Digital Cinema Not Quite There Yet 233
An anonymous reader writes "A Reuters article explains how, in some ways, the digital future of movie theatres isn't quite here yet. Despite the push for new technology in the projection booth, theaters have been slow to adopt the new and expensive gear." From the article: " Many in the movie industry hope digital cinema will help revive theater attendance, which fell 9 percent in 2005 in the United States. The studios stand to save about $1 billion a year in print distribution costs because they will be shipping digital movies via computer hard drives, satellite and broadband cable, versus old celluloid canisters. But digital deployment is expensive at about $100,000 per screen, and while the studios agreed to foot most of the bill, current equipment does not meet all the technology standards set by the industry."
Movie Attendance (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that releasing movies that don't suck would increase movie attendance.
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
and people watched it enough to keep it on the air for a few more seasons than it really needed to be on so clearly people can't get enough of BAD movies!
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
*Unless you are having a party with a bunch of like minded and funny friends.
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:5, Insightful)
We go to fewer and fewer movies over the past 12 months because almost everything they have been putting out are simply polished turds. As an indie film maker I have seen movies shot and editied on a crappy VHS camcorder for less than $1500.00US that are more entertaining and higher quality than many of the multi million dollar movie that has overpaid bad acting, seem like the script was being written as they were shooting, and now features the trademark "shakey cam" that must mean that hollywood can no longer afford tripods.
MPAA is dying faster than the RIAA. Movies have more indie talent than all of hollywood and many of the best actors are now starting to star in indie films. (Seeing Robin Williams in a really low budget film that he helped finance is a sign of the times.)
The only problem is that indie films are typically direct to DVD. Most theatres will not show indie films and none of the filmmakers have the money to get their film overhyped and marketed on all the networks.
Crappy winter movies (Score:4, Insightful)
They release a bunch of good movies around Thanksgiving and New Year's, when people take breaks. That's also when most of the potential Oscar nominees are released, just before the end of the year (to be fresh in the Academy's mind).
And they're waiting for the summer for people to be on vacation again, so they release the stuff that they thought was not good enough to attract attention during the summer and winter rushes of great movies, and the real losers that they're hoping will be able to recoup their losses as long as there's nothing else good to see.
Not that I agree with this "logic"; the studios love to pander to a "conventional wisdom" and never question it. When Spider-Man was released a few weeks _before_ the traditional Memorial Day weekend rush, they were stunned to discover that people who had five months of cruddy movies would throw gobs of money at a good one.
But logic good or ill, movies are cruddy now because that's when the cruddy movies come out. Last year's whole movie season was pretty bad, and the studios deserved to see attendance fall 9%. But if the studios have learned a lesson, you won't see the results until the late spring. They're still flushing their crap. Sorry.
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2, Informative)
There have been some good films released over the last year, the same as any other year. There have been crap films released since the history of films. Your theory is therefore flawed.
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
Oh come on - this has been one of the WORST years for quality movies in a long time. Just look at the Oscar nominations this year. Yeah, individual movie opinions are of course very subjective, but as an aggregate they had a far wider range of reviews (ie a lot more BAD ones) than your usual crop of Oscar contenders.
Persona
Difference? (Score:2)
Oh c'mon! Yes many of us our geeks and notice the occasional crack or 'crop circle' on our latest action sequence despite coming at us at 30-odd frames per second. Lets be realistic for a moment. IMAX movies aren't usually hits, and that's the extreme of digital quality to the point of looking 3D. Why do they possibly think that pixelating and upping the resolution of my movie may make me come to more of them?
It's a lame e
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
Nooo (Score:2)
Re:Movie Attendance (Score:2)
box-office slump is an urban myth (Score:4, Interesting)
Additionally, you can read his ideas for real ways to revitalize the movie-going experience here [suntimes.com].
An assignment for you (Score:5, Interesting)
Society has always been a terrible, roiling mess of people killing, fucking, beating, screaming, stealing and swearing. This is probably the most generally civil time in the history of the world, but not by much.
There was a great deal of American propaganda in the fifties and sixties in which television shows and movies depicted the way that authority figures wished society was, but it was completely inaccurate. Coat-hanger abortions, drug use, prostitution, unreported rapes, lynching of blacks, the blackmails of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and a thousand other offenses went on all the time. The populace of the fifties knew this, but their children and their grandchildren fell for the saccharine story.
It didn't make these children better people. It made them ignorant of how people work.
Your assignment is to read A Tale of Two Cities, in which highwaymen rob passersby constantly, traitors are drawn and quartered after having their entrails burned in front of their eyes, children are executed for stealing sixpence, and in general two of the "greatest" societies in Europe wallow in muck and horror. You'll see how these societies were in this predicament precisely because of how tough they were on offenses to their moral code. You'll certainly see that culture has long been full of violence, sex and profanity, because people are full of these things.
After you've done that, you can continue to proselytize for your supposed utopian vision of a society founded around families. You can continue to ignore that the majority of the world is not composed of families at all, but of single people, divorcees, widowers, and the parents of adult children. You can ignore that reproduction is merely the start of a life that is supposed to be full of many experiences apart from merely reproducing again. This twisted vision can still be yours... but at least you won't think your ideal represents a glorious past we once had.
Life has always been a crock of shit. Lucky that we so often like the smell of our own.
awesome (Score:2)
Re:An assignment for you (Score:2)
The pop culture
Re:An assignment for you (Score:2)
I guess you never had to go through the "duck and cover" drills in school or having your parents thinking of building bomb shelters in your basement. Those times were far from rosy and just like today with terrorism, fear of the bomb ruled people's lives.
The whole point he was making was that history is replete with as many (if
Re:An assignment for you (Score:2)
Sure, that was one of the issues of the day (and certainly a significant one), but I think it hardly "ruled people's lives". There's a reason there was a baby boom after WW/II, and that was because people were confident about their future.
We had duck an
Re:An assignment for you (Score:2)
Sure it did. That's why things like McArthy's, "are you now or have you ever been.." hearings got off the ground. Those hearings and the threat of being hauled in for that type of questioning is what I call ruling people's lives. How many people had their lives destroyed by them? Fear is a terrible thing to be peddling in both then and now.
A baby boom has happened behind every major
Re:An assignment for you (Score:2)
I'm not suggesting turning back the clock, only pointing out the absurdity of the original poster's premise that the 1950s were some sort of hidden hellhole comparable to "tale of two cities" and were only covered up by some sort of "Ozzie and Harriet" conspiracy.
Re:Korean War? (Score:2)
Oops, you're right, I should've remembered that. But it was actually symptomatic of the times that the war was relatively forgotten. People were confident going into the future and didn't want to focus on more war.
Re:DISTRIBUTE 'movies that don't suck' too! (Score:2)
Re:Hollywood Doesn't Care About Attendance (Score:3, Informative)
While we are at it, spider man deserves some awards, lets say best actor, we can give it to him again for his sequel.
Then finaly, best actor of 2004? Jesus Crist, as Himself, in the Passion of the Christ.
Please, look at this for the caliber of movies you would be awarding for excellence. http://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice.html [filmsite.org] I didnt go past the top ten. b
Re:Hollywood Doesn't Care About Attendance (Score:2, Insightful)
Jurrasic park was a warning message about the dangers of genetic engineering. While it was essentially another retelling of Frankenstein, it also encouraged us to speculate on how succesful prehistoric beasts would be as hunters when we were the prey. As a popular movie, it included a number of iconic scenes, and provided a showcase for revolutionary computer generated effects.
Mrs. Doubtfire was a touching com
Re:Hollywood Doesn't Care About Attendance (Score:2)
Revive theater attendance?! (Score:5, Funny)
Good lord (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped going to movies because I was sick of paying the price of a DVD, just to be forced to watch commercials for deodorant and lectures about how I'm an evil baby-killing sealsucker for downloading movies (which is something I don't do).
Now I'm supposed to go back and start going to movies again just because they've tossed in some newfangled, flashy, questionable technology?
Sometimes I wonder whether the people who work for MPAA style companies are stupid, or whether they simply are from some alternate universe where logic actually works that way.
Re:Good lord (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not downloading movies, I'm right here sitting in the theatre after paying for the ticket! I'm the guy who did the right thing!
I've never bought a car, but I'm pretty sure the salesman (or salesmens union) won't give me a lecture about people who steal cars and tell me that stealing cars is wrong.
Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure that I've not been given a lecture at the grocery store either. Oh yeah, and once I ate at Subway and I didn't get a lecture there either. What gives?
Re:Good lord (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good lord (Score:2)
Re:Good lord (Score:2)
Re:Good lord (Score:2)
Ads in the middle (Score:2)
cost (Score:5, Informative)
Re:cost (Score:3, Interesting)
Why?
Because people can now have a *very good* theater experience at home. I've got a relatively cheap ($1800) 720p projector, and when I go to any theater around town that isn't an IMAX, the first thing I notice is "this theater is not as nice as the one in my living room."
There was a day when people would go to a movie just to sit in an air-conditioned room for an ho
Re:cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Young people will do what they always did, find something new. There'll still be music clubs, discos, etc. and it's quite likely that another public media-consumation-in-a-dark-room venture will develop, if there's a need for that (Which I doubt, today teens don't have to hide the fact that they want to be alone (In a cinema you aren't alone, but noone can see, thats close enough) with their date anymore, like they had to during the 50's).
*shrug* The world will continue turning
Re:cost (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.collinsroadtheaters.com/ [collinsroadtheaters.com]
http://crifilms.com/ [crifilms.com]
Re:cost (Score:2)
Re:cost (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. You have to understand the economics of film distribution to understand the terrible position movie theaters are in.
In a major studio release, the split for the first week of release is normally 90/10. The studio gets 90% of the receipts taken in by the theater. The split slowly moves in favor of the theater in subsequent weeks. So you go to a first run movie, pay $10 and sit in a room with 40 other people -- the theater is going to make a whopping $40 for that entire showing from ticket sales.
The allocation process doesn't encourage theaters to try for a bigger cut, either. The studios decide how many theaters they'll release a film in for a given market, then the films are allocated to the theaters by bidding. The theaters bid on the split and the number of weeks they promise to run the movie.
The only way digital distribution is going to have any impact on overall prices at the theater will be if the distribution agreements themselves also change. How likely do you think that is? Personally, I expect the studios to take the money and run.
Re:cost (Score:2)
Further, satellite downloads give the theaters more flexibility because they can more easily "stage" several films through the same theater at different times. More kid stuff during the day, switching to adult stuff at night. And by not having to ship the film back, they can keep niche material longer.
Of course, they may,
Re:cost (Score:2)
No, you're absolutely right, there is enormous potential for change. As you point out, having a digital file on a theater server allows instant re-shuffling of the movie schedule. Unexpected hit selling out? Push a button and it's now showing on 4 screens instead of 2. That's good.
But specifically addressing the complaints of the OP: I think it's unlikely that ticket and c
Re:cost (Score:2, Interesting)
Stelios came up with Easy Cinema (http://www.easycinema.com/ [easycinema.com] where you could watch a film for 50 pence (off peak, not likely a recent release either). Not sure it quite worked out as it maybe was planned, but his basic take was that he could strip out all of the snacks and drinks, replace them with vending machines, and have a skeleton staff running the place. If you want that kindly old dear showing you to your seat wit
Re:cost (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons that I've always felt theater chains are just shafted in the movie industry. The quantity of business they get is almost completely out of their control, since it's determined by the quality/popularity of movies that other people. If it's a bad year for films, it's a bad year for
Re:cost (Score:2)
However, as Standard Oil proved earlier, it is illegal for a company to own the production and distribution for a product. So, all the studios were forced to sell off their theaters.
That doesn't mean the studios do no still keep a very tight leash on what their relatively cap
Re:cost (Score:2)
Re:cost (Score:2)
Re:cost (Score:3, Funny)
With a 2 liter costing about $1.50, that's still quite a bargain.
(Sorry, but this is Slashdot.)
Re:cost (Score:2)
Yo! Stop at the Deli, the theatre's overpriced
Ya got a backpack, gonna pack it up nice
Don't want security to get suspicious
Mr Pibb and red vines equals crazy delicious
Affordability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Affordability (Score:2)
(DRM) Not ready yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if this means "The equipment doesn't have the DRM and copy protection we require."
The one place where they could use DRM for a true user pays arrangement - i.e. Pay per screening etc - and no mention at all of this.
I'm sure there are probably other "technical issues" holding them up, but DRM would be the most obvious. I'm sure that I read a while back that copy protection has already been addressed in the form of encrypted hard disks for distribution in the UK.
Re:(DRM) Not ready yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:(DRM) Not ready yet? (Score:2)
And, despite all this, they still think tha
The savings may be the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't doubt there are technical issues. But even when those are resolved, there may be a long delay while the various actors decide how to split the savings. My guess is that the Consumers Union will not be invited to the negotiating table.
Hell no (Score:2)
Re:The savings may be the problem. (Score:2)
Cinema is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cinema is dead (Score:4, Interesting)
All these points will need to be re-examined in one to two years when the new 4K projectors start coming out with much higher (even than film in true comparisons) resolutions.
Re:Cinema is dead (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Cinema is dead (Score:2)
That's all I wanted to say.
Re:Cinema is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
I for one cannot wait for full digital cinema based on the spec [caperet.com] released last summer.
You are quite right about most prints for movie theaters these days too: they're pretty awful. Most films I've seen recently have been poorly projected (bad focus and not enough / too much cropped from the actual print via poor screen size ratio compared to the print) and the print quality was mediocre at best. Having to make sure you get to one of the first showings at any given cinema is probably the best bet, but who wa
I don't agree... (Score:2)
Re:I don't agree... (Score:2)
Re:Cinema is dead (Score:2)
Indeed, my feet can smell quite nasty and my farts are rather peerless when it comes to smelliness. The only thing I don't replicate from the the
the commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
And, if they are gonna show a preview, at least show a preview for a movie that the audience of the movie being screened might be interested in.
Fæx!
Re:the commercials (Score:2)
Re:the commercials (Score:2)
Perhaps what I was talking about isn't done in the US, but in Australia, we also get a large dose of advertising for other things before the movie: anti-smoking ads, anti-movie-copying ads, and ads for various stores and services. Those are the ads I'm complaining about, although I'd be happy to watch them if they let me in to the movie for f
Re:the commercials (Score:2)
Norway will switch by 2007 (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.ntnu.no/midgard/Nordic.html [www.ntnu.no]
Re:Norway will switch by 2007 (Score:2)
economics lesson (Score:2)
but you can be damn sure a company selling av equipment at 100k a pop is happy as anything to get 4 sales.. esp if they can tack on all kinds of shipping & installation charges that equate to a european vacation for their installation team...
Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Cinemas like equipment that's built to last. Some cinemas are using projectors that are 30+ years old and still working perfectly. New equipment such as multi channel digital sound processors are just bolted on. You can't bolt a digital projector onto one of these. The technology is fundamentally different.
People are not going to go to the movies just because they have digital projectors. They don't care! It doesn't make a difference how the popcorn was delivered, or whether the electricity comes from nuclear power or coal either. They want to see a movie. This is the problem. Hollywood is too obsessed with technology (not just cameras but digital sets as well). Give us a decent story. Use the technology to tell the story.
Re:Problems (Score:5, Informative)
Now the current generation of projectors are 2048x1080. Soon they will go to 4K. It is telling that IMAX known for its ultra large format films (70mm 15perf) is actively considering digital, in no small part due to the extremely high print costs $20K-$40K. If they consider digital good enough, that's saying something.
Re:Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
I found the resolution of digital was as clear or clearer than the film, by just a little bit. I loved the lack of jitter, which was a huge improvement. However, without the
Re:Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem for large theaters is that flawless digit
agreed. and disgreed. (Score:2)
But, I saw Star Wars Ep 2 with the 1280x1024 system and it was dismal. I have no idea who they tested it with, but they must have been blind. Yes, there was no jitter/jump. That was nice. But the contrast wasn't great and the pixelation wa
its US30K quoted from IMAX direct (Score:3, Informative)
all the movies they'de like into aust. If it was $1k on a harddrive they yeah, they could show anything 24/7.
A 90-10 Split? (Score:3, Informative)
Forget the Cinema (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Forget the Cinema (Score:2)
The only way to get content "legal" is for you to drop your archos player in the trash and go buy a video ipod and downgrade your video playback experience to a tiny screen with less control.
I personally have proudly went to going 100% illegal so I can enjoy Video entertainment technology from this century instead ow waiting for something tiny or low end that is sanctified by the content publishers.
Screw em. the f
Re:Forget the Cinema (Score:2)
The THEATRE experience (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if you go to Westwood in Los Angeles, the theatres look like opera houses, and are ornate and spacious. There is palpable excitement in the crowd on opening night for a new film. I saw a movie at a pizza restaurant/theatre in DC a while back. The tables were set on tiers. Sitting in a comfy chair eating pizza while watching a movie in a theatre is an awesome experience. Lastly, I saw Saving Private Ryan in Amsterdam. The theatre was also very ornate. Some people dressed up for the occasion. A choir dressed in WW2 uniforms sang before the movie and during intermission. During intermission, you could go to the lobby or a number of lounges to have a cocktail or some champagne.
If some maverick theatre owner was willing to turn movie-watching into an EXPERIENCE again, then I might think about attending, but right now I have no interest in being pumped in and out of a suburban money making machine.
LS
Re:The THEATRE experience (Score:2)
That was probably the Arlington Cinema & Draft House. I've only seen a few movies there, but yes, it's very nice to have a hostess come to your table to offer you a pitcher of beer while you're sitting there watching a movie. Not to mention that since the tables are spaced fairly far apart, when people at one table decide to start chatting, it usually doesn't disturb the people at the next table.
Re:The THEATRE experience (Score:2)
1) $30+ for tickets for family
2) 15 minutes of commercials prior to film
3) Sticky, crunchy stuff on theatre floor
4) Sound system TOO LOUD
5) Film sometimes out of focus
6) People talking, cell phones ringing during film
7) 50% chance that film will suck
Don't go to the theatre much anymore, though I do buy / rent DVD's.
In some ways? (Score:2)
How about "not even fucking close to being there"? How about "deficient in almost every way possible"? Or maybe "how stupid I am to even think it is close"?
DCinema facts from an insider (Score:5, Informative)
1. The format has just been ratified and in some ways is still incomplete. It is a SMPTE spec (DC-28).
2. The equipment needed to playback DC-28 doesn't exist in cheap enough quantities yet. This is essentially the chips to decode (encode would be nice as well but it can be done in software). The decoding of J2K is quite cpu intensive and the algorithms don't optimize well in todays CPUs so the decoder chips are a requirement.
3. Its an expense for everyone involved. The projectors are around $75K today, the encoding systems represent multi-million dollar changes to the workflow of the studios (depending on commitment).
4. The only person that is going to make money is the distributor. The distributors all have financing secured, the ones we have talked to for the past 5 years have 3-4 hundred million secured so that they can essentially subsidize a large portion of the rollout but at 10,000 primary screens this only goes so far when you consider projector costs.
5. The theater owners are unconvinced that switching to DCinema is going to gain them anything, in fact the only advantage it gives them is the ability to dynamically change the number of screens that they are using for a given movie at any point in time. The ability to instantly add another showing without ordering another print is a bonus but its not a big enough one.
6. The traditional equipment providers have been fighting this tooth and nail. Somewhat out of ignorance and protectionism but mostly because their technology involves gears and reels not bits and bites. They simply don't understand the technology or to be more fair they didn't in the beginning.
7. There was a lot of division in the format wars, the MPEG 2 guys wanted their version, there were some stand alone wavelet formats, there were some oddball variants of jpeg. All of which had some success which has ultimately delayed the rollout *somewhat* just do to the FUD it has caused.
8. the content owners are worried about digital copies of their films flying around the great cloud of the internet of course and about them being stored on hard disks but most of those issues have been somewhat addressed and we are now just waiting for them to sort of catch up with the reality of technology today.
9. There are a bunch of little things like the single longest lead time item for a D-Cinema system is the lens for the projector. The wait time can be as long as two years.
10. The accepted cost for the DCinema system is around $7K per unit (not counting the projector) which is rediculous as it does not leave much room for cost for storage, the decoder board, the network, backup systems, etc, etc, etc.. just an enterprise class server alone is going to suck up $4K of that cost, its a bit rediculous.
In response to some of the other topics mentioned.
DRM/Security: The DRM is simply normal encryption systems, since the playback system is entirely hardware the playback board has the keys. It will be quite hard to hack. This is not a case of DVD CSS encryption, the system will be much harder to get into. Also the move now is to put real-time watermarking into the film at playback.
Quality: The typical film you see in a theater is around 4th to 6th generation prints. This means you could be down as low as 1000 lines of resolution. DCinema kicks ass in quality. Even when you butterfly the content side by side with a 6K telecine from a pristing master print of the film the dcinema quality stands up quite well (90% of the test audience cannot tell the difference). I would also say that the main reason that some people can tell the difference is that the dcinema version is much more stable (not gate weave) so it is not moving all over on the screen. Even the golden eyes in hollywood agree that it is a better image. Keep in mind that all of the dcinema systems out there today are based on older technology and cannot compare with a DCI spec system.
Re:DCinema facts from an insider (Score:2)
I agree for now, but with the cost of hardware always going down and the fact CPU technology is rapidly racing ahead now with dual-core x86-type CPU's and IBM/Toshiba/Sony's Cell CPU de
How are the theater owners taking this? (Score:2)
And this is a business where showing movies doesn't really make any money for exhibitors. Exhibitors are really
what is a cinema? (Score:4, Funny)
See...Analog is STILL better (Score:2)
But aside from that personal preference, perhaps the movies being put out suck and noone wants to go see them? Its a thought...
Passion of the box office (Score:3, Interesting)
So Cinema isn't dead, the movie companies aren't hurting, it's just that all this is a myopic response to an abberation in the figures the year before.
Why is it so expensive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is retrofitting these theatres going to cost the $100,000/screen as they allege? I have a friend who I helped acquire a theatre and we were able to use a $2500 projector (and later 2 $3,000 unites with "lens shift" where they can be used in tandem), and threw the image onto a full size screen (30x50 ft?) with a super bright, and clear image... WE ran a DVD from a Sony DVD player that was up-converting everything to 1080 lines of resolution, and it looked as good, if not better than 35mm...
We found that the DLP projectors gave much truer color, whereas the LCD units put everyone in a candy colored world.
So anyway, we now show independent filmmaker's films, and DVD trailers - and an occasional a public domain film - and NO ONE had every questioned the quality.
I just don't understand why everyone wants a $100k "digital Projection" projector just because it's the unit they've used at events like the Oscars. Is this because to brand name? Ignorance?
From what I've heard, the bigger issue isn't getting the image on the screen, but the lack of willingness of the exhibitors to LET you play a DVD - they just wont allow it - even if you already get regular movie prints from the company (Disney, MGM, etc.), and are paying them market rate, and have the DVD at the same time the vinyl 35mm is available.
Re:Why is it so expensive? (Score:3, Interesting)
You must have had unbelievably crappy projectors and film, for 480p material to look anywhere near as good. Or, perhaps you're talking about a theatre with very tiny screens...
Well, either they expect low
It's only 24FPS. (Score:2)
3.1.4.2. Frame Rates The DCDM image structure is required to support a frame rate of 24.000 Hz. The DCDM image structure can also support a frame rate of 48.000 Hz for 2K image content only. The frame rate of any individual DCDM master is required to remain constant. Metadata is carried in the image data file format to indicate the frame rate.
The defined image sizes are
Digital cinema will kill theatres (Score:2)
Theatres have always thrived on providing better viewing experience than home television. Thats why when television became popular, theatres adopted the wide screen format.
The problem with Digital is that it is not really better than a good TV set. And technologicaly TV sets have actually better potential for improvement th
Question: not "why not go" but "why go?" (Score:2)
2. Commercials
3. Cost
Those in order of priority are why I very seldom go to the movies anymore. The writing is really horrible in a lot of films, and too damn many of them are aimed straight at teenagers and little kids. (I've got nothing against teenagers and little kids but...)
It's actually a very close call for me which makes me less likely to go to movies anymore, 'quality' or 'commercials'. The quality issue makes me apathetic about going - "I could go to a movie... but I'd probably
The REAL reason: Unions. (Score:2)
-Rick
Exhibitor position on DRM for movies - good design (Score:3, Interesting)
Some highlights:
The system shall be designed to push data to outside business entities per the needs of the exhibitor, and shall not allow outside business entities to pull data from the exhibitor's equipment or from the premises without the express written permission of the exhibitor on a case-by-case basis. All such communications shall be recorded and shall be auditable by the Exhibitor.
That's a nice contractual definition of a "no spyware" requirement. IT managers, put that in your purchase orders.
Good performance requirement. If you have to do hardware replacement, this puts an upper limit on how fast the vendor has to authorize the new hardware.
If we have to have DRM, it needs contractual safeguards like that.
Re:Digital cinema is well established (Score:2)