I only go to digital theaters if I can help it. It's just simply a way better experience.

John Moses, an instructor in Film Studies at Fresno City College, agreed that digital projection tech might take the magic out of the movies.

"There's something maybe magical about the little scratches that cross the celluloid," he told FoxNews.com. "And the colors are going to be a little less vibrant."

Right, and vinyl sounds better.

And you'll no longer see the changeover cues, those black dots that appear in the corner of a film to let a projectionist know when the reels needs to be switched.

or more commonly white circles, if you're watching actual show prints where the cue dot are applied to the positive print.

This thread lacks a fight club reference...

Slipping, guys.

snuff3r: This thread lacks a fight club reference...

Slipping, guys.

snuff3r: This thread lacks a fight club reference...

Slipping, guys.

Some production studios still add the cigarette burns to modern movies for theaters.

Igor Jakovsky: I actually enjoyed Planet Terror.

Planet Terror was awesome. Death Proof was monotonous crap.

It's better to shoot and edit on video too.

uncoveror: Film only looks better than digital when viewed through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. It is a dinosaur. Digital is demonstrably better in every way.

Doesn't matter if it is better. It's easier for the companies to ship, they only need to ship one to a theater no matter how many screens that theater is showing it in, they can easily provide software to track how many times it was shown, and it isn't going to look or sound worse in 1 month, all things you cannot do or are not true with film. On a pristine projector with a new film reel, a good bulb, clean lens and a perfect backscreen then film might be better, and I probably have described one, maybe two commercial film screens tops in North America. The other couple of thousand theaters are going to be mediocre at best, and pathetic at worst.

TV's Vinnie: I have never, ever seen any such "black dots in the corner" while watching a film. Has anyone? Methinks the article's author is pulling a big one out of their ass.

Not for a very long time but they did exist.

fluffy2097: Pestifer: I just tried to see "Tintin" this past week. It was digital projection, but the bulb or whatever they used was so dim that the movie was impossible to watch in 3D once you subtract the light the glasses eat. It was easier to watch in 2D blur-vision.

Some cheap places think turning the brightness down on the projector increases lamp life (The bulb is on or off, brightness is controlled by other things). Others run bulbs longer then they should (Projector bulbs can loose something like 30% of their light output over time according to documentation I've read). You're supposed to run them for X number of hours, instead of until they burn out. Your theater could have been doing either of these boneheaded things, or both!

/Oh the reasons I don't go to the movies any more.
//So many reasons...

Actually, those people who think 'turning the lamp brightness down' will extend the life are technically correct. Xenon lamp brightness is primarily controlled via current, and lowering the current will result in slightly slower degradation of the elements. This has been common practice at many theaters; most are able to get away with it because most people simply don't notice the difference, especially on a 2D presentation.

However with 3D you lose a significant amount of light even before you hit the screen because of the additional processing, and lowering the light source on top of that just makes things drastically worse. Many exhibitors still feel it's worth it though, as the lamps typically run far upwards of $1500 apiece (not including ant costs incurred should a tech be needed to do the replacement) and squeezing an extra 50-60 hours out of a 2K (the most common to my knowledge) lamp can mean a lot to the bottom line when they generally only last about 1500 hours. 50 hours means another 16 shows (averaging 3 hours for preshow ads, trailers, and feature); with 30 people per show (averaging weekends with slower weekdays) and $3 per person, the theater can just about pay for that new lamp.

Still no excuse for a crappy image though.

/DC operations tech
//forcefed most of this info by manager whose family ran large theater chain for 40 years and helped pioneer DC
///number of dispatches for 'dark images on 3D' that turn out to be running lamp in '2D' mode or @80% voltage is just depressing

Mad_Radhu: I also remember reading recently where some theaters were leaving the 3D filters on the projectors when showing 2D movies, which seriously cut down on the brightness. They were leaving them on because they didn't have people who knew how to change the filters properly without triggering the anti-piracy protections and causing it to shut down.

Theaters that leave the 3D lenses or filters in place for 2D shows are either cheap, understaffed, or have very lazy projectionists. As far as I've ever seen there are no copy protection systems for 3D lenses or filters because there's really no need for them a this point. It's not really feasible to record a 3D presentation that isn't being projected properly because the resulting image will be terrible.. polarized systems will be out of convergence and give just about anyone a throbbing migraine or motion sickness from the non-aligned parallax and double images, and alternating frame systems tend to look like it's being projected through a shower curtain. A dirty shower curtain at that.

According to a friend and former co-worker who deals with this stuff for a living, it's theoretically possible to design a camera that could capture and process a properly projected 3D image in 3D, but the technical requirements would be astounding, and pirates aren't known for doing things the hard way when they don't have to. There are far simpler and more convenient points of attack.

/no, I'm not going to tell you about them
//that's where the most protections are anyway
///'people' are still the weakest link

TV's Vinnie: "And you'll no longer see the changeover cues, those black dots that appear in the corner of a film to let a projectionist know when the reels needs to be switched. "

I have never, ever seen any such "black dots in the corner" while watching a film. Has anyone? Methinks the article's author is pulling a big one out of their ass.

I've seen them. One movie I don't know if they were changeover cues specificly, they looked like braille characters, but I saw like 4 or 5 of them in one movie. It was kind of annoying.

Great Porn Dragon: Those are good, but personally, I'm still waiting for "Werewolf Women of the SS"

Or Thanksgiving. It's really the only American Holiday without its own horror movie.

/doesn't want to be snarky and say which is Easter's