A/V Veteran

The history of audio and video, both in the movie theater and at home, has been a back and forth tug of war for decades. Stereo, for example, started in the theater and was only adapted to the home much later (a couple of decades later if you count Disney’s Fantasia as the multichannel theatrical milestone. But a small bump in the road they called World War II delayed the widespread theatrical adoption of multichannel audio, and therefore the impetus for home stereo, for years).

Digital projection also appeared first in the movie theater, followed soon afterword by affordable digital displays for the home. But as each trickle down from theater to home enhanced the home experience and therefore threatened the viability of movie houses, theaters and studios moved to counteract the threat. That gave us today’s enhanced (or at least louder!) multichannel surround theater sound, vibrating seats, widescreen films, high resolution digital projection, and last but least, 3D.

The best movie theaters are now equipped with every trick in the AV book, at least in major markets. IMAX has been a big draw (despite its more expensive tickets). The AMC chain has its Prime technology, an IMAX competitor of sorts, with vibrating, reclining seats. The AMC complex in Burbank California, near my former home, had both IMAX and Prime auditoriums, the latter equipped with Dolby’s Atmos object-oriented audio system.

But even as Atmos makes its way into more theaters, films, and even into the home, Dolby hasn’t rested on its laurels. It has combined Atmos with image enhancements for the theater in a new format it calls Dolby Cinema.

Dolby Cinema: A Dolby Vision Twin?
You’ve undoubtedly heard the buzz over high dynamic range. HDR is an option for Ultra HD, since it requires special formatting (or grading, to use the technical industry term) at the source. In brief, HDR doesn’t offer just a brighter picture with higher contrast. It also provides a means to generate more realistically bright image highlights. In other words, we’ll need to redefine the meaning of “image pop.” HDR will be a whole new ball game, and more obvious to the average viewer on a home-sized set than Ultra HD’s added pixels.

In the flat screen Ultra HDTV world, HDR (done properly) can be achieved with one of two imaging technologies. One of them uses self-illuminating, individually addressable pixels that can generate high levels of peak brightness. We may see this from OLED, but as of early May 2015 no HDR OLED sets have yet reached the market. (Plasma designs never had the brightness capability required for HDR). The other approach to flat screen HDR uses an LCD set with many zones of full backlit local dimming (the more the better) so that the areas with those bright highlights can be individually illuminated. The latter is the approach used in Dolby’s PRM-4220 monitor (see below). Only one such LCD set has been introduced into the consumer market as I write: Samsung’s 65-inch JS9500 UHDSUHD in Samsung’s designation. There is as yet no significant HDR consumer software. But it will come.

Dolby, the first out of the HDR gate with Dolby Vision, could be credited with launching the concept. Its own PRM-4220 is a 42-inch professional HD (not UHD) HDR monitor with hundreds of individually backlit zones. It sells for silly money—tens of thousands of dollars. Consumer HDR sets will use far fewer zones to keep the prices down, and will not always carry the Dolby Vision name (the Samsung doesn’t) but will operate on a similar principle.

Dolby includes an offshoot of Dolby Vision’s HDR for projection, a redesign of auditoriums to maximize contrast, and all of Dolby’s latest audio wrinkles, including Atmos. We’ve covered Atmos extensively elsewhere, but the main item of interest here is the image enhancement promised by Dolby Cinema. Dolby Cinema claims a wider color gamut (not exactly new, as the current Digital Cinema gamut has been in use for years and is unlikely to change much, if at all, in the near future), high frame rate capability (only a few films have yet been produced with this feature), and HDR. The latter should offer not only brighter, punchier highlights but far deeper blacks as well.

The Christie Digital projectors designed for use in the Dolby Cinema format employ laser illumination. Two upcoming films have apparently been “graded” for Dolby Cinema HDR: Disney’s Tomorrowland (opens May 22) and the Disney/Pixar Inside Out (June).

But how can a projection system selectively illuminate different parts of the screen, a seeming requirement for true HDR? The discussions on both the Dolby and Christie Digital websites are (deliberately?) vague on this subject, though an educated guess suggests that it involves CRT-like scanning of the DLP chips. The ability to scan the chips, together with the fact that lasers can be turned completely on and off nearly instantaneously, would also allow for the sort of black levels previously unattainable in theatrical projection. Theatrical black levels took a step backwards when we transitioned from film projection to digital, but were never as good as the blacks we can get from today’s best home theater projectors.

Great black levels will be more important than peak white output in theatrical presentations, as projectors can’t produce the same peak brightness as can a flat panel UHD set. Dolby’s pro HDR flat screen monitor can produce 4000 nits of peak brightness, which is equivalent to 1167 foot-lamberts. Consumer HDR sets are likely to be capable of 800-1000 nits, or around 260 foot-lamberts. According to Christie, “We’ll be delivering audiences a richer, more detailed viewing experience with up to 14 foot lamberts onscreen in 3D and up to 31 foot lamberts for 2D Dolby Vision content.” That peak brightness level isn’t even close to what a flat-panel HDR set will produce. But reports from experienced observers who attended a showing of Inside Out at the recent CinemaCon theater-owners trade show in Las Vegas (we weren’t there, unfortunately) reported that the black levels were spectacular.

The first Dolby Cinema opened in the Netherlands last December, though there were no films graded for HDR at the time. Dolby has teamed up with AMC to convert some of AMC’s Prime auditoriums over the next several years. In fact, if you live in LA, Kansas City, Atlanta, or Houston, there should be an AMC Prime location with Dolby Cinema in your neck of the woods by the middle of May (though sadly, no longer in mine). Four more such theaters are expected in June. There will also be IMAX theaters equipped for Dolby Cinema, though no announcements specifics there as yet.