A/V Veteran

Movie time has been in short supply at chez TJN recently. My home theater system is packed up for a pending long distance move. I’m down to a modest two-channel setup (Onkyo AVR, Revel Concerta M20 bookshelf speakers, no sub, flat screen HDTV) in my much smaller family room. Potential buyers can now see the former home theater as the living/dining space it’s supposed to be.

The HDTV in this smaller system is my 60-inch Pioneer Elite Kuro plasma, Five years after Pioneer stopped making them, the only flat screen HDTV I’ve tested (including 4K sets) that (marginally) exceed the Kuro in providing viewing satisfaction is the Panasonic TC-65ZT60, another plasma I also purchased after reviewing it. But my now reference Panasonic ZT is packed up and ready to play King of the Road. The Kuro is close enough, however, that absent a direct comparison I still marvel at its image quality every time I watch it.

The recent LG OLED I reviewed would be up there as well, but at 55-inches is just a bit too small to completely scratch my HDTV itch—and in any case it’s no longer in-house. There are potential upcoming winners from Panasonic (4K LCD with full backlit LED local dimming) and LG (4K OLED), but neither has yet been tested and both of them are ruinously expensive for most of us. While I might not be the one to review either of the latter (depending on how their availability matches up to my getting established at a new location), I’ll be pitching for a future follow-up to one or both for a comparison to TC-65ZT60, since I’m the only one on staff with access to the latter.

I can still watch movies on the Kuro before I split for points East, but plan to take full advantage of the commercial theaters here in Los Angeles during this prime movie release season. My final destination won’t be anywhere near as rich in great movie houses (to my knowledge, there’s only one digital IMAX theater there, at best, within 50-miles). The past two weeks were a start, with viewings of both Interstellar and Big Hero Six on big screens.

I saw Interstellar at the TCL Chinese theater (better known by its original name, Grauman’s) in Hollywood. I wrote about this theater, and its conversion to a reserved-stadium-seating, IMAX theater, about a year ago. Since the Interstellar presentation there used the varying aspect ratios director Chris Nolan prefers for IMAX, the film didn’t appear to be using the full width of the theater’s reportedly 85-foot wide screen (earlier reports put this at 95-feet). The movie was filmed and presented in 2D only; Nolan isn’t a fan of 3D, nor in fact of digital cinematography and projection. He shoots on film, and while in most theaters digital projection is the only option these days, the film is being presented on film in many theaters. As I write this it’s still playing that way at the Chinese IMAX.

That theater reportedly spent $600,000 on audio and video upgrades to accommodate Interstellar. Key among these changes was a full 70mm IMAX film projector. Interstellar is almost 3 hours long (in my opinion 20-30 minutes could have easily been cut with no damage to the film’s impact or narrative flow) and the platter holding the film (shown in the photo above) was enormous! In fact, to keep the platter’s size even remotely practical there were no trailers shown at the Chinese presentation. The end credits were also a fraction of the length of today’s typical film (a welcome bonus!).

My only reservation about the picture quality involved the theater’s 3D-ready screen, installed in last year’s IMAX conversion in anticipation of 3D-forevermore. That’s a problem these days for 2D films in most theaters, which converted to the silvered, higher gain screens installed to provide adequate brightness (and passive glasses capability) for the now rapidly fading 3D craze. Assuming that the film itself contains adequately deep blacks, the Chinese’s higher gain screen resulted grayish (rather than inky black) space shots and a lack of stars, frequent distractions that took me out of the film. Hopefully the upcoming Blu-ray will remedy this, assuming that your display has decent black levels.

But my biggest issue with Interstellar was with the sound. The dialogue intelligibility was poor, a complaint I’ve heard from others who saw the film elsewhere, so it wasn’t necessarily the fault of the Chinese theater. But the latter has had such issues in its pre-IMAX days due to excessive reverberation in the auditorium. This was never adequately fixed, using effective acoustic treatments, because the preservationist lobby objected (many years ago, during the original THX certification, or so I’ve been told) to making any changes that might alter the historical appearance of the theater. That’s odd today, considering the extensive changes made in the IMAX conversion (which didn’t to my eyes, compromise the historical looks of the theater).

In addition, the volume level was far too loud. I say that as someone who has to scale back the volume in his home theater by 3-4 dB when friends come to visit. This is a common problem in big LA theaters (I always bring ear plugs!).

In spite of these issues, and the film’s head-scratching, wormhole and black hole physics (the latter rated by some physicists as reasonably congruent with existing theories), I enjoyed Interstellar. But my favorite Nolan film remains The Prestige, which likely puts me in a very small minority, most of whom would likely vote for The Dark Knight.

Big Hero Six, a Disney computer animated feature, is very different. I saw this film in at a local AMC multiplex, in one of that chain’s new “Prime” theaters. AMC Prime offers digital projection, a big screen (almost s big as the digital IMAX screen in the same complex), reclining and vibrating seats and, with appropriately mastered films, Dolby Atmos. Big Hero Six offered both 3D and Atmos. This presentation was also too loud, though less overwhelmingly so than the Chinese.

In my experience so far, Atmos is most effective in quieter, more atmospheric moments and adds little to already cacophonous action scenes. Hero was a fun movie, however, with particularly impressive 3D that enhanced the experience while not calling undue attention to itself. It helped that the Prime theater’s 3D brightness level was never too dim to be distracting. The movie should be fun for everyone, except perhaps those who wouldn’t be caught dead going to an animated feature without a kid or two in tow. Even the latter folks, however, might enjoy it as more of a superhero action flick (though very kid-friendly) than your usual animated fare. As to the former, it’s no Incredibles; as to the latter, no Frozen. But Disney clearly has a winner on its hands for the holiday season.