Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

:thumbsup:

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

Yeah, film is great as a means of film making, and I think it should always remain a choice for filmmakers who want to use it.

But for projection? Nah, times have changed. Sure, it's great to see films this way once in awhile, but the negatives (no pun intended) of watching an older damaged print far outweigh the positives, IMO.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

My point is you scoff at digital cinema but you cling like a frightened child to these obsolete home formats that can't possibly give you an ounce of the quality that you get in a standard digital theatrical presentation. If you want technology to evolve, this is it. Even IMAX is digital now, and because of that they're pioneering laser systems for large scale theatrical exhibition.

Digital isn't perfect, but neither is film and there are pros and cons to each.

Weren't release prints usually taken off of IPs as opposed to straight off the negative?

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

:lol: OK, I think you might've been misreading my statements a bit too much, and it's probably my fault but I don't "cling" to obsolete formats more than I keep them around for fun and to reminisce. I'm probably a bit biased about film since I worked for a decade as a theater projectionist, but digital does have some problems that should have been straightened out BEFORE it was implemented and replaced film in theaters- and I have that general feeling about ANY new technology that's meant to replace an older one. Sad thing is that very few theaters hired people who cared enough to present film properly, so of course digital is going to look better to most people in comparison.

I saw a movie in digital IMAX at the Hollywood Chinese Theatre last year, and the pixel grid was very obvious onscreen. Sadly I've never seen an actual film there.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

And in the interest of fairness, here's some things I DIDN'T like about film:

Change-over cues, giving away how much time has passed during a movie, and unnecessary as a very small percentage of theaters were still running changeovers even in the 1990s.

Print defects- I have reel 1 of "Independence Day" with a black splotch running through the left side. Things like this routinely happened- I've got a few more defective reels as well, one of which fades to black for a few seconds in the middle. Depending on how bad it was, theaters would call the studios for replacement reels (and in these cases not ask for the old ones back.)

Even when handling film properly, inevitably a bit of dust gets on the film. There are ways to minimize or prevent this, and some even see this as part of the "warmness" of analog vs digital in general but your mileage may vary. Watching a movie at home shot via digital as opposed to film, the lack of such artifacts seem like there's something missing but others may see that as an improvement.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

last year I saw a 35mm print of Jim Jarmusch's 'Down by Law' - it looked thoroughly mangled.

the worse 35mm screening I saw was 'There Will Be Blood' where at one point the reel change occurred and the following scene was upside down and running backward [face palm] - and then stopped, and burned. [ugh]

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

Worst print I ever saw was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Tobe Hooper in attendance. But it's probably the only time a print that bad added to the experience, not detract from it. That honor would go to Grindhouse for fabricating that shit thinking it was cool.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

No one knew what that shit was until they saw Fight Club.

:sarcasm:

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

To be fair, it sounds like the latter was the fault of rather foolish projectionist.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

true - but with DCP - these flaws couldn't have been replicated.

~

side comment: related to shoddy bad presentations. When the Washington DC Hirshhorn Museum showed the high-def digital presentations of 'The Tulse Luper Suitcases: Part 1: Moab' and 'The Tulse Luper Suitcases: Antwerp' weren't even shown on a proper screen but on a white wall; Peter Greenaway who was at this screening lambasted the museum for doing so --- wow, awkward...

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

I was also a projectionist for several years, 35mm and IMAX, although thankfully I didn't have to do changeovers. When we installed our digital systems I thought my eyes were going to bleed from all the QC we did in each auditorium. But the end result was a consistent and more predictable image than with 35mm. IMAX was a different story of course.

And I'm not surprised the IMAX at the Chinese looked bad when you saw it. That auditorium was designed for the laser system that IMAX was developing, but it wasn't ready in time for the opening, so they were using multiple 2K projectors and those projectors simply weren't good enough for the space. I saw Gravity there and vowed not to see another movie there until the new laser system was installed. It's now in place and I saw Furious 7 there. The movie was from a 2K DCP so it wasn't ideal, but the branding spots for IMAX looked luscious and beautiful. I suggest you catch another movie there now.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

I knew what that shit was WAY before Fight Club- I actually found it out from a book cover (given out to cover your school books) from a video store called Major Video (which got bought out by Blockbuster)- it had a few trivia questions on it and one was "how do you know when the projectionist is about to change reels?" I'd already seen the dots before but now knew what they were for- but I didn't know about platters until after being hired on floor staff at a theater and then wandering up to the projection room (I was supposed to look for someone but I used that as an excuse to go up there. That place became my home about a year later!)

Anyways, the dots ruin the movie because once you're trained to look for them, you start counting them if the movie bores you, and if you're enjoying the movie then you'll eventually start predicting which reel is going to be the very last- that is if you don't know how many reels the movie has to begin with. When TV stations ran 16mm film on the air, they'd use the same sort of cues to signal the end of a reel, so you'd know when they were going into a commercial and sometimes the commercials themselves had the cues on them too.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

With all of the love for digital projection in this thread, I sort of hate to say this, but there's a part of me that wants to see actual film when I go to a movie theater and not what amounts to a DVD shown on a really hig screen.

Which means, yeah, there's going to be some dirt and scratches, and reel changes, and it might be a little out of focus, but seeing projected film just seems right.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

As a casual audience member I have found the changeover from 35mm to digital to be fairly seamless, even during the 3-4 years of multiplexes running both formats.

The digital projection looks good and retains a cinematic film look. Is it a glorified DVD? Sure but that is just a result of advancements in technology that have helped bridge the quality gap between the home and the theatrical experience.

The home experience has become so good and so cheap that the uniqueness of the theatrical experience has been somewhat diminished.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

You know all of that because you were a professional projectionist though.

I agree, there's a mystique to seeing a film on, well, film. All those nicks and scratches almost feel like you're watching something with all of the people who watched it before, and like it's well-used and well-loved. Objectively, I know that the "glorified DVD" argument isn't entirely true (though the difference between a 2K DCP like most films use and a Blu-ray is fairly small), but I do sometimes feel like there's actually incentive to see a film print because it's something I can't get at home and is a sort of special event. Digital, especially when it's so close to what I can get at home, just doesn't have the same cache, especially with the behavior of people at cinemas today. I'll go out of my way to see something on film. With digital, I'll certainly see something I'm interested in or go as a social event, but the thrill is kind of gone.

The average viewer probably doesn't even know there was a changeover, much less notice the difference. I hate to admit it, but there are also digital scans out there with do a fantastic job of emulating film's look, grain and all (Blu-ray and DCPs). The aesthetic difference may or may not be perceptible to most viewers, but it's close enough that 99% of people don't care. Yes, there's a mystique to the 120+ years of celluloid film-going, the smell of chemicals, changing the reels, the clicking projector, but that magic doesn't pay bills, and the honest truth is that they haven't opted for something aesthetically inferior, and most people won't notice. The fact is also that the price is so insanely smaller that film simply can't compete, and special film screening for interested parties are probably so expensive to organize that it's probably just a matter of time before film is go altogether. Studios put up with filmmakers like Spielberg, Tarantino, and Nolan because of the clout they have, buy frankly, they're just delaying the inevitable.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

The only time where I felt like the flaws of celluloid worked to the benefit of my experience was when I saw a scratched up 16mm print of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Halloween in a completely full theater. The nicks and scratches in the film added to the documentary style of the movie and made it feel more visceral and immediate.

On the flip side, back in the early '00s WB struck brand new 70mm prints of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I saw it multiple times when it ran at the Egyptian theater. It was beautiful, absolutely the best way to see the film. About a decade later, I saw one of the same prints at the Cinerama Dome. It looked like absolute shit. Scratches and skipped frames all over the place. You'd think that anyone capable of projecting 70mm in this day and age would know how to take care of a print, but clearly that wasn't the case. A DCP will never have this problem.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

funny thing about Warner's DCP of 2001 - I saw this on Arclight's (Bethesda, MD) signature 'widescreen' 65ft. screen - and it quite frankly looked like shit.

It's apparent that the encode is 2K and every anomaly is blown out of proportion - halo's, edge enhancement issues on the models, slight double imaging, black levels look gray, in a couple of moments the image judders sideways for no apparent reason (when no camera panning was used). It's embarrassingly bad. Hell, even the bluray looks better what they threw on the on DCP. Warner's needs to a proper 4K transfer/encode onto DCP from the 65mm elements.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

Ugh, that's a shame. You'd think Warner would take more care with one of their most prestigious titles.

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50th Anniversary is right around the corner. My money says it will get judicious treatment in time for that milestone.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

It WAS an MGM title at its time of release. I saw a 70mm print of it in the year 2001 and it was pretty good, though the screen wasn't really big enough (classic Academy-ratio era theater) to do it justice.

If I see an older movie in a theater via digital, I might be able to have a more favorable opinion of it based on how it looks. They need to give it a real anamorphic function though- letterboxing may be OK for home but not for theaters.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

Ok so I have my Samsung soundbar connected to my LG via optical input. Almost once a week I turn everything on TV, PS4 etc and there is no sound. Go to set up and it seems to default from optical to HDMI (ARC). Is that a better connection than optical? No clue why it keeps happening

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

They just announced that Ultra HD Blu-ray won't have region coding at all. All discs will play worldwide. The studios really don't expect this to hit the mainstream if players like Disney are abandoning region coding.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

Take that HD-DVD.

Re: Let's talk about Ultra HD Blu-ray
 

It probably won't matter, import discs will likely be prohibitively expensive. There's no way the studios will press the amount of discs per title that we get on DVD and BD.