How big of a screen could you project Blu-Ray on before the resolution would seriously suffer? How does that compare to a regular movie theater screen? Could you project HD material on a movie theater screen, and have a minimal loss in picture or quality, or is it really not even close to that quality?

That is a pretty good question, though obviously theatres don't use anything like Blu-ray at all. Blu-ray obviously is fantastic at 120 inches (10 feet) and still good at sizes up to 15 feet across or so. But above that I really don't know either.

I have a 10 foot widescreen and Blu and HD-DVD were both awesome. And I have been in some very small secondary theatre rooms that weren't a whole lot bigger than the one at my house. But what would Blu-ray look like on a 50+ foot widescreen? I don't know.

Screen size isn't everything. A 32" TV could be too big. A 10' screen could be too small.

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/v...alculator.html

Viewing distance is usually your best tool when figuring how big you need your image to be. Not sure what the maximum is for Blu-ray projection but using that calculator will tell you what you need. My couch is about a foot too far from my 52" 1080p screen (can't really move it closer with my living room set up) and many times if I'm rewatching a movie by myself I'll bring in a chair to sit at the recommended distance just to see all the detail possible. I don't feel I miss that much with most movies, but it is fun on second and third viewings to really study the detail. Some movies have some amazing stuff going on you miss the first time through.

I guess what my question is could a movie theater use a projector with a Blu-Ray player? How much quality would they lose? It's really a hypothetical question.

EDIT: ignore me. my memory for details is terrible and nothing i said was accurate.

4K is actually quite a bit more than twice the resolution of Blu-ray (or any 1080i/p source). It depends somewhat on the aspect ratio of the film being projected, but 4K will be at least 3 times the total resolution of 1080p at very wide aspect ratios, and over 4 times at 1.85:1.

A lot of it would depend on where people sit. The people in the front wouldn't see as good quality, but those in the back wouldn't notice as much. Plus, of course it would depend on the disc. However, there are other benefits to film or digital cinema besides resolution, like greater color depth and lack of compression.

The sound should certainly be as good or better than with film, provided it's a lossless track. Most theaters still use Dolby Digital or DTS.

Most home theater projectors are good to around 100" diagonal. Beyond that, your biggest obstacle is brightness, not resolution. 120" - 130" is possible on many models, but pushing things. There are people who will go larger, but after that point you're sacrificing picture quality for size.

Theatrical digital projectors have both higher resolution and much higher brightness than anything available to the home consumer.

Right, but I interpreted the question to be how it would look if a movie theater used a BD as a source instead of film, using the same level of brightness as their regular projectors. I didn't think he was suggesting they would use a consumer home theater projector to illuminate a movie theater screen.

Exactly my question Drexl.

Don't most digital projection theatres use 2K projectors (2048x1080 pixels), and some use 4K projectors (4096x2160 pixels)? So unless I'm missing something (and if I am, please feel free to point it out ), a 2K projector using a BD as a source (1920x1080 pixels) wouldn't be too much worse looking than it normally would?

The biggest difference between a 2K cinema projector and a home one is the light output, as previously stated. I've seen much better contrast on home models though. I havn't seen a 4K projector before.

It's probably a question of the source. The digital copies sent to the theaters are supposedly huge uncompressed files, I think, with much better color specifications. Watching the discs at home looks mighty close though to what I see at digital showings. Biggest difference is the noticable brightness.

I've read that Sony has some theatres with SXRD projectors that are supposed to be 4K. I didn't think about compressed vs. uncompressed files, good point. I wonder how much difference there would be as long as the compression was well done?

HD DVDs on my 110" screen look stunning. As Josh Z said, it really isn't res that you'll lose going bigger as much as brightness/contrast. That's my biggest obstacle.

This is what I understand to (currently) be the case; i.e. the majority of digital proection systems currently in use are 2k, with 4k available but not nearly as common. So in the case of a 2k 2048x1048 projection, I'd assume not much is really gained over a blu-ray purely in terms of resolution, thus a blu ray projection wouldn 't suffer much in comparison specifically in that regard. But the combined factors of the increased light output of commerical projectors and the uncompressed nature and increased color gammet of the commerical digital cinema files is where the noticeable difference would come in. You have to keep in mind that even though the HD codecs are leaps ahead of the dvd standard in terms of visible artifacts, they are still heavily compressed from the digital source (in contrast to lossless audio), and artifacts would surely start to become pretty noticeable when projected at commercial screen size. I think that gap will become a little smaller once blu rays that take advantage of the deep color feature in the blu ray spec are released? Thus I think a particularly well-authored blu ray of a recent big budget film would look fairly respectable in comparison to a 2k projection of said film? I am certainly no expert so I could be wrong in so many ways it's not even funny.

DeepColor is actually not in the Blu-ray spec at all. It can't be done on the format.

I thought I had read that ps3 games would eventually utilize deep color, leading me to assume the format at least provided accomodation for the feature, and that films would eventually follow. So is it just that deep color wasn't utilized for the video codecs used on the blu-ray format, i.e. for films on blu-ray, or is the spec for some reason not accomodated in any form on the blu-ray format, including for games?

I believe it's possible for PS3 games, but not for movies.

Even if it were posssible, if studios were to start releasing special "DeepColor Editions" of their movies, the discs would be incompatible with the majority of Blu-ray players on the market.

A Blu-ray Disc is just a container for whatever data they want to put on it, which can include movies, games, or anything else. However, a BD movie has to follow a set of specifications to be playable on standard BD players.

you can get 42 inch plasma panasonics if you look around brand new now.
that be a good starting point.

What?

I'm on some list where Sony now wants to sell me their 4K projector. So it's either a mistake or they do sell it to the home consumer.

That's attached to the boxofficemojo.com mailing list, and I think they're aiming that toward exhibitors. Are you on a mailing list that would be popular amongst exhibitors by any chance?

The 1080p JVC RS2 still seems to be tops in terms of somewhat affordable ($7500) home theater projectors. It's very nice, but only 800 lumens (30,000:1 CR).

As for the original post, it's a tough call but at 140" Blu-rays still look extremelye nice (I'm current running at 110" and BDs look amazing). Of course, if you sit right on top of it, you'll probably notice some occasional flaws.