The painful conversion of cinema theaters to digital
Last weekend I went to the cinema. The actually movie I enjoyed, the picture quality I didn’t. Despite film being superior to 2K projectors and still challenging 4K projectors, I think in many cases this quality potential is repeatedly ruined by operator behaviour and the quality of the film itself.
Specifically, operators can do serious focus errors, with film a process that needs to be checked for every reel, even during the same play. But of course nothing can be done (like in the case of my last cinema visit) when the reel is many generations apart from the original. In other words, the bigger the film release, the more reels are produced, and consequently the lower the picture quality.
It is with some feeling of relief that I hear that in the US studios are finally to help theaters by paying a digital print fee of $800-$1,000 per film. This way, after a certain amount of films, theaters will end up with multi-thousand dollar projection equipment. Plus, the five main studios will have to pay no more the $1,000 per film which is the cost of physically sending out reels to a theater.
Let’s hope that the installed equipment will be 4K machines, but in any case the analog-to-digital transition has now definitely gone to high gear. In Europe things are really going forward in some places (the UK being a good example) or do not yet move at all (Greece for example). Distribution deals are done per country and theater chains are so fragmented that many different plans take place or are to shortly go ahead. What is particularly unacceptable in some cases is state subsidies to theaters owners for analog-to-digital upgrades, it makes one wonder why people cannot have these for home theaters as well…
Sooner or later digital distribution and projection will be so prevalent in the larger more important markets that the smaller ones are to be inevitably taken along. Unfortunately for cinemas, 4K equipment came along a bit late. In the meantime, home cinema equipment has jumped into the opportunity and a good Full HD home system is as good as any film or digital 2K theater.
The wild card is named 3D, a type of projection that the movie industry hopes will bring people back to theaters in large numbers. Opinions on this are contradictory. 3D movies are still scarce and most directors are still pondering over their move to digital, let alone 3D. What is certain is that we have already entered a long period of transition with open end results and the only guaranteed way of bringing people to theaters is not technological progress but good exciting films that everyone wants to watch.
