Digital movies - at a cinema near you
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - oh, come on, I'm allowed to do at least one Star Wars column aren't I? Okay, well, anyway, a long time ago someone had the bright idea of projecting several still frames of film in quick succession. Magically, the picture came to life and cinema was born. That really was a long time ago, more than 100 years in fact, but storing a film on a large amount of celluloid and mechanically passing it in front of a large light bulb has little changed during the history of cinema.
However, in an ironic twist of fate, full-scale public cinemas are set to evolve by borrowing technology from the home theatres which have tried so hard to emulate 'the real thing'. You guessed it - movie delivery and projection is about to go digital. It makes sense considering the physics behind a celluloid movie. You're looking at distributing a load of massive 5ft reels, each weighing up to 30kg, and costing about £1,500 to duplicate - and they have the cheek to wear out.
A digital movie could be delivered electronically, pumped through fiber optics, or stored on high-density optical disks. Each playing would look the same and appear just as the director intended. The crucial technology is the digital projector, a device many enthusiasts enjoy at home. The trick has been to develop a quality system for use in the cinema.
Hughes JVC and Texas Instruments reckon they each have a working system - you'll have seen them in the workplace.
Hughes JVC favours its image light amplifier, ILA, system, which employs a crystal light valve and a conventional CRT boasting more than 12,000 lumens light output and a resolution of 2000 x 1280 pixels. TI is advocating its digital light processing, DLP, technology which uses a device like a disco mirror ball to reflect light onto the screen. TI's proposed digital cinema projector boasts 13,000 lumens and a squarish resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels, stretched to widescreen using anamorphic lenses, just like today's film systems.
But what of the movies? George Lucas, he of the galaxy far, far away, has already digitised the first Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace, for a one-month digital trial on four screens in the US, as of 18 June.
Several demonstrations of both systems in Las Vegas this April, including one of Shakespeare in Love, drew enthusiastic response.
Still, purists will fear in a similar way to vinyl vs CD, that digital projection can't match film. Experts worry that some distributors may over-compress the image for easier delivery. And at about £100,000, a digital projector is three times the price of a film model. Then again, with digital projectors, cinema owners could generate additional revenue showing live sporting events. Digital projection will happen, and in the UK we'll probably have to adopt the US phrase of 'going to the movies' as in a couple of years, there'll literally be no films to see.
Gordon Laing is a freelance IT journalist.