Audio Video News

High definition video may be the Holy Grail for couch potatoes, but it's not good enough for the cinema. At least that's what members of the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) concluded at a Hollywood technology retreat February 8.

A seven-studio coalition formed to establish technical specifications for digital cinema, DCI announced that it would push for a digital-cinema standard approximately twice the resolution of the best variety of HDTV. In film parlance, 1080i high-def video offers an image resolution quality of under 2000 ("2k") lines of resolution on a 16:9 screen, or only about half the quality the industry's technical gurus would like to see instituted as a standard. At present, most digital film offers resolution in the 2k–4k region.

DCI chief technology officer Walt Ordway told reporters that his group wants to exceed HDTV's limits while offering exhibitors and studios a system that will be reliable for the next 10–20 years. Existing digital cinemas would not meet a new upgraded requirement set by the DCI.

The problem with video is that "it's not very scalable," according to Kodak digital cinema program manager Glenn Kennel. "We can improve and expand upon the quality of presentation," with digital cinema, he mentioned. Lucasfilm's principal engineer Fred Meyer said he felt that there has been "too much emphasis on comparisons to film in a lot of the technology developments . . . . It might be good to look beyond to what's better than film."

Digital cinema vs HDTV is part of a long rivalry between movie studios and the television industry. TV originally adapted the 4:3 aspect ratio for its picture tubes because it was the film industry standard. The movie industry responded with widescreen, and later, surround sound, to pull viewers back into the theaters by giving them a bigger experience than they could get with television. The electronics industry and its sometime allies the network broadcasters were many years late in coming to the widescreen/surround sound/high-def game, but they may be catching up. Home entertainment is soaring: the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) recently announced that DVD's surging popularity drove the movie sales-and-rental business over the $20 billion mark last year. The theater business is also soaring: Entertainment Properties Trust, the nation's only real estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in movie theaters, reported returns on investment of 96% in 2001 and 32% in 2002, according to the February 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Correction: When we originally posted this story, we mistakenly mentioned "There are about 150 digital cinemas worldwide, most equipped with Kodak or JVC projectors with D-ILA chips." Molly Mulloy of Rogers & Cowan informed us that "all 154 digital cinema projectors commercially deployed worldwide are from Texas Instruments manufacturer partners Barco, Christie and NEC Viewtechnology, utilizing TI DLP Cinema technology. Kodak and JVC do not have any commercially deployed digital cinema projectors." Texas Instruments reportedly will demonstrate a 2k-quality chip for its projectors at the ShoWest conference in Las Vegas next month.