Copied from an earlier post, thought you might all enjoy...
About halfway through SW-AOTC, I had a vision...a vision of our future...
10 years from now, 99% of all movies will be shot digital, and projected in DLP cinemas. And we of the Forum will be exclaiming upon the release of Star Wars: Episode 10 - Revenge of the Midichlorians, "Have you heard! Lucas is shooting ST:ROTM in FILM! The Zeigfield in New York recently installed the latest THX Ultra-panavision Film Projectors - I'm THERE, dude!"
I witnessed what much of you all have already commented on. From the 6th row, I could clearly see jaggies on all moving straight edges, pixels were ALWAYS visible, whites were crushed, black were compressed, and black level was rather grey-ish. THe pros were of course no stutter and no dust/scratches, but for me they didn't outweigh the cons.
Now for the REALLY bad - in the movie right as you thought the Jedi's were going to get it at the hands of Dooku in the "colliseum" (before the rescue), we had a power brownout! As you can guess, the hard drive crashed, and the projector cycled. We were left in the dark - no movie, no sound - for about 5 seconds. I Have NEVER seen a crowd get so ugly so fast!
Then, the projector snapped on with a frozen, broken up image of the last thing before the brownout. The lights came on, and a young girl working for the theater came in to explain they were trying to get it going again. About a 3 minutes later, the lights went down, we cheered, and the movie started again, but no SOUND. We all yelled at the booth, and the response was they turned on the pre-show music soundtrack! How surreal! Yoda storming in to save the day with no sound except Bob Marley's "One Love" .
Of course, this ruined the big moment, and the theater went nuts. The movie stopped again, and the same young girl came out, with a request for calm. She had a radio, and was talking to the booth. Finally, she announced that the problem was that no-one really new how to operate the hard drive. They didn't know how to start it a any given point, and to top it off, they couldn't fast forward - only rewind! So the only solution was to start it and some "chapter point" about 30 minutes ahead (near the end) and REWIND it back to where it all screwed up! She advised that we elect someone to watch the screen until it arrived at the brownout point, so that the rest of us wouldn't see what was coming. Unbelievable!
Of course, the lure of watching aerial battles and Yoda's light saber fight BACKWARDS and in fast motion was too much to resist. The howling laughter of all the kids in the place was torture, while the videophiles amongst us were near homicidal levels of frustration (this after waiting in line an hour to get in).
Anyway, the Kansas City (actually Olathe) AMC has a lot to learn about the "new" theater technology.
About halfway through SW-AOTC, I had a vision...a vision of our future...
10 years from now, 99% of all movies will be shot digital, and projected in DLP cinemas. And we of the Forum will be exclaiming upon the release of Star Wars: Episode 10 - Revenge of the Midichlorians, "Have you heard! Lucas is shooting ST:ROTM in FILM! The Zeigfield in New York recently installed the latest THX Ultra-panavision Film Projectors - I'm THERE, dude!"
I witnessed what much of you all have already commented on. From the 6th row, I could clearly see jaggies on all moving straight edges, pixels were ALWAYS visible, whites were crushed, black were compressed, and black level was rather grey-ish. THe pros were of course no stutter and no dust/scratches, but for me they didn't outweigh the cons.
Now for the REALLY bad - in the movie right as you thought the Jedi's were going to get it at the hands of Dooku in the "colliseum" (before the rescue), we had a power brownout! As you can guess, the hard drive crashed, and the projector cycled. We were left in the dark - no movie, no sound - for about 5 seconds. I Have NEVER seen a crowd get so ugly so fast!
Then, the projector snapped on with a frozen, broken up image of the last thing before the brownout. The lights came on, and a young girl working for the theater came in to explain they were trying to get it going again. About a 3 minutes later, the lights went down, we cheered, and the movie started again, but no SOUND. We all yelled at the booth, and the response was they turned on the pre-show music soundtrack! How surreal! Yoda storming in to save the day with no sound except Bob Marley's "One Love" .
Of course, this ruined the big moment, and the theater went nuts. The movie stopped again, and the same young girl came out, with a request for calm. She had a radio, and was talking to the booth. Finally, she announced that the problem was that no-one really new how to operate the hard drive. They didn't know how to start it a any given point, and to top it off, they couldn't fast forward - only rewind! So the only solution was to start it and some "chapter point" about 30 minutes ahead (near the end) and REWIND it back to where it all screwed up! She advised that we elect someone to watch the screen until it arrived at the brownout point, so that the rest of us wouldn't see what was coming. Unbelievable!
Of course, the lure of watching aerial battles and Yoda's light saber fight BACKWARDS and in fast motion was too much to resist. The howling laughter of all the kids in the place was torture, while the videophiles amongst us were near homicidal levels of frustration (this after waiting in line an hour to get in).
Anyway, the Kansas City (actually Olathe) AMC has a lot to learn about the "new" theater technology.
