular HD video, 2048x1080 rather than 1920x1080).

Read the article for details on that, and the push to get digital into all 36,000 US theaters by 2010. Below is my own commentary on the whole 4K vs 2K thing.

I had previously heard/read somewhere that 4K is a false economy that has little value beyond the marketing value of "we got more." The comment was something to the effect of "with 4K, only the first X frontmost rows can see the difference, for the other Y amount (the majority) of the theater patrons will not be able to perceive the advantage of 4K." As in, even if their vision was good and they saw the two side by side, if you were sitting so-and-so far back from the screen, you couldn't tell the difference between 2K and 4K.

I could believe that argument even though I haven't sat down with protractor to figure out the arc degrees of perceptual difference between 2K and 4K at a given distance.

But I do recall another quote about 4K, that it may not be advantageous or useful given the age and skin condition of our leading actors. In current cinematography, a LOT of filtering is used on the lense during close-ups of actors to hide skin imperfections in "beauty" characters. I noticed a lot of poorly done skin smoothing for Scarlett Johansen in The Island, for example. 4K would be GREAT for wide shots of luscious scenery or battles, but wouldn't be utilized in close-ups. Again, it all boils down to the the science of what people can see, but of course, that gets over-ridden by what people believe, and we can all see how marketing driven our culture is these days. Can you really believe that one any pair of mall blue jeans is "better" than another when we know they are all cranked out in China/Taiwan/wherever by the same underpaid, underage workers? But that's another blog, entirely.

Will digital sell, in the end? In my own experience, it has failed to make ME visit the only digital projection theater in town for 6 months. I'd read that as a big goose egg. Digital 3D, however, got me in there twice in the opening week (once for me once again for me w/neice & nephew, ages 4 & 7).

If 4K projectors can in 10 years be cost competitive in the end financial results compared to traditional film projectors, with ALL costs included - mailing film prints, print costs, digital duplication/DRM costs, the flexibility to run multiple copies of a single file during the opening weeks, etc., then it will prove itself long term. Or does the industry take a bath up front, and recover/recoup the expenses long term? Wait and see, wait and see...

-mike